London Literature Festival: Michael Morpurgo, 100% Proof and the Nature of Performance Poetry

From Poetry Parnassus straight into the London Literature Festival! My shifts this week were a little hectic at the Southbank Centre, especially yesterday when a school visit coincided with the Shake the Dust finals (a national youth poetry slam competition). I've been to two events this week, a talk by Michael Morpurgo and his biographer Maggie Fergusson, and 100% Proof, a Shake the Dust event which showcased the works of the Shake the Dust regional poet coaches, a slam/drama group from the US called First Wave, and Lemn Sissay, who is a Southbank associate poet and the first poet commissioned to write for the London Olympics. It's been a good week, and it's been lovely to share it with my sister and dad, who accompanied me to these events, and a couple of friends and aquaintances who just happened to be there!

The Michael Morpurgo event was absolutely lovely. He is one of my sister's favourite writers and I enjoyed his books when I was younger. I remember seeing a production of 'Kensuke's Kingdom' at the Polka Theatre in Wimbledon when I was little, and it became one of my favourite books as a child. It was wonderful to see such an audience at this event - children and their families who are currently reading Morpurgo's books, young adults like myself who remember how special his stories were from our childhoods, and teachers, parents and grandparents who have enjoyed reading the stories to their children over the years. It was amazing just how many different age groups Morpurgo has touched with his writing. Also as special was the way that Morpurgo spoke to the audience. The memories revealed in the talk - for example, the separation of his parents - were not entirely comfortable, and yet Morpurgo manages to speak in such a way that does not dumb down the facts for children, but that retains a greater simplicity and honesty than the way adults interact with one another and censor themselves and each other.

The talk opened the London Literature Festival and promotes 'Michael Morpurgo: War Child to War Horse', a biography by Maggie Fergusson which takes the interesting form of seven chapters - the seven stages of life - to which Morpurgo has responded with seven new stories. It's a collaborative effort, with Fergusson chronicling and Morpurgo reflecting, and I can't wait to read it. The talk itself was about how the book was made, the memories and experiences it stirred up for Morpurgo, and a reading of one of the stories from the book, followed by questions and answers and even Michael singing a song from the stage production of War Horse!

It was a very special talk and a priviledge to be there and to share it with my sister.

100% Proof was very different but equally enjoyable. It began with readings from the regional poet coaches: Molly Naylor, Michelle Hubbard, Kat Francois, Alfie Crow, Frisko, Michael Parker, Sarah Jane Arbury, Brenda Read-Brown, and Si Murray. I enjoyed most of these, and it was wonderful to see such a spectrum of styles, from gritty hip-hop to lyrical storytelling, playful punning and even some singing. I particulary enjoyed Michelle Hubbard, Sarah Jane Arbury and Brenda Read-Brown. Again, these poets had dramatically different styles but were equally touching and enjoyable in their performances. Next up was First Wave, who performed a 30 minute extract of their touring poetry/drama production. I was impressed by the quality of their act, which addressed racism, discrimination, and being an outsider in challenging terms. Their act was not something I would think to go and see normally, and I felt alienated after a bit (although this in itself made me realise just how lucky I am that the people I know in London are so accepting of each other and of me, on all grounds - race, gender, age), but they did a fantastic job and put on a really thought-provoking show. The final act was Lemn Sissay, and it was clear as soon as he came on stage and launched straight into a poem, that here was a master at work. While the other acts of the night had all been good, both Sissay's poetry and performance were on another level. His delivery was wonderfully energetic, his poems both celebratory and thought-provoking. That, and he just seemed like a really cool guy, involved the audience, and is clearly a born performer. It was a wonderful night!

