Henry Normal and Nigel Planer

12th Sep 2024

A special one-off performance of poetry, stories and thoughts celebrating the sea, the coast and edges of things.

Henry Normal as lived by the sea for over 30 years and been inspired by it for twice as long.

Nigel Planer is a comedy legend, an actor, writer and more importantly for this show he's a great poet. He joins Henry Normal, BBC Radio 4's 'poet in reticence' to reunite a team that entertains, educates and informs (but mostly entertains it must be said).

Expect poetry, stories, jokes, Q & A, fun, knitwear and a few surprises.

The Sea and me, Nigel Planer
From Nigel Planer’s poem; On Finding Someone

“…there is no turning back no turning and I am massively stable now in the swirling
there is no reminiscent story we can tell that will not fit
no neurosis possible no other route but this no miscegenation
since we are one and this is it
and the sea in its furious deafness confirms the certainty of us and the wind sings this coupling since Egypt and the Flood
if each ripple were a hint of other maybes if each star a window to a doubt
the water would lie glassy still around us, naked, and the lights would be out.”

“I have a wary relationship with the sea. It’s terrifying and dangerous and yet exerts a magnetic pull. It’s almost as if I’ve spent my life trying to get away from the sea and its “Tumbling in Harness” as Dylan Thomas put it. From hopeless student days in a freezing Brighton, through to diving in the Pacific Atolls of Polynesia, the sea has had its unwelcome hook in me. Robert Louis Stevenson escaped from the North and spent the last 8 years of his life in the south seas, his poor health improving with each month spent on the waves. Following in his adventurous path, I was able finally to come to terms with the sea and face my own fears of it”. NP

Nigel will read poetry from his collection ‘Making Other Plans’ as well as some passages from the memoir he is working on, including the story of the extensive research into Robert Louis Stevenson that he did in order to write his play, ‘Death of Long Pig’