Blue plaque for J R R Tolkien - more photos

A few more photos taken at Monday's unveiling ceremony outside 2 Darnley Road in West Park, Leeds...

Unveiled - Tolkien's Blue Plaque

In a ceremony organised by Leeds Civic Trust, the plaque for one of our area’s most famous – and most beloved – literary residents was revealed on Monday morning, 1 October, on the red brick wall of 2 Darnley Road. It was unveiled by Dr Kersten Hall, graduate of St Anne’s College, Oxford and Visiting Fellow to the Faculty of Arts at the University of Leeds. 

The event followed campaigning by the Tolkien Society and its members. Here is part of the Society’s informative statement for the event:

J.R.R. Tolkien, graduate of Exeter College, Oxford, was Reader in English language at the University of Leeds, his family moved to Leeds residing briefly at 5 Holly Bank, Headingley and then leasing a house in St Mark’s Terrace. In 1924 Tolkien bought the semi-detached property in Darnley Road. He went on to be made Professor of the English Language at the university. The family lived there for over a year before Tolkien’s election to the Rawlinson and Bosworth chair of Anglo-Saxon saw them return to Oxford in 1926. 






During his time at the University of Leeds Tolkien was instrumental in shaping the English Language syllabus at the university; some aspects of this were still present sixty years later. He also worked with E.V. Gordon to produce an edition of the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which was published in 1925.

Members of Headingley LitFest’s organizing committee were there, as might be expected, accompanying others in the crowd to the nearby Stables Bar for a reception. Speakers included Rory McTurk, Emeritus Professor of Icelandic Studies at the University of Leeds, who contributed to the LitFest programme in 2009. Included in his brief talk were references to a ‘completed’ translation by Tolkien of the story of Sigurd and Brynhildr - and also a Tolkien version of Beowulf, which might just be released for publication next year. 

In only-too-brief conversations with transient friends, it was established that some Tolkien Society members had come up to Leeds from many miles away - for example Dr Lynn Forest Hill, who had travelled from Southampton.

In letters to Allen and Unwin in 1961, the great man emphasized his gratitude for his time in Leeds: “I was devoted to the University of Leeds, which was very good to me, and to its students, whom I left with regret.”

Pictured below: Second Lieutenant J R R Tolkien during the First World War. To qualify as a signals officer, he attended a signals school run by the army's Northern Command at Farnley Park, Otley, which he left in May 1916. He did not see the full intensity of the Battle of the Somme, but he did experience the horror of trench warfare. In November 1916, he was invalided back to England with 'trench fever' and temporarily posted to Hornsea in East Yorkshire. His recovery from this was sporadic and , having relapsed, he was admitted to a Harrogate sanatorium. He also spent time at the Brooklands Officers' Hospital in Hull.  (from the booklet produced by Leeds Civic Trust)

Mimika Children's Theatre Comes Home

Mimika, the internationally acclaimed children’s theatre is to perform in Headingley on Saturday 3 November at the HEART Centre in Bennett Road in four special performances of their show Landscapes, presented by Headingley LitFest as part of our Between the Lines pre-March programme of events. 

This is the first time that Mimika has had a home performance in the city for twenty-five years!

Bill and Jenny, the inspired ‘do everything’ creators and animators of Mimika are really looking forward ‘to coming home’ and sharing their work with their local neighbourhoods. 

While their current show Landscapes has enthralled and enchanted audiences elsewhere in the UK and world wide, for example in London, Dublin, Madrid, Toronto, Singapore and in countries such as Denmark, the USA and recently China, Jenny (pictured, with goose) told us: while travelling around the world and performing to audiences from different cultures is often thrilling and fabulous this chance to show the work to friends, neighbours and the local community will be special.

Landscapes is a wordless theatre presentation set inside a beautiful white calico dome. It is an intimate, gentle and engaging evocation of four areas of the natural world. Audiences travel from the Desert to the Rainforest, from under the Sea to the South Pole. Using ingenuous crafted and designed models, puppets and sets, special lighting effects and an immersive sound track, Mimika take their audiences on a very special colourful and enchanting journey.  The show has been described as by far one of the most mesmerising children’s theatre pieces, (Canada) and as a show that should enchant audiences of any age (USA) with Mimika heralded by Kilkenny Arts Festival (Ireland) as one of the most original theatre companies in Europe.  

