Always on
This project successfully funded on 29th September 2025, you can still support them with a donation.
THINKING OF HAPPINESS ETC - Laskey & Son
Leiston, Suffolk, United Kingdom
£7,617
raised so far
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Aim
To create some warming limelight to bathe my 80 year old poet father in & launch a life-long project for me
THINKING OF HAPPINESS ETC
With Laskey & Son
The launch of a heartening long-term project - a kaleidoscope of poetry, music, dance, video, swifts
I’m Michael Laskey's third son Jack - the smallest of the 4 humans on the bike, pictured above.
September launches a project that I will continue to develop throughout my life.
My ultimate aim is to meet my brilliant dad in an iteration of the show when I’m 80 myself when he will be projected on film reading his poems on a holographic projection screen.
https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/aldeburgh-jubilee-hall/e-egvkvy
£20,000 will be enough money to pay for our 3.5 week rehearsal period, technical rehearsals and our first two performances.
Please support my dad and me to make our project come alive this September and beyond.
Sample Poem
The Last Swim
September, October… one thing
you don’t know at the time is when
you’ve had your last swim: the weather
may hold, may keep nudging you in.
Only afterwards, sometimes days on,
it dawns on you that you’ve done:
just the thought of undressing outdoors,
exposing bare skin, makes you wince.
And that’s best, to have gone on swimming
easily to the end: your crawl
full of itself, and the future
no further than your folded towel.
From The Tightrope Wedding, Michael Laskey, 1999
About the Project
Thinking of Happiness Etc is a unique father and son collaboration.
Michael Laskey is a T S Eliot Prize shortlisted poet. Two of my dad's collections are Poetry Book Society Recommendations.
‘Laskey is his own man – so when I compare him to Larkin and Heaney it is merely to place him in the company he deserves.’ Craig Raine
My dad has never made a piece of theatre before. At the heart of the production, he will read his plain-speaking poems.
Michael’s poems will be accompanied by: live music, dance, projected live video, and foley sound effects. The professional experience of the ensemble working with Michael is extensive and far-reaching.
Theatre is my first love. I'm directing Thinking of Happiness Etc.
I'm a multi-disiplinary artist and Artistic Director of creative arts company Spielhouse - with various productions currently in development.
I've worked internationally as an actor for the past 22 years – after training at RADA.
After an Arts Council England grant, my dad and I started collaborating on this project – with the aim of expanding the reach of Michael’s poetry. The fruits of this research and development period form part of Thinking of Happiness Etc.
In 2026 Michael and I hope to mount an East Anglian tour of the show – followed by a small National Tour in 2027. We are also in discussions about a run of some weeks at a theatre.
The plan is for the show to tour with creative community workshops and an exhibition of work made in the workshops - alongside the work created for the show by the Thinking of Happiness Etc ensemble.
More about Michael Laskey
Alongside his own writing, Michael Laskey a ‘champion of contemporary poetry’ – teacher, mentor, workshop leader, editor.
In 2015 he was awarded the British Empire Medal for Services to Poetry.
Almost all of Michael’s work life has been on a voluntary basis – including founding and directing The Aldeburgh International Poetry Festival, which ran for 26 years – 23 of which were at the Jubilee Hall – making the hall the logical and best place for the Thinking Of Happiness Etc project to launch from.
Dad lives in Suffolk with my mum Kay, who was a GP. Dad was mainly responsible for looking after my brothers and me when we were growing up.
Please click here to hear Michael reading some of his poems on the Poetry Archive site
Sample Poem
Offering
When did I last consider my heart,
pay it a little attention, honour
its sixty steadfast years in the dark?
Hardly notice it, my mind focused
on slicing an onion, on what I ought
to have said or done, the story I’m reading
now, Alice Munro, or remembering my dead
aunt Nin’s laugh, those half crowns for ice creams.
Yet all the time it’s working, beating on
constantly, like a god I forget
the existence of, keeping my blood
moving through its thousands of miles
of tunnels, making it still possible for me
to nod off after supper, to wonder
about Water Aid or no longer
postponing phoning my brother,
to nurse a baby grudge, fatten it up.
It’s the size of my fist and weighs no more
than eleven ounces. If I bend back
my wrist, I can see the pulse twitch.
Millions of times. You can do the sums.
That’s stamina for you, dedication.
Old squeezebox of mine, what do you mean
by your quiet insistence? What do you want
beyond the few lengths of the pool I swim
most days for you, and my sensible diet?
from The Man Alone (2008)
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made