Non Canon & Suzannah Evans - Music & Poetry

Non Canon, stage name of Bristol-based songwriter Barry Dolan, and poet Suzannah Evans have been friends since they met on their first day of university in 2001 and bonded over a shared love of Idlewild, Ben Folds Five and Less Than Jake.

20+ years later, with a couple of albums and books to their names, they hatched a plan for a joint tour after discussing the similarities and differences in the not-always-glamorous worlds of independent music and poetry.

Non Canon writes sad songs about feelings, politics, and feelings about politics. He has released two albums on Xtra Mile Recordings (Frank Turner, Skinny Lister, Beans on Toast), lives in Bristol, has a cat called Monty, and can also be found making much louder noise under the name Oxygen Thief.

Suzannah Evans is a Sheffield-based poet. Her second book Space Baby was published in June 2022 by Nine Arches Press and deals with themes of future anxiety, climate grief and human expansion into other galaxies.

While both performers deal with some, let's be honest, depressing themes in their work, their performances are actually quite fun overall. Which is the right way round really, isn't it?

They will be supported at each date of the tour by local poets and musicians, and for Reading they are:

Pip Summers: Southampton-Based Shouty-Acoustic Transfemme Singer-Songwriter

Zannah Kearns: Writer, poet, and current co-curator of Poets' Cafe