Performance times are 10.00am, 11.30am, 1.00pm and 2.30pm.  Adults £4.00, Children (under 16) £2.50. Children under ten should be accompanied by an appropriate  number of adults for groups of five and over. 

Tickets are now on sale at HEART . As each performance is limited to twenty-five persons, you are advised to get yours soon.

More information on Mimika at www.mimikatheatre.com

Linda Marshall at Salvo's

This Sporting Life at the Hyde Park Picture House

At the Hyde Park Picture House last Tuesday (4 September), This Sporting Life revived the feelings in me which I had when I first saw it on the big screen many years ago - it is stunningly powerful, with superb acting from just about all the cast. It's dour but brilliant. In spite of the odd, hybrid accent, which drifts into his native Irish at times, Richard Harris puts his heart, soul and athletic body into the part of Frank Machin, and Rachel Roberts is so impressive as Margaret Hammond! As with all classic films, you notice things you missed before - I recognised places I know now but didn't at the time of the first showing, I appreciated the innovative camera work and I took pleasure in recognising so many actors who made it after the first appearance of the film - William Hartnell (Doctor Who), Frank Windsor as a dentist, not a policeman, Leonard Rossiter as a sports journalist, not Rigsby, and Arthur Lowe as Charles Slomer, not Captain Mannering. 

Alan Badel (The Count of Monte Cristo, TV series in 1964) was truly aristocratic as Gerald Weaver, the moneyed sponsor in a camelhair coat, and he contributed strongly to the class element in the film - he's from another world completely to the grim one inhabited by Frank Machin. The match scenes were convincing, but the brutality was really played up - to go with Machin's ruthlessness: I would have enjoyed a couple more straightforward tries without players getting punched up, but then the film is pretty long already, and more scenes on the pitch would probably stretch it too much.

This showing will be, I hope, the beginning of a productive collaboration between sports and the arts in Leeds.

Meet The Beats

A terrific jazz group - Des The Miner - will be performing on Wednesday 5 September at the Mint Café, which is on North Lane, Headingley, as part of an evening with a focus on beat poets like Allen Ginsberg, whose 1965 poem ‘King of the May’, written just after he was expelled from Czechoslovakia, will be played from a very rare recording made at Betterbooks in London. 

Also performing with his keyboard will be the inimitable Ted Hockin and one or two surprise guests.  

There's no dress code, but if you own a beret...       

And make sure you sample the Lebanese buffet.

Grow Your Tenner

Here's something that LitFest supporters should be interested in!  

Localgiving.com announces £500k Grow Your Tenner campaign We are pleased to announce that our £500,000 Grow Your Tenner campaign will begin at 10am Tuesday 25th September to celebrate the launch of the new Localgiving.com monthly donations feature! From 25th September Localgiving.com will encourage new supporters to make one-time and/or ongoing monthly donations on the website by matching up to £10 per donation. We’ve got a pot of £500,000 to match donations, and we will match up to £10 per donation until the pot is gone, raising awareness and funds for local charities and community groups across England. So when a supporter gives £10, we’ll double it to £20! And even better- when a supporter signs up to donate £10/month to a local charity, we’ll match the first three months! Our new monthly donations feature will enable supporters to give automatically and regularly to local charities through online Direct Debit. Charities must have a paid subscription to be eligible to receive both one-time and monthly matched donations. Our records show that your charity is currently within your three month free trial. Localgiving.com fundraising facts In the last 12 months, nearly £2.5 million has been raised on Localgiving.com Over 2,300 charities are currently using Localgiving.com to fundraise online Localgiving.com is the UK’s leading website for local charities and community groups We automatically process Gift Aid for charities and community groups Your charity can gain access to new supporters and engage with them directly Charities receive matched donations through Localgiving.com promotions like with our upcoming Grow Your Tenner campaign Click here to learn more about the benefits of Localgiving.com For general questions about fundraising with Localgiving.com, please contact us at help@localgiving.com Best wishes, The Localgiving.com Team “Localgiving.com gives our charity a personal, high level of support and has raised our profile in the community.  Localgiving.com specifically supports those smaller, local charities that might otherwise slip under the radar, which is just great!”  Josie Hill, One25 Click here to view One25’s Localgiving.com webpage

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Poetry Parnassus continues

The Poetry Parnassus continues. It aims to feature poets from all two hundred and four of the Olympic nations, and is curated by Simon Armitage. It's the largest-ever poetry event in Britain.

