Ignite Books Gala Night - London Monarch

Last Monday was the Ignite Books Gala night at The Monarch in Camden, London. 
The mini tour is the second one organised by indie press Ignite Books. Last April, the publisher celebrated its first release, Joolz Denby's novella The Curious Mystery of Miss Lydia Larking and the Widow Marvell. At the time, I had written a little report HERE. 

This time, Ignite Books were celebrating the launch of Joolz' stunning new novel, Wild Thing, which I have reviewed HERE. The book has been available on the New Model Army shop since December 2011 but is officially released - i.e will be available on Amazon (HERE), on Kindle, maybe even in bookshops(?) on February 14th 2012. 

Ignite Galas are intimate, beautiful events full of warmth, poetry, prose and music. 
South-London poet Peter Hayhoe started the night with his bitter-sweet texts about the realities of love in the modern day. Find a little video of his stuff HERE.

Then Steve "Spot the Poet" Pottinger, Ignite Books co-founder, read a few of his excellent hard-hitting, politically flavoured texts. Some of them like 13th Floor and Five a Day are available to read on his WEBSITE. 

Steve Pottinger

Accompanying Joolz and Steve was Mik Davis, former frontman of the now defunct New York Alcoholic Anxiety Attack and his Utopian Love Revival bandmate, drummer Calum.  

Mik

Calum

Then Joolz came onto the stage, filling the room with her unflinching charisma. She started with The Black Dahlia, a new text that has given its name to Joolz's new spoken word album (which has been written and produced by Mik Davis who accompanied her on stage for this track). 
We were also treated to Smoking Joe and to The Wolf Girls of Midnapore (taken from the wonderful Spirit Stories album), the real story of feral children which would eventually inspire Wild Thing. 
As Joolz has admitted, it is not easy to choose an extract of Wild Thing for a reading without revealing too much of the story. But even the short extract she had picked for us came to life thanks to her wonderful skills as a storyteller and raconteur, her rich voice following all the nuances of the text. There is nothing I'd love more than have an audiobook version of Wild Thing read by Joolz. 

This was an enchanting evening put together by people fired up by their passion for words, music, art and freedom from the claws of corporate-sponsored "culture" . 

Oh, and I got a gorgeous out of print (1986) collection of Joolz's Poems...

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to know

And thank you to Steve Pottinger for giving me a lovely Ignite Books mug... Perfect accompaniment to my freelance working day!