Shropshire Star

Libraries’ across Shropshire welcome music and poetry festival following grant to artists

Libraries across the county will be filled with live music and poetry following a grant to Shropshire artists.

Published
Understories Whalebone and Jean Atkin Landscape

Bridgnorth based acoustic trio, Whalebone, and Shrewsbury poet Jean Atkin have been awarded arts council funding to create their new performance, Understories.

The music and poetry fusion is based on the new folklore of Shropshire and has been especially written to be performed in libraries in Shropshire.

Understories includes tales of grisly murders, haunted roundabouts, pigs kept in railway stations and a boy who burrowed under a church.

Guitarist Charlotte Watson, said: "We're very excited to be bringing live performances to these wonderful and inspiring places. Libraries are ideal spaces for Understories' mix of poetry and acoustic music and we're grateful to National Lottery and Arts Council England for enabling this to go ahead."

Poet Jean Atkin added: "It's immensely exciting for me to be bringing Understories around Shropshire libraries with the talented members of Whalebone. The whole project is about Shropshire's borrowed and handed-on stories, so really there's no better place to introduce it than in a local library."

The performances are free entry and coming to Shrewsbury Library at 1pm on Friday March 1, and Whitchurch Library at 4pm on Tuesday March 5.