Roma Havers: LOB at Contact

Poetry meets tennis and live literature meets theatre in LOB, a piece that explores moving through sporting spaces as a queer body, written and performed by Roma Havers, Young Identity alumna and Learning Officer at Manchester Poetry Library. Strawberries are promised…

Roma Havers is a poet and theatre-maker, whose work explores queer inheritance, what it means to practise, and radicalising queer joy.

Here’s the blurb: “It’s the year 2000 and my grandmother, dreaming of Wimbledon glory, is devastated by my lack of prowess. Having been obsessed with this memory for twenty years, now, with her trusty swingball set, poet and theatremaker Roma Havers once again attempts to serve a LOB. Egged on by locker room banter, a Victorian ghost for a doubles partner and a masked ball that just won’t go to plan, at its heart this dance and poetry show prioritises the rearticulation of failure and shame and what it could mean to move as queer bodies in sporting spaces, even if you’ll never reach Centre Court. With original music from Donna Loman, Movement Direction from Christopher Brown and Swingball from Nico’s balcony.”

Roma Havers is a poet and theatre-maker, whose work explores queer inheritance, what it means to practise, and radicalising queer joy. For Manchester International Festival, in 2020 she ran a queer writing Festival In My House called Paying Attention. She has also performed OUTscription, about queering archives, for Manchester Sexuality Summer School, and has worked with Art With Heart’s Dial and with Young Identity, running workshops online and producing their new book Working From HOME.

Performances are 45 minutes. There will be a BSL interpreted performance of LOB on Friday 7 October by BSL interpreter Andy Higgins. More events at Contact take place during Manchester Literature Festival.