Thursday 27 March 2014

Stories from the War Hospital - Review

Mabh Savage was in the audience at the New Headingley Club last Friday 21 March. She posted the following review on her blog at http://bit.ly/1iDajD3 which we reproduce with her permission: 

There is an odd camaraderie at New Headingley Club, between Leeds Rhinos rugby fans about to head off to cheer on their team, and LitFest fans here to listen in contrasting silence to Stories from the War Hospital, a performance and introduction to the book of the same name.


Headingley LitFest 2014 is sub-titled Surviving, and Richard Wilcocks' painstakingly researched volume pays tribute not only to some of those who survived the First World War, but those of the 2nd Northern General Hospital at Beckett Park, Leeds, who tirelessly worked to save and rebuild the lives of those back from the front in a bad condition.

Richard introduces the book, a collection of true stories of sick and wounded soldiers, nurses, doctors and volunteers. There are clearly members of the audience who are very invested in this publication, as murmurs and even shout-outs about military acronyms and familiar names mingle with this introductory piece. One of the audience is introduced as an interviewee for the book.  There is a sense of pomp and circumstance that belies the plain and basic trim of the wooden block stage and identical folding chairs; this volume has evidently been a labour of love and great effort, and the people involved are proud to see it come to fruition.
Contact headingleyhospital@gmail.com for your copy

The performance itself is brought to us by The Vedettes, who are Richard, Katharina Arnold, Charlotte Blackburn and Hannah Robinson. The three women are in period VAD nurse's uniforms, although the wide range of roles they each take steps far outside this costume choice. The performance focuses on three of the stories from the book: the stories of Robert Bass, Dorothy Wilkinson and Margaret Anna Newbould. Imagine snapshots of the period brought to life for a brief moment; there is this sense that we are looking through a lens into the past, into tiny fragments of these peoples' lives. I think this is accentuated by the fact that these are completely true stories; the events have been retold by descendants of the protagonists; the dialogue is from the retelling of those closest to the events.

Katharina introduces the performance with a piece on acoustic guitar. The guitar is then used as a break to indicate the beginning of each new story. Music of the time is also included as part of the stories, again creating this snap shot feel; people standing together and singing, people at Christmas sitting together carolling; all little snippets of everyday life that hammer home how real, how horrifyingly accurate the descriptions of the sickness, the suffering, the wounds and the wailing really are. At one point Hannah is rocking backwards and forwards screaming, and I shiver to think of how much worse the volunteers at Beckett Park must have had it; not just one screaming soldier, but hundreds, many with no hope except the consolation that kind words and the promise of a letter home can give.

We learn of Robert Bass, the soldier who survived wounds to the leg and shoulder, only to have a shell mutilate his jaw, teeth and face. The vivid imagery of this - severed lip, smashed jaw, destroyed teeth- is hard hitting and reminds us not only of the catch-all phrase 'horror of war' but that conflict is not the large and faceless concept many of us presume it to be, but a visceral process that obliterates individuals' hopes, dreams and souls; in short, everything that makes them human. My friend Jonathan notes that often the numbers for 'Dead and Wounded' are lumped together, as these are all people who can no longer be fed into the war machine; in short, a wounded man is as useful to the military as a dead man.

Thankfully, this performance, and in turn, the book it comes from, shows us that lives can be restored, and that the de-humanising process is not irreversible in every case. Robert undergoes revolutionary maxillofacial surgery at Beckett's Park, and indeed finds something of a happy ending... Well, I won't spoil the story utterly, go read the book!

