Loose, warm conversations with working literary voices.
Spoken Label gives writers and performers room to talk through books, poems, readings, and the scenes that sustain them. The conversations are informal but attentive, moving from friendly banter into craft, language, publication, and live creative community.
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Spoken Label is a conversational arts and literature show with a strong interest in writers who work close to the page and the microphone. It feels local, human, and lightly improvised. Rather than flattening every guest into a neat publicity slot, the show gives them time to explain where a book, poem, performance night, or creative collective came from. That looseness is part of the appeal. Recent episodes move between poetry collections, crime fiction promotion, regional language, spoken word showcases, open mic culture, and the practical work of getting artists in front of an audience. The conversations often start casually. Then they drift into useful detail. A discussion with Alistair Lawrie opens up questions about Doric, oral recitation, accent, and the value of keeping a living language in use. Half Beard Half Poet brings a rowdier live-performance energy, with talk of a punk dive bar, a mini-festival, and poetry that wants to lift the roof. Krystal 'Gypsy' Orellano Weldon points the show toward creative collectives, rappers, singers, harmonica players, comedians, poets, and a showcase built around performance as community. Aakriti Kuntal's episode leans into visual poetry, Lilith, mythic femininity, and the idea of a reader a poem might be seeking. Amanda Crundell's conversation turns toward darkness, neurodiversity, scars, shadows, and how a collection finds its shape. The show can be repetitive in its openings. It can also wander. But its patience with side roads is often where the good material sits. Spoken Label is strongest when a guest is allowed to talk like a working artist rather than a press kit. It is bookish without being stiff, supportive without becoming glossy, and comfortable with rough edges. For listeners who want literary discovery beyond the usual circuit, it offers a generous archive of voices and spoken word culture.
Made for: For listeners who like poetry, books, spoken word, literary events, and interviews that leave room for tangents. It especially suits people curious about creative scenes beyond the most polished mainstream arts coverage.
What sets it apart: Spoken Label stands apart through its informal, artist-to-artist patience: guests get space to describe dialect, page layout, live performance energy, myth, darkness, and community work in plain speech. The result feels closer to a long creative catch-up than a standard book publicity interview.
Spoken Label is a podcast series designed to interview and record sessions from authors, poets, artists, musicians etc in North West England and beyond.Formed in 2015 and ran / edited by Andy N, author of ‘Return to Kemptown’ and ‘The End of Summer’,it is always often to submissions from interested artists.Email: [email protected]
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Spoken Label gives poets and writers room to connect page-level craft with performance, publication and the communities forming around their work.
Spoken Label lets poets and writers explain how work moves between voice, page and public performance. Andy N asks direct, practical questions, then gives guests room to discuss drafting, arranging collections, designing covers and building events around spoken-word poetry.
A Doric word puzzle becomes your doorway into poetry's life off the page.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A loose literary conversation where Doric's sound, culture, and staying power come through most clearly.
Spoken Label treats literature as something heard in the mouth as much as read on the page. The conversation moves from Amanda Nicholson's women's crime novel Death to All Men, with its support group for women that spirals into killing bad men, into readings and discussion…
A warm poetry conversation moves from quiet attention to the charge of a pub stage built for release.
Spoken Label catches its guest thinking about poetry as something physical and alive, the kind of practice that changes with the room. Some nights ask for a softer reading and close attention; others need the force to lift the roof.
A loose but purposeful route from a women's crime novel to spoken word, shared stages, and a closing love song.
The episode ranges from a women's crime novel to reflections on death, a spoken-word festival, and a final love song, tying them together through a practical question: where creative work finds an audience.
A thoughtful look at fragmented poetic form, visual layout, and Lilith as a figure of freedom.
The episode is strongest when it treats poetic form as more than decoration. Its discussion of fragmented work, spacing, and visual layout shows how a poem can build extra pressure on the page, letting arrangement deepen or complicate what the words already carry.
A candid literary conversation about darkness, thematic sections, and the short poem that opens a collection.
This episode settles into a candid literary conversation about writing darkness, then widens into theme, structure, and the emotional charge that can make a short poem a natural doorway into a collection.
A warm poetry conversation where page design becomes part of the performance.
Peter's conversation traces a line from an unashamed love poem to gravitas verbatim, keeping close to the craft of performance poetry. The strongest thread is his attention to how white space, tabs, and ellipses can hold pauses, pacing, and emphasis on the page, so the layout…
A grounded craft conversation on rewriting a thriller and finding a cover with real emotional pull.
This Spoken Label conversation tracks a writer through the hard work of shaping a medical thriller, with particular attention to the choice to write the book twice so a darker backstory could sit behind the central character rather than simply announce itself.
Books, life, and the tender difficult middle.
The chat starts in Spoken Label fashion.
Author Peter Roe discusses his crime novel 'Death to All Men' and his second novel 'Death and the End' in a spoken label podcast episode.
Hayley Lynn Gordon discusses two books: a crime novel about a women's support group that turns to killing bad men, and a poetic sequel exploring life and death.
This episode promotes two books: a women's crime novel about a support group that turns to killing bad men, and a poetic sequel exploring life and death.
Author Ashley Edge discusses her crime novel 'Death to All Men' and her poetry collection 'Death' on the Spoken Label podcast.
Saira Anwar discusses two novels: 'Death to All Men' about a woman who starts killing bad men after forming a support group, and 'Death and the N', a sequel exploring life and death.
Peter Roe brings poetry back to the voice.
Doric works best when it is heard.
A crime novel teaser opens the episode.
Spoken word fills the room.
A podcast episode promoting two books: a women's crime novel about a support group that turns to killing bad men, and a poetic sequel exploring life and death.
Amanda Crundall discusses her crime novel 'Death to All Men' and her upcoming book 'Death and the End' on the Spoken Label podcast.
A crime-novel promo opens the door, oddly enough.
A support group turns into a murder setup.