Read this Carcanet blog entry by Henry King to catch a flavour.

This Sporting Life at The Hyde Park Picture House

Promised Land at The Carriageworks - Review

Richard Wilcocks writes:
Anthony Clavane spoke about his best-seller Promised Land: A Northern Love Story in an event entitled The Lingo of Sport, which took place in the New Headingley Club as part of the LitFest in March. He spoke about the diversity of his native city, about what it means to be a writer celebrating Leeds and about a certain football club with a remarkable history. “I’m working on a dramatic adaptation at the moment,” he told us, “along with a co-writer, Nick Stimson.

“It is going to be full of music, and probably dancing as well. It will be the same narrative, but things will be seen through the eyes of Nathan and Caitlin, two young people with plenty of ideals who are on two sides of a religious and cultural divide: Nathan is from a Jewish background while Caitlin’s ancestors were Irish Catholics.”

Somebody in the audience mentioned West Side Story. “No, not exactly that. It’s not a romantic tragedy. It’s more of an affirmation. They fall in love and get together and that’s it for them. There will be a lot of flashbacks to what happened at the turn of the twentieth century when Jews were arriving, escaping from pogroms in the Russian Empire, and also to the time when Don Revie was revered as the saviour of Leeds United, when The Mighty Whites reached the European Cup Final in Paris. The play is based on facts and research.”

Now that play with music (not ‘musical’) has launched at the Carriageworks, thanks to the Red Ladder Theatre Company and a very strong community cast. On the opening night (25 June), most of the audience fell in love with it: they clapped along, laughed and in some cases cried. I have seen a few ‘community plays’ and this was the best and most enjoyable by a long chalk in that wide category.

For a start, it is superbly-rehearsed, with tight and effective direction by Rod Dixon, who can turn a crowd of amateur (hard to believe) actors into a kind of dancing animal, sometimes aggressive and riotous, sometimes sublimely happy and sometimes chorus-like, commenting on the action. It becomes a crowd of swaying, chanting scarf-brandishers on the terraces, the inmates of a sweatshop somewhere near the Jewish ghetto (called The Leylands in Leeds), a bunch of vicious racists addressed up by a ranting anti-semite and much else. There is stirring music from the Red Ladder Band, I think not enough of it: there could have been at least one more Klezmer number and one more song with an Irish flavour. The footwork is nifty at all times.

Nathan, who represents Clavane, is played by the talented Paul Fox with wit and charm. The author must feel flattered, indulged even. Lynsey Jones is an equally charming Caitlin, and she acts (and plays guitar) with real spirit. Steve Morrell is a very credible David, stallholder in Kirkgate Market and Nick Ahad plays an exploiting boss as a cross between a cartoon capitalist in a top hat and a soft-edged gangster.

Yes, the story is predictable, mainly because it has to be, because it is based on local history and we know that the action is going to end up… here, and yes, the two lovers face only the small problem of their parents’ prejudices (a really funny scene with the two mothers discussing their offspring while drinking tea on a sofa) rather than a secret marriage and murderous relatives, but that’s not the point. The point is that it is a celebration, which might be a bit earnest and possibly a little sentimental, as we hang on those two words ‘Leeds’ and ‘United’.

There are scenes in it which remind us, as well, that we have no reason to feel smug in this country after watching that Panorama programme on crudely racist football hooligans in Poland and the Ukraine. We had them here in the seventies, just as bad. Some of them are still active.

It’s quite an achievement, to turn a book like that into good night out at the theatre.

