Headingley LitFest: A friendly and conversational tone

Monday, 24 March 2014

A friendly and conversational tone

Wednesday Evening 19 March –HEART

Helen Burke – Leeds Combined Arts partnership event.

Doug Sandle writes:

Leeds Combined Arts was formed in 2006 and organises monthly poetry readings, arts events and projects. Founded in the former old Headingley Community Centre its monthly meetings now take place at HEART. The main aims of LCA is ‘to provide workshops and events in schools, theatres, local community centres and other organisations and to encourage and create opportunities for members and the wider community to participate in a variety of arts related events and activities’. LCA has regularly held partnership events with the Headingley LitFest and this year the writer, performer, artist and poet Helen Burke was featured reading her own poetry.

As well as providing a colourful display of her own expressive art work and original textile designs, Helen delivered her poetry within a friendly and conversational tone that is both intimate and accessible and which, perhaps paradoxically, added to its emotional potency and expressive intensity. As feedback from the attentive audience confirmed, her work, which draws upon her own personal experiences and encounters, is “thoughtful, thought provoking and moving” and evidence of a “wonderful imagination”. Her work can also be engagingly humorous - as with her popular poem about a French cat encountered in Paris that is cleverly observed and amusingly characterised much to the delight of the audience.

Helen’s impact was summed up by the feedback comment of one audience member who in describing it as an ‘excellent performance’, tellingly revealed that he/she ‘had never been to a poetry reading before and really enjoyed it’ - now that’s just the kind of response that Headingley LitFest finds very gratifying – so thanks to Leeds Combined Arts and to Helen for a memorable evening.

Audience comments:

1. Excellent event. Entertaining. Intelligent. So much so that Helen is booked to appear at ‘Poetry by Heart (in partnership with HLF) in March 201.

2. Excellent event. Very entertaining poems. Lovely evening.

3. Loved every word. This is the second time I’ve seen Helen perform now; I am a big fan of her poetry.

4. Very lively. Entertaining. An excellent human being of great humour & powers of insight.

5. Enjoyable evening in a friendly comfortable atmosphere.

6. Helen has some very unusual poetry, some very thought provoking.

7. Wonder food for the soul.

8. As always, Helen’s work is thoughtful, thought provoking, funny and moving. A wonderful imagination – lovely to have the chance to hear her in solo performance.

9. Good event, right-sized room. Interesting mix of poetry & paintings/prints/textiles, verbal and visual. Good to have short tea break.

10. The LitFest as a whole has been great so far, and I especially enjoyed Helen Burke’s reading at the LCA event.

11. Excellent performance. Just the right length. Have never been to a poetry reading before & really enjoyed.

12. A very enjoyable evening.

13. Totally amazing.

14. Very good poet reading some very interesting and funny poetry as well.

15. Very entertaining and good fun. Excellent performance from Helen.

16. The length of the programme felt just right, and Helen’s poetry was great, and well defined between the interval.

17. Great. Engrossing. Captivating.

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LITERARY HEADINGLEY

Headingley is just the place for it! Don't expect a big circus with marquees, though: we're not at that stage yet. We're all volunteers as well.

Our venues include the HEART Centre on Bennett Road, the New Headingley Club on St Michael's Road, friendly cafés, historic local cinemas, Headingley Library, people's houses and the historic Leeds Library in Commercial Street, city centre.

Headingley's Literary Links

Headingley has strong connections with many writers:

Arthur Ransome was born in Headingley, J R R Tolkien lived at 5 Holly Bank and also at 2 Darnley Road, West Park when he was reader in English Language at the University of Leeds 1920 - 25, Alan Bennett lived over a butcher's shop opposite the Three Horseshoes, now Royale Dry Cleaners.

Lucy Newlyn has published poetry about her early life in Headingley, George Orwell stayed at 21 Estcourt Avenue with his sister Marjorie and her husband Humphrey 'Humpy' Dakin (with whom he visited the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth), T S Eliot used to visit his mother-in-law in Weetwood Lane, William Fryer Harvey was brought up in Spring Bank, Trevor Griffiths lived just off Victoria Road on Winstanley Terrace, Jon Silkin's first office of STAND magazine was his flat at 144 Otley Road, Sir Geoffrey Hill lived in Shire Oak Road, Peter Redgrove lived in Headingley between 1962 and 1965 when he was Gregory Fellow of Poetry at the University of Leeds, and playwright Kay Mellor still lives near The Hollies in Far Headingley.

Wilson Barrett, the charismatic first manager of the Grand Theatre, Leeds (a prolific playwright as well), lived in Beech Grove Terrace, Woodhouse in the 1870s. His house was a meeting place for many writers, artists and visitors to Leeds - such as W. S. Gilbert, George Grossmith and Atkinson Grimshaw.

Headingley LitFest 2020 was the thirteenth. The fourteenth will take place from March 2021 and will be adapted to the rules of the Covid pandemic. We are now a proud part of the annual Leeds Lit Fest.