MICHAEL Gibson present 13 centuries of English poetry and song 'stripped down to their rhythmic essentials' at Knutsford Methodist Church on Friday, June 21.

The evening is entitled ‘The Poem and the Song’, starts at 7.30pm, and is part of this year’s Knutsford Music Festival, with tickets £10 and £8 for concessions.

The show includes the first English Poem-Song, a rude riddle, a lament for a warrior, a song by Cnut, a song about the English weather, a pagan May-Song, a minstrel’s song and an ale song, all laced with tunes on an Anglo-Saxon lyre and a wooden pipe.

Before that Michael will be at Knutsford Library at 6pm on Thursdays, May 30, June 6 and June 13 for evenings entitled 'But What Is Poetry?'

Michael is a poetician who works with English poetry over its 1,300-year span, back to the 7th century.

He said: “I look for what I call ‘the songness and dancingness’ in poetry.

“I consider I have defined the original rhythmic nature of our older poetry, and in my ‘musicalistic’ metrics I follow that thread up through the centuries to the ‘poetry’ of the present day, where it may still sometimes be found.”

Over the past 25 years Michael has performed English poetry, with music, in this country and abroad.

He has lectured and performed in schools; for literary and philosophical societies; at arts and literary festivals, and at universities.

In 2010 he was a candidate in the election for Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and stood as a Parliamentary candidate in the Tatton constituency on a number of occasions.

Tickets for the Methodist Church performance can be bought on the door.