Egyptian Evening in MINT - المصرية مساء

Marcos is organising this. He's the boss of MINT café in North Lane, Headingley and he was over the moon when the LitFest collaborated with him on a terrific Lebanese Evening in March, which had a bellydancer on the programme along with poems in English and Arabic by the likes of Khalil Gibran and Mahmoud Darwish. 


Now there's going to be an Egyptian Evening on Friday 29 June at 8.30pm with Helena Bellydancer, who will not only dance but talk about the remarkable Lady Lucy Duff Gordon (pictured), who was a mid-Victorian translator and travel writer. Her three volumes of travel letters were not originally intended for publication, and perhaps owe their honest style and natural tone to this fact. 


There will be some other readings too, in Arabic and English - for example from the works of Nizar Qabbani, a poet revered in the Arab world.



The food in MINT is brilliant - you can order an authentic mezze buffet for seven pounds if you want to try it. Entry at the door is three pounds.

Warm and wonderful

Warm and wonderful in the HEART café on 8 June!  Amongst the friends - a bunch of school students, poets all. Singers too. Stella Litras brought along her keyboard and guitar - and a brilliant young group called Caution!

 In the picture - Michelle and Becky.

Michelle and Friends

Charismatic performance poet Michelle Scally Clarke is well-known in Headingley:  for the past five years she has been the creative genius behind the amazing poetry slams held at Lawnswood and city of Leeds schools as part of the Headingley LitFest. Her own poetry lays bare her turbulent journey from care, to adoption, to motherhood, to performer – and she encouraged the teenagers who attended her preliminary workshops to dig deep and find their own sense of identity. She worked with the students for six weeks before each slam, nurturing their talents and offering them her own inimitable style of encouragement.

She will be joined by poet Becky Cherriman, musician Stella Litras and other guests for what should be an unforgettable evening in the HEART Café, Bennett Road.


From 7.30pm      £5

Lines of Dissent - Ian Parks

Lines of Dissent is the title of our Poetry and Jazz event in the HEART Café on Friday 25 May at 7.30pm      £5 on the door

Poet Ian Parks will be joined by the two Simons from Des the Miner, which is the resident group at the Flux Gallery, and by his guest Kim Moore.

Ian Parks was one of the National Poetry Society New Poets in 1996. He was made a Hawthornden Fellow in 1991 and has taught creative writing at the universities of Sheffield, Hull, Oxford and Leeds.

Described by Points North magazine as 'an heroic figure in Yorkshire poetry and a living legend in Hull', Ian Parks is the only poet to have poems in the Times Literary Supplement and The Morning Star on the same day. His collections include Shell Island, Love Poems and The Landing Stage.

His poems have appeared in Poetry Review, The Independent on Sunday, The Observer and Modern Poetry in Translation. He is currently editing a new anthology of contemporary Yorkshire poetry for Five Leaves Publications and was special guest on the Janice Long Show (BBC Radio 2) earlier this year.

The Exile’s House is published by Waterloo Press and he will be venturing out of Mexborough in November to live and work as writer-in-residence at Gladstone's Library. He's asked them to subscribe to The South Yorkshire Times during his stay.

He has researched Chartist Poetry: his book on this will appear next year.

The Exile's House - Ian Parks: Download

“A poet working big themes and moving in new directions.”  Ed Reiss

“This is a poetry which is universal, profound and as natural as breathing.” David Cooke

 A Last Love Poem - Ian Parks: Download

 Jazz Train - Ian Parks: Download
 Over The Top - Ian Parks: Download
 Lazarus - Ian Parks: Download

Kim Moore works in Cumbria as a peripatetic brass teacher, which involves travelling to different schools to teach brass instruments and drinking cups of tea.  She lives with her husband, two dogs and a cat. 

Kim has recently completed an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.  She has been published in various magazines including Poetry Review, The TLS, Ambit, The Rialto, The North and Magma and has recently had reviews published in Mslexia and Poetry Review.  In 2011 she won the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize and an Eric Gregory Award.  She regularly reads for the ‘Carol Ann Duffy and Friends’ series at the Royal Exchange in Manchester and is Reviews Editor for the Cadaverine magazine.  She is currently working on her first full collection. 