Charlotte plays the role of Nurse Margaret Anna Newbould, a nurse at Beckett Park who became Acting Matron of the Formosa, a hospital ship that carried casualties from the Gallipoli Peninsula. The Vedettes create a gut wrenching image of the sweat, sickliness and overall sordidness of life on board a ship overfull of the dead and dying. You can feel the heat and the hopelessness. Margaret was much decorated for her service, and one can't help but feel that a medal is the least someone deserves for being one of the only bright lights in these poor souls' existence... 
Katharina and Hannah play the couple Dorothy Wilkinson and Clifford Pickles: sweethearts torn apart by war, and then damaged further by Clifford's onset of shell shock. This for me is the most heart wrenching story; psychological trauma is an enemy one cannot fight with bullets and aggression, and of course in the time of the First World War, little was known about how to treat it. Both performances here are strong, human and touching.

As the show finishes, I'm left with a conflicting set of emotions; once more I am shown the grim reality of war, yet to see these close ups of the people affected most strongly by it is something of a privilege. I feel like I have been invited to see behind the scenes of a great play, and am not disappointed by the backdrops and actors. Richard points out, that out of nearly 500 staff that would certainly have worked in the War Hospital, we know of only a very few in detail. Yet it gives me hope that these stories are now recorded for future generations; not only so we don't forget the shocking reality of the effects of war, but so we can remember how great, how resilient the human spirit is, and how there truly are those who work tirelessly for the good of others.

UPDATE - website for published book Stories from the War Hospital is at www.firstworldwarhospital.co.uk



If you are interested in obtaining a copy of Stories from the War Hospital please email headingleyhospital@gmail.com .

After the War – the Secret Survival of Gavrilo Princip

Aritha Van Herk with (inset) Gavrilo Princip
Don't miss the finale event of the main programme for 2014:  Aritha Van Herk, award-winning Canadian novelist and critic, will read from her latest work in a new Headingley LitFest partnership event with the Yorkshire Network for Canadian Studies.


Gavrilo Princip (1895 – 1918) was a Serbian nationalist who became the catalyst for the First World War when he assassinated Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, starting a chain reaction which led to the beginning of the war only one month later. So much we know. Or do we? What of Gavrilo? Do we know the truth?

Meet Aritha at Headingley Library on  Monday 7 April. The event starts at 7pm and will be finished by 9pm. For more information contact Catherine Bates: c.bates@hud.ac.uk

Wednesday 26 March 2014

Flamenco in Mint Café

Ana Luisa Muñoz
Monday 24 March - partnership event
Mint Café North Lane - Flamenco Diez

Richard Wilcocks writes:

There is a theory that all poets should be able to sing their work - or at least get somebody with a good voice to do it for them. What are a poet's words but notes, and what are notes but an excuse to play music? Didn't Homer and the performers who learned his lines sing about Troy and Odysseus? I bet they didn't clutch little scraps of papyrus in front of them as they mumbled tonelessly! I agreed with everything I've just written on Monday, when I was crammed into Mint Café, which was exotically warm for our gypsy romances and where the thrilling voice of Ana Luisa Muñoz affected everybody so much that they clapped ecstatically.

It was all in Spanish, mind, but that didn't matter in the least. What lyrics, what emotion! Some of those present might have been reminded of  García Lorca, Spain's most revered poet, who was featured in the Headingley LitFest two years ago in both Spanish and English, and who was present again in spirit on Monday - Verde que te quiero verde...

Look out for this group. They are back soon!




A wonderful if sobering event

Mud, Blood and Endless Poetry – Dr Jessica Meyer
House Event – Sunday 23 March

Richard Wilcocks writes:
It was revelatory: few in the audience in my front room knew much, if anything, about the poets who were the focus of  Jessica Meyer’s talk. Wilfred Owen made an appearance, but with the little-known, seldom-analysed The Chances, which was written at Craiglockhart and published posthumously in 1919 in Wheels. Written, as was so often the case, at a time when the literate officer classes tried to adopt the accents of the less-educated horny-handed sons of toil, in a nearly-accurate version of the dialect of working-class London, the poem deals with what was known as shell-shock:

‘E’s wounded, killed, and pris’ner, all the lot –
The ruddy lot all rolled in one. Jim’s mad.

