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BBC Arts
Contains Strong Language
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2018 Home
Highlights
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Previous Years
28 – 30 Sep 2018, Hull
BBC Contains Strong Language 2018
Hull, 28-30 September 2018
Contains Strong Language 2021
Looking for this year's edition of the UK's biggest poetry and spoken word festival of new work? CSL heads to Coventry in September...
23 Sep 2021
Highlights from Contains Strong Language 2018
It was one Hull of a weekend. Pictures and more from the return of CSL : 28-30 Sept 2018
The Best of CSL 2018 - Part 1
A handy summary of what went on at the 2018 festival of poetry, performance and new writing
Clips : the story so far
A few audio and video highlights from CSL 2017 & 2018
Unwritten: The Verb
Performance and interviews from the live recording at CSL and Birmingham Literature Festival - with footage from the origin of the project in Jamaica
Contains Strong Language 2018 - a guide
All about the UK’s biggest poetry and performance festival of new writing, which returned to Hull in September 2018.
Words First - 1Xtra
BBC Radio 1Xtra celebrates spoken word!
Highlights
Doctors celebrates World Poetry Day
A special World Poetry Day episode, Rhyme and Reason, features Midlands poet Joe Cook.
Enchanted by language
Four of the Hull 18 poets reveal their trade secrets.
Listen to Front Row
Sean Scully's documentary A Northern Soul, Vicky Foster's one woman performance Bathwater and Tanya Shirley with discussion of Caribbean poetry.
Listen to The Verb
The Verb at the 'Contains Strong Language' festival in Hull with Jackie Kay, Gruff Rhys, Louise Wallwein, Joe Hakim and work inspired by 'Palgrave's Golden Treasury'.
Listen to The Echo Chamber on Radio 4
Jacob Polley, Caroline Bird, Wayne Holloway-Smith and Mary Jean Chan share poems about beginnings, arrivals and coming of age.
The Echo Chamber collection
Extracts from Paul Farley's conversations with poets
Still, by JoinedUp Dance and Simon Armitage
Poet Simon Armitage and director of JoinedUp Dance Jackie Goodman tell us more.
Features
The Verb - BBC Radio 3
Radio 3's cabaret of the word, featuring the best poetry, new writing and performance
Home Town Story
Written by award-winning poet and playwright Louise Wallwein, and Directed by Mark Murphy, Home Town Story was commissioned and produced by Absolutely Cultured for Contains Strong Language.
BBC Local Poets 2018
BBC Local Radio teamed up with 12 specially chosen poets across England to create a dozen new poems for broadcast on National Poetry Day.
"I now feel able to call myself a writer"
Piers Black-Hawkins on winning the Alfred Bradley Bursary Award 2016.
The Cultural Frontline - BBC World Service
Making the Caribbean soldiers of World War One visible through verse - with poet Tanya Shirley.
Photos from Contains Strong Language 2018
Some pictorial highlights from the 2018 festival
Latest Events
2021
23 Sep 2021 Coventry
2020
25 Sep 2020 Cumbria
2019
27 Sep 2019 Hull
2018
28 Sep 2018 Hull
See More Events
Links
Wrecking Ball Press
Arts Council England
Absolutely Cultured
14-18 NOW
British Council