Imagine you’ve been shot into space. You’re going to be counting the years on your fingers. To fill up some of your time, between the science and flying, what would you take – music or books? Or would you have to take both? There’s absolutely no doubt that we’d want to take them both, or rather that our very clever, never needs re-charging iPod would be full of both poems and tunes.

Phrased & Confused takes words and music – poets and musicians – and mixes them up to create gorgeous lyrical feasts for music lovers and secret wordsmiths alike. It’s not necessarily clever, but it is a whole lot of fun…

Since 2004 we’ve been exploring our hunch that music fans are a potential new audience for live literature events, under the banner Phrased and Confused. With 3 successful national tours and a festival tent already under our belts, we’ve learned a lot along the way about who comes and why and about how music promoters are interested in getting more involved in live literature.

Phrased and Confused first went out on tour in 2004 with novelist Patrick Neate, DJ Charlie Dark and musician Earl Zinger, who wowed audiences with their combination of spoken word and music sets.

In October 2006 we took Phrased & Confused on the road again, incorporating some of what we learned about audiences and promoters, and this time featuring some of the UK’s most talked about new singer-songwriters; Emma Pollock and Chris T-T, alongside poet Brendan Cleary and djs Sore Throat. Alongside the tour we ran a development programme aimed at giving live literature producers across the UK the chance to present work in their local music venue.

Then in 2008, for the first time, we programmed a stage at Leicester’s Summer Sundae Weekender, commissioning four new works (from Jean Binta Breeze, Andy Craven-Griffiths, Aoife Mannix & Janie Armour and Mark Grist & MC Mixy) and showcasing a diverse array of talent including Benin City, Excentral Tempest, Dockers MC and Joolz Denby over the 3-day festival.

It was a real hit, with over 1800 festival-goers spending time in the tent, and we’re back again this Summer with another packed schedule of lyrical music and spoken word. And we’re really excited to be offering four more commissions to spoken word artists.

And in May 2009 we embarked on our third national tour, pitching together Canada’s beautiful folk collective Woodpigeon, satirical wordsmith Murray Lachlan Young, together with two of our commissioned acts from Summer Sundae: poet Aoife Mannix and accordianist Janie Armour and Dead Poets, a mash-up of MCing and poetry, courtesy of MC Mixy and poet Mark Grist.

Our ongoing audience research shows how successfully the Phrased & Confused format does attract music fans to spoken word: 37% of our audiences on the 2006 Phrased & Confused tour hadn’t been to a spoken word event in the previous year, but 42% had attended 1-10 live music gigs in same period, and a whopping 92% of them had attended between 11 and 50 gigs. The majority of them said they came for the ‘mix of live music and words’, and only 18% said ‘the line up’ was what made them come, suggesting that they trust us and are happy to experiment. Result!

We have big plans to develop Phrased and Confused, including large-scale events and a one-stop spoken word digital platform, so watch this space!

Information about previous Phrased & Confused activites is available on our archived site 2005-2007.