Tubthumping at The Constitutional

Tubthumping at The Constitutional, 14 April 2022, from £10.00 - Book now

Head to Farsley, between Leeds and Bradford, and a rip-roaring evening awaits, featuring some of the UK’s most dynamic spoken word poets: Nymphs & Thugs presents Tubthumping at The Constitutional, and the second Tubthumping presents Toria Garbutt and Vanessa Kisuule.

It is co-hosted by spoken word organisers and label Nymphs & Thugs founder Matt Abbott and poet and performer Maria Ferguson, and each month features a showcase of emerging talent alongside nationally and internationally renowned acts.

Tubthumping means “the expression of opinions in a loud or aggressive way”, but don’t be scared. The semi-regular series of events is part-funded by Leeds Inspired, and organised in partnership with the team behind Trouble At Mill and The Old Woollen. It is co-hosted by spoken word organisers and label Nymphs & Thugs founder Matt Abbott and poet and performer Maria Ferguson, and each month features a showcase of emerging talent alongside nationally and internationally renowned acts.

This time round, it’s the turn of Toria Garbutt and Vanessa Kisuule. Vanessa was Glastonbury Festival’s 2019 poet-in-residence and she has been featured on BBC iPlayer, Radio 1, Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Blue Peter, Don’t Flop and TEDx in Vienna. She has written for publications including the Guardian, NME and Lonely Planet and has publication credits in anthologies with Canongate, Orion and Penguin Random House.

Nationally acclaimed spoken word artist Toria Garbutt is a regular support act for the Bard of Salford, Dr John Cooper Clarke, most recently on his Luckiest Guy Alive tour. In 2016, she released her first album Hot Plastic Moon via Nymphs & Thugs and, in 2018, her first poetry collection, The Universe And Me, was published by Hull’s Wrecking Ball Press. Manchester poet Mike Garry says: “Toria’s words are silk javelins. Frank explorations of self, outpourings of a joyfully pained mind. She means it. Cos she’s lived it. I love that girl.” Toria featured in the Guardian‘s 2019 article Generation Next: The Rise – and Rise – of the New Poets, alongside Nymphs & Thugs label mate Matt Abbott, who calls her “the lyrical machine gun”.

Matt founded Nymphs & Thugs in 2015 to produce spoken word events around the UK – featured artists include Wigan-based writer and performer Louise Fazackerley, Salena Godden and Luke Wright. Matt’s one-man show Two Little Ducks received rave reviews when it debuted at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe, leading to a 22-date UK theatre tour in autumn 2018 and resulting in both a studio album and a debut poetry collection of the same name, which was published by Verve Poetry Press.

Maria Ferguson is a writer, performer and multi-award-winning theatre-maker from Romford. She has been a resident artist for Roundhouse and Battersea Arts Centre and commissioned by Royal Academy of Art, Stylist and BBC Radio 1. Her debut solo show, Fat Girls Don’t Dance, won the Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Show and her second show, Essex Girl, was shortlisted for Soho Theatre’s Tony Craze Award and won Show of the Week at VAULT 2019. Her debut poetry collection Alright, Girl? was published by Burning Eye Books in 2020 and was highly commended for the Forward Prize for Poetry, while her poem ‘My Letters’ was highly commended in the Forward Prize 2021.