Jessica Meyer knows plenty about shell-shock. Her brilliant, well-researched article on the subject is in the recently-published Stories from the War Hospital (available  from headingleyhospital@gmail.com) in which she makes it clear that she links it with her ongoing research into masculinity in the war.

‘Woodbine Willie’, a padre who originated in Leeds (Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy‘s father was vicar of St Mary’s in Quarry Hill) preferred a similar dialect for To Stretcher Bearers, whose heroic activities are well-documented, incidentally, in Wounded by Emily Mayhew, our guest of last week. Kennedy’s Anglican Christian convictions are made apparent in the final lines of his vivid, dramatic poem:

‘Ere we are, now, stretcher-case, boys,
Bring him aht a cup o’ tea!
Inasmuch as ye have done it
Ye have done it unto Me.

Ewart Alan Mackintosh (killed in action 21 November 1917 aged 24) wrote In Memoriam in something like his own voice, that of a humane, caring officer addressing a father:
Ewart Alan Mackintosh

You were only David’s father,
But I had fifty sons
When we went up in the evening
Under the arch of the guns,
And we came back at twilight –
O God! I heard them call
To me for help and pity
That could not help at all.

I Have a Rendezvous with Death by Alan Seeger (yes, there is a link - he was Pete Seeger’s uncle), who died as a member of the French Foreign Legion in the fighting around Verdun, is a poem well-known in the United States, but not here. Procreation, love and happiness is contrasted with death and destruction to great effect by a poet who knew what was surely coming to him:
Alan Seeger

God knows ‘twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear…
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Ford Madox Ford has come back into fashion, arguably, because of Parade on television, but an excerpt from his Footsloggers, which deals with love of one’s land and our relationship with the State in wartime, was new to all except one in the room. Haunting memories of a particular place which come to an officer in the trenches (a filthy rat-infested ditch) are the subject of From Steyning to the Ring, by Lt. John Purvis, and Simon Armitage deals with the soldiers who survive in his 2008 poem The Not Dead:

We are the not dead.
Neither happy nor proud
with a bar-code of medals across the heart
nor laid in a box and draped with a flag,
we wander this no man’s land instead,
creatures of a different stripe – the awkward, unwanted, unlovable type –
haunted with fears and guilt,
wounded in spirit and mind.

So what shall we do with the not dead and all of his kind?

Simon Currie adds:
I thought you and Jessica Meyer provided a wonderful if sobering event. I read yesterday two of the poems to our Shakespeare-plus-poetry group at Harrogate theatre and the people were bowled over.

Dark Threads

Dark Threads - Jean Davidson
Headingley Oxfam Bookshop - Tuesday 25 March

Gail Alvarez writes:
It is for another to write a fuller account of the excellent evening in Oxfam Books with Jean Davidson talking about her experiences in High Royds, but whilst there I cast my eye along the shelves.


I was struck by the quality of the bang-up-to-date books on show.  We often bemoan the loss of the independent bookshop but we have our own Aladdin’s Cave for the discerning reader right here in the heart of Headingley.  How could I have forgotten?  Do I need to use online searches for my book choices and then one-click to buy them?  No; volunteers will give advice on the backlist of authors or similar books on favourite topics. Fewer visits to the ‘Jungle’ and more to a real bookshop for me!

Tuesday 25 March 2014

Expressive intensity

                                                          Photo: Sally Bavage
Guest Poetry Evening - Heart Café
Thursday 7.30pm 20 March

Doug Sandle writes:
The Heart café with daffodils and night light candles on every table was a cosy atmospheric venue for the annual headline guest poetry event of the LitFest. A full house was introduced to Yorkshire poet John Wedgwood Clarke and to the National Poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke. As was remarked – with a LitFest event still to come entitled A Pair of Sandles, we were not expecting also to feature a pair of Clarkes! The event opened with our usual format of a five minute taster from each of our guests – of which Gillian joked that it would give an opportunity for the audience to decide whether to stay or not – but of course after the taster session no-one left and all remained for what was to be an enthralling and intensely evocative evening from two poets whose respect for and craft with language and the expressive intensity of their descriptive and metaphorical use of words was spell binding.

