Crispin Thomas at the Shed
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world cup haiku
any land or time
uniting delighting all
only a football
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Crispin Thomas - Englands' maverick performance and football poet, will be asking the 'Big Question'...discussing his life and performing his work in Berlin on the evening before the England vs Sweden game at the Lido on Monday June 19th! Crispin will deliver his poems and thoughts on the World's biggest footballing competition and plans to create a monster spontaneous poem onstage with the audience (in English). He'll also be tackling questions on the game today, in addition to his life and love of football and poetry. In the words of William Wordsworth .. "poetry is writing with passion about something you feel passionate about", and so it is with Crispin who writes with passion about his passion - football in a blue and white shed in his garden! Crispin told us that while he's still unclear about just what he did in a 'previous poem' to deserve this invitation, he's really looking forward to the show! He's also hoping like all footballers (and poets) today, that once he's 'out there' he can he can 'settle down and play his normal poem.
Crispin, who's been watching football live since the late fifties, has been running poetry workshops on everything from Racism for Kick it Out to the History of the Beautiful Game, for some years. On his travels he's worked in some strange places from Porto in Portugal, where blackboards and chalk still ruled (technophobe heaven), to the glamour of the FA HQ in Soho (scary!).
He's even waxed lyrical in secure prisons in Wales with football hooligans (interesting, he claims). He works regularly with the National Literacy Trust as part of Kick Into Reading in English libraries, and is an important part of Chelsea FC's 'Education Through Football' programme.
A master of the ad-lib and spontaneity with a dry sense of fun and humour, Crispin's performances of his self penned poems and rhymes are witty and thoughtful, comic and rhythmical. Crispin writes from the heart on everything from shopping to goalposts, and from cake to socks!
About the football poets website
The Football Poets site is free and non-profit making. It is totally un-funded. Some of it is out of date, due to lack of funding, but it almost adds to its quaintness like an old football ground. Crispin Thomas is the voluntary editor for the site for the past 6 years. Launched for fun to tie in with Euro 2000 the site is now regarded as the largest football poetry site in the world with over 7500 poems from all over the globe.
It is recommended by the BBC, Independent, Guardian, Kick It Out, When Saturday Comes, and the media. Any work which they do in schools goes onto the site. Children get to see their work appear in published form, often for the first time.
Date: 19 July 2006
Venue: Lido,
Cuvrystraße 7,
10997 Berlin
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