ABSTRACT
This chapter gives qualitative and anecdotal consideration of the present thriving spoken-word scene and of the venues in Glasgow that welcome spoken-word events. It will cover some background and history and analyse where there is fluidity between performance and the page through consideration of the work of Tom Leonard and James Kelman in the 1990s.
Consideration will also be given to the activities of The Worker’s City Group and The Free University as cultural interventions that incorporated spoken-word events as part of wider strategy of cultural resistance to neo-liberal economic policies that have been pursued by successive UK governments and Scottish local government since 1979.
There will be discussion of Glasgow University’s role in encouraging spoken word and spoken-word events specifically through the ‘Outside in/Inside out’ Festival which took place in October 2016 and the University’s present programme of lunchtime readings. Such ideas as ‘page poets moving off the page’ and ‘the role of live literature events in encouraging new participants’ will also be touched upon’.