My experience of Poetry Parnassus and the London Literature Festival (as well as other events I have been to in the past) have really changed the way I think about poetry, performance, and the way I want my own work to take me. I started writing when I was inspired by artists like Zena Edwards and Dizraeli, and wanted really to be a performance poet. Recently however, I've realised just how much more suited to the medium of paper I am; that doesn't mean that I can't, and don't enjoy, reading my poems to an audience - I absolutely love it! It's just that I've realised that for me, the poetry comes first, the performance second. The first tenet of slam and performance poetry is that the poetry should come first, but too many times have I sat in front of a confident performer reading at best mediocre poetry. Luckily I haven't had to sit through something like that for quite a while now, and those performers whom I've seen recently have really impressed me, but I think the danger with writing for performance is that the poetry suffers. Yes, supposedly it's all about the poetry, but this isn't true, is it? Quite often performance poetry appears as just a big ego trip, with poets thinking more about their own kudos than about the poetry. I recently watched one performance when the poet actually said, "usually I write about boys, but this poem is about me!" and to me this is the trap that many aspiring poets fall into. Yes, it's fun to read your poems out loud, and get to act them a bit; yes, it's really cool when an audience responds well to your work; yes, it's important to share and preserve our oral traditions; yes, it's wonderful that performance poetry blurs the line so much with hiphop, music and acting. But it is still supposed to be POETRY. Poetry Parnassus and 100% Proof show that it is still possible to put poetry first, and I hope that we can all learn from the example of these poets.

'Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal' by Jeanette Winterson

I saw Jeanette Winterson give a talk at UEA in March, in which she read from this, her new book. Just like I had snapped up a ticket to go and see her speak, I snapped up this book. Both the talk and the book are for me two pieces of that rare art that absolutely touches you. Seeing her speak, and hearing her recite a couple of lines of T. S. Eliot, almost had me in tears. Winterson is just one of those writers who can cut to the heart of things, and show them in all their beauty and sadness. Read her books.

Why Be Happy..? revisits Winterson's experience of growing up that she first wrote about in the wonderful Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. Once again, Winterson tackles painful issues such as adoption, religious dogma and growing up with sharp, tender, inspiring humour. It's witty, it's poignant. It traces her childhood and teenage years, escape from working class Accrington to Oxford, mental breakdown, and trying to trace her biological mother. It covers a lot of ground, some of it already trodden, but all of it original, exciting, touching, funny.

I'll be passing this book around to my nearest and dearest. It's not just an autobiography. It is so many things besides. You'll have to read it yourself to find out. The one thing I found slightly wearing was that the 'grown up' bit of the book seemed slightly self-indulgent to me...but then again, Winterson is undoubtedly a writer who deserves to indulge herself.

A great book.

Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary

Full title 'Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes'. Really good book, I highly recommend and I think it would do the world a load of good if everybody read it, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.


First of all, let me say that I am a devout atheist, but that I have friends who are Christian and friends who are Muslim and friends who are Buddhists and Hindus and atheists and agnostics etc. etc. Basically, I look in a religious debates as an outsider and 99% of the time it sounds like everyone is spouting complete rubbish and not listening to each other. So it was nice to read a book as balanced and informative as Destiny Disrupted.


Ansary takes the reader from the birth of Islam and the life of the Prophet through to our post-9/11 world. All the major and many minor events in the history of the Arab peoples and Islam are covered, from the original khalifas (Mohammed's immediate successors and trusted followers) through the Crusades and the Mongol invasion, from the Abassids and Umayyads to the Turks and Persians, from Akbar the Great to Ahmadinejad, from the house of Ibn Saud to the Ottomans to the Secular Modernists, from Jamaluddin-i-Afghan to Osama bin Laden.


Not everything in this book sits comfortably; I'm British and a lot of the railing against European Colonialism touched a socially-conditioned nerve of mine, but every point that Ansary made about this was valid, and there was an equal amount of railing against Arab mistakes too. I didn't agree with everything in the book, and I wish that Ansary had touched a bit more on current conflicts, the rise of the Taliban and Muslim Brotherhood, etc, as well as the life of women in the Arab world. However, the book was balanced (between Arab and Western, and between 'moderate' and 'fundamentalist' Islamic sensibilities) and written wonderfully. Ansary has a real feel for the interconnectedness of events and a sensitivity to both the 'Middle World' and the 'West', having lived in both. Also, he's a pretty good story teller, making even the driest of religious doctrines readable and understandable to your average outsider. After reading this book, I understand so much better what the Islamic faith is about, what makes it different from and similar to Christianity, and how history has led our two civilisations to the conflicts that are now raging.

Ansary refrains from calling the current conflicts raging around the world and the events leading up to them as a 'clash of civilisations', instead making a convincing argument for calling them two mismatched world views. This isn't the only book to read on the subject of Islam, or the 'mismatch' of our two cultures, but it's a brilliant place to start, and I wish that more people would read it. Maybe that way we'd understand each other a little bit more.

The next book I want to see is a collaboration between both Western and Arabic/Islamic historians, comparing within the same book these two mismatched world views. If any historians read this....