Excitement mounts in Gatehouse of Fleet as it prepares for the seventh year of BIG LIT: The Stewarty Book Festival (April 20th – 23rd). What began as a modest festival-in-a-day is now a mighty four day festival of wall to wall events, featuring literature in all its cunning guises. This year it headlines the self-styled ‘People’s Potato’, inimitable poet comedian, John Hegley with his show, Peace Love and Potatoes. The show has toured extensively in England but has its Scottish premier with this trip to the Dumfries region
In a sequence of songs, poems and daftness Hegley expounds on an eclectic melange of subjects, including letters, drawings and dances, with trains, a family of daleks, John Keats, Joan of Arc, trucks, boats and a ship. And chips. Suitable for adults and youngsters over 7.
‘‘You’re absolutely guaranteed a good time says Chrys Salt MBE, convener of The Festival, ‘John’s work is funny, moving, thoroughly eccentric, thought-provoking – and always original. We expect a full house for this one!’
John will also entertain children from three primary schools in the Region with his unique approach to poetry, dance and song, his poetic genius and silliness – with vegetables – in his brilliant interactive show for children, “Animal Alphaboat”. School children only.
John appears on the morning and afternoon of Thursday April 20th , but BIG LIT has lots of other treats in store in the following three days – a writers workshop with award winning novelist Karen Campbell, charismatic broadcaster and performer Billy Kay exploring the Scottish Diaspora and its influence on wine. There’s music (ancient and modern), Samuel Beckett, poetry, prose, biography, Virginia Woolf, history, installation, exhibition, Leonard Cohen, a gory literary murder to solve at Cream o’Galloway, talent both local and national, alive and dead – not to mention a timely Scottish PEN event featuring exiled Bafta award winning Palestinian poet Ghazi Hussein who has found refuge from torture in Scotland.
Explore the full programme on www.biglit.org with tickets available from the BIG LIT Box Office in Gatehouse at The Franca Bruno Shop Tel: 07803 228497 / 07707 686109 (open daily 10am – 5pm) or online through the BIG LIT website.
