Celebrating her years of work on the Glasgow Spoken Word circuit, Leyla Josephine will record a live album of her archive in the Hug and Pint on Burns night.
Leyla has been writing and performing around Glasgow and the UK for the last six years, and is set to immortalise some of her best poems set to an audience on her home ground.
Leyla is well known for her political poems about abortion, gender, and UK politics, and has had two successful runs at The Edinburgh Fringe.
Her first show ‘Hopeless’ toured with sold out shows across the UK and her most recent show, ‘Daddy Drag’ won the 2019 Autopsy Award as an exploration into toxic masculinity while playing her late father in drag.
"I’ve been rehearsing for the last week and really looking forward to the evening" Leyla told The Glasgow Times.
"As a poet and writer you rarely get a chance to perform more than 20 minute sets at a time, so this is equal measure challenging and exciting.
"I’m so chuffed with my line up too. I love every one of them as poets and as pals. Tickets are already selling fast and I can’t wait to kick things off.
Supporting Leyla on the evening will be some of Glasgow's best poets and performers, including Amelia Bayler, Scottish Slam Champion Iona Lee, playwright Hannah Lavery and Spoken Word Artists Cat Hepburn and Janette Ayachi.
The evening will close with a DJ set from Aby Watson, more commonly known for her club night Push It in Glasgow's Stereo club.
The news of her live album comes shortly after Leyla was appointed as Writer in Residence for Citizen, the next phase of the year-round programme taking the Edinburgh Book Festival across the country.
"I feel that the reason poetry is difficult to others is because people put boundaries on it, saying what is and isn't good" says Leyla.
"When I'm teaching in contexts that aren't used to writing, the main thing is getting them to write down opinions and feelings, things about their life.
"I fell into spoken word.
"My friend Sam was running poetry nights in Inn Deep and he told me to come down and do it, and from that I kept getting gigs."
Since then, Leyla has performed in hundreds of venues particularly around Glasgow, speaking widely to the masses about topics like love, death, sex, porn and abortion. Last year she toured with John Cooper Clarke.
"I'm at a different point in my career now. I've been doing it a long time and my craft is changing a lot, its quieter" said Leyla. "I still feel lucky people want to listen to what I have to say."
Tickets for the show are available online and in venue.
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