John’s work reflected his interest in sea swimming and the relationship between swimmer and sea and his poetic exploration of the coastal land and sea scape of the East Yorkshire coast.  His careful reading enabled each word, each pause and each phrase to echo with meaning to convey a basic human and yet spiritual encounter with sea, shore and coast and an evocative expression of both a specific and universal sense of place, and of its life and narratives.

Gillian read with an engaging easiness that lulled the listener into an encounter that was an intense expression of her poetic response to nature and landscape (especially that which was winter sharp and ice cold), and the narratives, lives, and events they and their seasons framed. Often intensely descriptive, her poetry’s sensuous and sensory imagery drew us into the deeper resonances of their narratives revealing a very humane respect for and love of life.

Audience Comments

1.     Really good evening as ever – congratulations on organizing these memorable evenings esp. getting Gillian Clarke at such short notice. Candles and flowers, really good atmosphere.
2.     Excellent.
3.     Two fine poets. And HEART did it well.
4.     A first-class event. Both poets were on top form. John Wedgwood Clarke’s command of language is impressive and Gillian’s poetry is lovely, lyrical and full of beautiful imagery.  
5.     Brilliant! These two poets complemented each other perfectly. A rare opportunity to experience famous poets like Gillian Clarke in intimate surroundings – small number audience.
6.     There was a delightfully all-embracing atmosphere. Both poets were outstanding as speakers (vocally) and as communicators. The overall organisation of the event was superb.
7.     Two very different poets. Inspirational, relaxing, & stimulating. A really excellent evening.  
8.     Very entertaining and inspiring.
9.     Good sound system!! Excellent poetry – clear reading!! Welcoming, friendly venue!! Very good!!  
10.  Wonderful – but John Clarke was somewhat overshadowed.
11.  I could listen to Gillian Clarke read and speak all day! I love the format of anecdote and poem, as it (anecdote) adds an extra dimension to the meaning of the poem. Carry on with the poetry please!  
12.  Really good evening – very inspiring.
13.  Excellent evening. Terrific atmosphere created by these two poets. Relaxed and without any kind of poetic pomp, they riveted the audience. Thanks to Headingley LitFest for this event.
14.  J.W.C. enjoyed poems. Would have liked 15 mins for questions to learn more. G.C. – generous sharing of the back-stories of her poems. Gentle humour. Wonderful poetry. More!  
15.  Thoroughly enjoyed both. A brief question and answer session with each would have been great.
16.  Such a privilege to be in the company of such an amazing woman.
17.  John was a good choice for a Leeds audience – we recognised so much of the area and empathized with his emotions. Gillian’s poetry was sensual and almost mythical. An inspirational evening!
18.  Really good quality poetry and well read, with two important poets. Nicely compèred by Sheila and Doug, and the length of the evening was just right.
19.  I thought that both poets were very good and I particularly enjoyed John’s coastal poetry.
20.  Fab readings. (Fridges a bit noisy). Great opportunity to hear memorable words.  
21.  Very special and evocative.
22.  Nice balance between the two poets – good to have a regional voice as well as a ‘national’ poet – both very good. Nice relaxed atmosphere – and great that it cost only £6 – very good value.
23.  A privilege to hear two poets of such quality in one evening. Well done to the Headingley LitFest for getting them to read their work.
24.  Delightful evening! What a privilege to hear Gillian Clarke – a real coup for the LitFest to bring her to Leeds.
25.  Enjoyed both poets very much. So evocative of place and memory. Made me want to experience those places. I have experienced them through their words
26.  1. Lovely venue – warm, relaxing, comfortable with welcome refreshments available. 2. Successful structure – nice introductions, and a welcome interval. 3. Good speakers – Gillian Clarke was exceptional. I would like to have a hug from her one day.