Headingley LitFest: Looking Out, Looking Up

Monday, 31 March 2014

Looking Out, Looking Up

Looking Out, Looking Up - Peter Spafford, Richard Ormrod, with guests
7.30pm Friday 28 March - Heart Centre

Audience Comments

Richard Ormrod

1. A remarkable smorgasbord of literary delights.

2. Brill! Lovely entertainment – varied!

3. A very enjoyable and varied evening – good to give a space for younger performers to join with more seasoned professionals.

4. Brilliant evening of live music. Varied and original.

5. Fantastic event. Came to support my daughter who played and I’m so glad I did. Wonderful venue and great to see some new and very different talent. Poet Lizzie was inspirational and so insightful for one so young. Peter and Richard were funny and poignant and their take on nursery rhymes was so different but made me very nostalgic. The Graham Browning Trio had such thoughtful lyrics, great harmonies and a fab double bass. For a 17 year old like Hannah this was a great opportunity to perform to a new audience. An unexpectedly entertaining and enjoyable evening – and just how many instruments can Richard play!!

6. Lizzie Hawkins excellent. Music fascinating. Peter Spafford great. People should not be allowed in late and definitely not mid-number!

Lizzie Hawkins

The Pleiades, Betelgeuse, Cassiopeia, Charon:
We pass these to each other like sweets
and trace the bent back of the Plough
turning our heads up, finding the white necessity of the Pole Star.

7. An odd, but fascinating, mixture of music and poetry (and poetry set to music). The musicians were inventive and had the audience enthralled.

8. Very good event.

9. Compelling, innovative first part. Wanted more of the young poet. I didn’t enjoy the trio but people around me said they were in tune with them. Welcome exciting sounds returned in the third section. Prufrock will never be the same again but in terms of congruence of words and music Crossing the Bar worked best for me.

10. A nice variety of words and music. Good to see young people performing too.

Graham Browning

11. Very invigorating and heartwarming. Lovely atmosphere and variety of performers.

12. Extremely exciting music and range of instruments. Quirky words from Peter and lovely youthful poems from the young poet. The ukulele player had an exceptionally strong and plangent voice. The Graham Browning Trio – music pleasantly dreamy, lyrics mediocre. Loved the Browning, Eliot and Tennyson. A lot more of Peter and Richard would have been good.

13. A great evening, sensitive, exciting and most melodious. Thank you.

14. There were some really exceptional songs from various performers – brilliant. All of the people taking part were highly talented – I greatly enjoyed the evening.

15. The sort of evening you would never find in London. A kaleidoscope of music and words – a joy all round.

16. A truly remarkable evening – the musical skills truly magic, the singing and ????? Sheer satisfying joy.

Hannah Swalwell

17. An entertaining and illuminating variety – performance of music and poetry. More of this kind of event – Headingley LitFest is value, through and through.

18. Wonderful evening – varied, full of imaginative creativity from a range of professionals and young performers. Nursery rhymes and T.S Eliot were a joy.

19. Something for everyone. Varied. Lovely evening.

20. Great evening. Good way to hear poetry in a musical setting!

Peter Spafford adds:

The Breeze is a song about war, in particular The First World War. It's based on a true story told me by a very old man in the West Country many years ago. Music never stopped a war starting, but it's worth a try.

Images: Lizzie Coombes/Betty Lawless. Ukelele: Richard Ormrod.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gTIE3uEYCQ

No comments:

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.