Through the Looking Glasses and Hoorgi House present: An Evening with Ivor Cutler
Doors: 7pm, the event will begin at 7:30
Tickets: £10
Join us as we celebrate the publication of two new editions of Ivor Cutler’s work.
Hoorgi House, the official imprint of the Ivor Cutler estate, is committed to reissuing the work of the Glasgow poet, singer, musician, teacher, painter, illustrator, sculptor and playwright who died in 2006.
The long out-of-print Life in a Scotch Sitting Room, Volume 2 was reissued in September 2022. Now, marking Ivor’s centenary comes Gruts, and Other Wireless Menu, a comprehensive new edition of early radio scripts. This brings together three previous books as well as a number of unpublished and long lost stories - edited by broadcasting historian Ian Greaves.
Tonight we will hear from Jeremy Cutler of Hoorgi House and Ian Greaves, in conversation with Travis Elborough. This will be preceded by an hour-long screening of rarities from Ivor’s career and the deepest recesses of the archives, including versions of many of the stories featured in Gruts… An unmissable opportunity for Cutler fans.
Hoorgi House releases, including the two books, will be available to buy at this event.
Ivor Cutler was born in Govan in January 1923. Across a wide-ranging career which lasted more than half a century, he published 29 books - many self-illustrated and several of them intended for children - as well as 11 albums of songs, poems, stories, dialogues and plays. He was also prolific on radio and television, clocking up over 400 appearances.
Before The Beatles, before John Peel, and even before he turned to poetry, Ivor Cutler was a radio star. His self-penned monologues and sketches for the BBC Home Service were an instant hit, charming adult listeners and children alike.
Gruts, and Other Wireless Menu brings together almost 100 prose pieces written for BBC Radio between 1959-65. This includes the contents of previous collections Gruts, Cock-a-doodle-don't! and Fremsley, as well as seventeen recently rediscovered stories - exclusive to this edition - which have not been available in any form since their original transmission.
Hoorgi House was established in 2007 initially as a label for Ivor Cutler’s records. So far there have been reissues of the albums Privilege, A Wet Handle, A Flat Man; also, a new E.P. of previously unheard material, Singing While Dead. In 2022, Hoorgi House branched out into print editions of Ivor’s work.
Ian Greaves is a writer and researcher whose books include edited collections of the work of Dennis Potter, Jonathan Miller and N.F. Simpson. He has devised radio programmes about Douglas Adams and Dudley Moore, and works as consultant on many projects about television history. These include BBC Four’s fiftieth anniversary celebration of Play for Today (2020), and the recent Raven Row gallery exhibition People Make Television. He has also produced archival events at the BFI, the Royal Court and Cafe Oto.