If this blogpost were a library book, I would have a very big fine to pay! Apologies!
It's been very busy recently, and not just in literary terms! This weekend I did a charity hitchhike called Jailbreak, in aid of Cancer Research. I managed to get from Norwich to Rosslare in Ireland within 48 hours and spending no money! Hitchhiking was a new experience that has been inspiring a lot of poetry since I got back.
Apart from preparing for and undertaking Jailbreak, I've been doing a lot of literary stuff. Last month I read at two events: the UEA CWS Open Mic, which was wonderful and which introduced me to some truly amazing young poets, and Freewheelin', a spoken word night run by Lewis Buxton and Alex Valente, and which debuted on March 5th at the Bicycle Shop in Norwich. It was a brilliant night in a lovely setting (although a Baileys hot chocolate set me back £5.60. £5.60?!?!) with a really vibrant variety of poets sharing their work. I was so honoured by my introduction. I can't remember it exactly but I remember thinking how welcoming the atmosphere was, how well Lewis and Alex hosted it, and how poetry is the place where I can feel confident and accepted. It was a fantastic night and I hope there'll be many more to come!
Towards the end of February I took a workshop at Writers' Centre Norwich with the wonderful Pascale Petit. As soon as I saw her name, I just had to book it. Her collection 'What the Water Gave Me' is one of my absolute favourites (I reviewed it here) and the workshop didn't disappoint. It was lovely to undertake some exercises that I found really unusual, but had a recogniseable Pascale Petit spin on them. The afternoon was spent critiquing a poem we had sent in advance, which was really helpful and surprisingly enjoyable! I left having a greater confidence in my work. It was a class for intermediate to advanced writers, and some of the participants had the MA Creative Writing from UEA, but I felt more comfortable in that workshop than I have done in beginner's classes...I guess because I am not a beginner. The thing I particularly liked was that Pascale's choice of exercises really brought out my 'voice', the vocabularly and imagery that I have swirling around in my head, the way I like to look at the world. I was surprised that it was a scientific, geological and botanical lexicon that emerged. I got some good work out of the workshop, had a really good time, and have definitely made a leap as a writer as a result of Pascale's suggestions.
Thirdly, I saw Jeanette Winterson give a talk at my university as part of the UEA Spring Literature Festival. She. Was. Wonderful. I came out feeling so inspired. Winterson read us the first chapter of her new book 'Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?', took questions, and just generally shone. Her humour, her humility, her gentleness, her sharpness, were extraordinary. You had to be there to understand how amazing the talk was. I literally ran down to Waterstones to buy a signed copy of the book afterwards. I'm halfway through it and it's wonderful...perhaps a bit philosophical in places for my own taste, but wonderful.
Anyway, that's all for now folks! :)
Showing posts with label performance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label performance. Show all posts
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Latitude 2011 & Good News!!
First the really cool news, today I signed up for abctales.com, where you can share your stories and poems online, and I uploaded two poems (unseen on this blog). Just found out that they have been cherrypicked by the editors and have had a warm reception from fellow abctales-ers! The poems are 'Plastic Lovespoon' and 'Blind Woman at Clapham Junction' and can be read here. Please take a look!
Latitude is a music festival with a difference, also featuring comedy, theatre and literature among much much more. I just got back from this year's festival and thought I'd write about the amazing wordsmithing I found there.
I spent a lot of time in the poetry tent and the poets that I saw read/perform include:
- Sophie Hannah
- Jo Shapcott
- Dizraeli and the Small Gods
- Amy Blakemore
- Hannah Jane Walker
- Kate Fox News
- Jack Dean
- Mab Jones
- Sam Riviere
Who shone? Dizraeli and the Small Gods - a beautiful, emotional mix of music, rap and poetry; Mab Jones - comic, honest poetry about life's minutiae, really loved it; Hannah Jane Walker for thought-provoking, lyrical poems; and Amy Blakemore for a young voice with surprising maturity and real originality. I urge you to check these guys out online, they were fantastic, and I am going to try and persuade a bookshop that I know in Wales to book a reading with Mab Jones!
Who disappointed me? Well, no one really, all the acts I saw were of a really high quality. However, Sophie Hannah's reading was more like a rant and although humourous at times I also left wondering if she was a psychopath..... Sam Riviere's work seemed, from what I caught of it, to be about the issues of identity and being an outsider, including a long poem about a trip to America. Interesting but not my personal cup of tea. Jo Shapcott read a series of poems about bees, and at that point I had to leave. But I was disappointed with her reading - it lacked audience connection, I felt, and although I love her poetry, the beekeeper in me (yes, I do actually keep bees, have done for 6 years now I think) was frustrated with her overly simplistic explanations to the audience about the science behind the poetry, the science of bees, and her mis-pronunciation of the word 'propolis'. But that's just me being nit-pickety.
What really fascinated me however was the different reading/performing styles of the poets. Some read from books or pieces of paper, e.g. Amy Blakemore, Sophie Hannah, Jo Shapcott - whereas others recited their work from memory, e.g. Mab Jones, Dizraeli, Jack Dean. Both methods worked well but undoubtedly those who had memorised their poems gave more energetic performances. So I picked up some interesting tips for when I am brave enough to finally enter an open mic! Who knows, maybe at next year's Latitude...?
Anyway, just a few musings on the world of the live spoken-word performance. For those who are into performance poetry like me, I can highly recommend Latitude festival; the poetry line-up was wide-reaching, varied and inspiring.
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