Lizzie Nunnery, a Liverpool-based singer and award-winning playwright has been commissioned by national poetry organisation Phrased & Confused to create a brand new work inspired by Liverpool, and in particular influential artist and poet Adrian Henri.

Adrian Henri came to prominence as a writer alongside Roger McGough and Brian Patten in the groundbreaking and irreverently contemporary Penguin anthology The Mersey Sound (1967), one of the best-selling poetry books of all time (over a quarter of a million copies to date). A celebrated performer, he was also a painter, playwright, novelist and librettist.

The title of Lizzie’s new work, Liverpool I love your horny handed tons of soil, is taken from a fragment poem by Adrian Henri. It will explore through spoken word, live music and digital technology what’s been lost and found in the re-sculpting of the Liverpool landscape over the past 50 years. Fifteen minutes from the piece will be premiered at the Liverpool Philharmonic Music Rooms on March 18th as part of the Liverpool Acoustic Festival.

The performance will include live drawing by a polargraph – a type of robot, created by Liverpool maker collective DOES, that will respond to the words in Lizzie’s piece.

Lizzie Nunnery said, “For a long time I’ve been performing live as a musician and incorporating spoken word in to my set, but the length of this piece means I’ve been able to go much further in crafting a narrative, drawing together images and themes, sparking off the Mersey poets’ renderings of Liverpool. It’s been wonderful working with composers Vidar Norheim and Martin Heslop alongside digital maker Adrian McEwen to push the piece beyond a poem set to music, turning it in to a proper little show that hopefully uses visuals and audio in a surprising way. It seems fitting that the work of Adrian Henri is the main reference for the piece: I like to think he’d approve of the experiment!”

Lizzie has also collaborated with children and families from Unity Theatre’s Splatterdays to create images for the performance inspired by the built environment around Hope Street.

Tickets for the event are priced at £40 (Weekend), £20 (Friday only), £30 (Saturday only) and are available from the Unity Theatre Box office, The Philharmonic Hall Box office, by telephone on 0151 709 3789 or online at www.liverpoolphil.com.

Festival Website: www.liverpoolacousticfestival.co.uk.