Rupert Ibbotson

New Release

A Modern Day Albion

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rupert@yellowbellyrecords.co.uk

Once upon a time in old Lincoln town, when the streets breathed softly and old stones remembered more than they revealed, Let The Imp Out held its first gathering! And the words arrived before the people did, hovering in the air, waiting to be spoken. Now hosted monthly by Yellowbelly Records, Lincoln’s own independent music label, with a taste for the unpolished and the true, the night has become less an event and more a rhythm - one that now beats confidently into its second year.

Let The Imp Out began, as many necessary things do, with a restlessness. Rupert Ibbotson, poet, writer, musician, listener, saw a gap where voices might fall if they were not caught. Lincoln has its stories, its ghosts and its glories, but too few rooms where language can stretch its legs and speak plainly or wildly. So Rupert made one.

Let The Imp Out - named with a wink wink to the city’s mischievous emblem - was created not to polish poetry into something precious, but to foster a spoken word scene that breathed, stuttered, sang and occasionally shouted. Each month since, the room has filled with a low, electric murmur: poets clutching notebooks softened by use, first-timers rehearsing under their breath, seasoned voices ready to bend language into new shapes.

The night unfolds in fragments - laughter cutting through silence, confessions offered up like coins, images flashing briefly then lingering long after the last line lands. There is no barrier between stage and the floor, no hierarchy beyond the courage it takes to speak. Here, the local and the lyrical meet without any form of ceremony.

Now as the months passed, the crowds grew. What was once tentative became assured. What was once small became something more. And by the time Let The Imp Out reached its tenth month, it had woven itself into Lincoln’s cultural fabric, proof that a city listens when given the chance.

Yellowbelly Records, ever attentive to the margins where art thrives, provided not just a banner but a home, and an endorsement of the spoken word as something vital and alive, something worth turning up for even on a weeknight.

And Rupert, while holding space for others, did not remain silent himself. Out of the same impulse that birthed the night came his debut poetry anthology;
A Modern Day Albion

This collection arguably reads like a companion to the event: rooted in place, alert to history, alive with contemporary breath. It is a book that looks at England - and Lincoln within it to an extent - not as a monument but as a living thing, flawed, beautiful, and speaking in many tongues. Together, the night and the book feel intertwined. Let The Imp Out gave the city a voice; A Modern Day Albion gave Rupert a voice.

And so, each month, the Imp is released once again - through poems, through people, through the simple, radical act of standing up and saying something that matters, or that doesn't matter for that matter...

Alongside Let The Imp Out, Lincoln boasts a fantastic spoken word scene, with heavyweight nights like Outspoken, hosted by Ron Booth at The Birdcage, and SpeakEasy, hosted by The Linklings at The Greenroom, packing punches month on month. Lincoln is very much a city on the rise when it comes to spoken word events, and we strongly recommend folks come along to see what all the fuss is about!

rupert@yellowbellyrecords.co.uk