Playing The Poem
Agnes Jeanne Maria & Peter Spafford
Playing The Poem
A singer sings a poem.
A poet reads a poem and a musician plays between the words.
Musicians play an improvised groove and a poet riffs fragments of a poem between the notes.
Playing The Poem is a new experimental project in which poets and musicians get to play together in an informal, trusting space, in the moment, and on the radio.
After working together in Unsung Sports (2023), Schwa & at Chapel FM Arts Centre, Peter Spafford & Agnes Jeanne Maria have found improvising with poetry & music to be a really good thing.
From taking poetry from Peter’s collection Sun Tanking (2025) & improvising melodies around the words, we then took words from writers featured in the Threshold Anthology (2026) as apart of the Writing On Air Festival. From there - Playing The Poem was made, a project to lift up local writers & musicians with freedom to play with words, melodies, rhythm and sound.
Playing The Poem -
Don’t Forget Me 2026 live
As apart of the Writing On Air 2026 launch - we played Ellie Thompson’s poem Don’t Forget Me, improvising directly from her words.
Don’t forget me
Oh how i miss it,
the gaps between the stars,
my love residing,
in a place far from here,
her shadow bounces,
dusted in the ashes of your memory,
do not wait up, love,
for i am here somewhere,
dancing a lullaby,
the seabirds still call,
caught in the threshold of life
- don’t forget me.
Ellie