Chartists rally on Kennington Common in London -

Land of Nod - at HEART

The Land of Nod is a Leeds-based comedy sketch show that’s been running since Spring 2010. They have performed in a number of venues in Yorkshire- Bradford Playhouse, Hebden Bridge Fringe Festival, Wakefield, York and regularly at Seven Arts in Chapel Allerton. The show consists of seventeen quick fire sketches ably performed by four actors (2 female/ 2 male) with a wide range of performing experience.

The sketches range from the topical- Our Tribute to the Diamond Jubilee- to the macabre, surreal and satirical. Influences range from Peter Cook, to Big Train, to The Day Today. They cover topics from waiting for god to ‘Airlock Holmes’ a modern day wanna-be detective who never seems to get it right.

They are appearing in the HEART Café in Bennett Road on Friday 11 May at 7.30pm. Tickets on the door - four pounds.


Feel free to click on the poster below and print it out.

For further information visit the website www.landofnod.org.uk

Three Friday evenings, soon...

 The café in the HEART Centre has just the right sort of atmosphere for poetry, music – and comedy. Now, we are responding to your requests and organising three follow-on events for the Headingley LitFest which will take place in it, all of them starting at eight pm.

There will be more detailed information soon on this blog (have you bookmarked us yet?), but for now please put these dates on your calendar:

May 11 – MIKE NELSON – stand-up comedian who ran a successful workshop for the LitFest in March

May 25 – IAN PARKS – poet who appeared at the Flux Gallery with others in March, with JAZZ from Destheminer

June 8 – MICHELLE SCALLY CLARKE – charismatic performance poet who was the driving force behind the Lawnswood Poetry Slam, with musical friends

City of Leeds Poetry Slam

Vivian Lister writes:

WOW!- the Wonder Of Words!

 -Wham–Bam- City of Leeds SLAM

City of Leeds School students hit the ground dancing with this their first ever Litfest slam. Supported by the excellent Leeds Silver Steel Sparrows, these talented young people dazzled us with an evening pulsating with drive, energy and full-on pizazz.

Strong political poems confronted world issues - of women’s oppression, of the futility and pain of war -  in language that was both reflective and heartfelt. There were flamboyant assertions of identity, of the pride of race and gender and the determination to be, to live and to grow.

The great comedy duo, Pinky and Za ("Don’t call me babe!" "Yeh babe!") delighted their fellow students with an energetic, fast moving dispute about language use and dignity - at least we older audience members think that’s what it was about as we were swept along in the slip-steam of this fast flowing dialogue. There were also plenty of poignant moments, personal experiences described in accurate, truthful language and performed simply and conversationally.

Faced with this wealth of exuberant talent, the judges retired to make their decisions whilst we were entertained by Michelle Scally Clarke, the event’s brilliant facilitator and Stella Petris, her wonderful collaborator who gave us their tribute to Nina Simone. There  was also  spirited playing by the Silver Steel Sparrows.

The judges - Amanda Stevenson, Head of English at Lawnswood School, poet Becky Cherriman and song writer Bob Green, expressed their delight at the flair, skill and also courage of all the performers. They were also impressed by how well the young people had worked together and looked after each other.

The judges awarded the prize for best poem to Farzad Ahmadi for the poem, ‘Shattered Dreams’, praising both its wonderful imagery and Farzad’s strong performance.

They gave special mention to Maryam Dodo’s poem, ‘Happy Day’, to Pinky Sibande for the beautiful, ‘Silence in the Room’,  to Antonio Bessa’s poems which dealt with serious world issues with power and clarity and to Natasha Gogwe’s ‘Climbing’ in which the energy of the rhythm emphasised high aspiration. 

The winner of the best personal achievement award was Neelam Chohan who impressed the judges by the  direct , conversational tone  of her poetry describing the trials of her life and also her reflections upon what writing has meant to her.

The judges also praised Luke Edgar for the courage and honesty of his writing.

The award for best overall performance was given to Za Nyamande who combined lyrical word play with commanding stage presence and style. Special mention went to Elijah Phillip for the beautifully performed, ‘Getting Older’.

Bob Green addressed the slammers: ‘Each of you has written your own truth- and that is poetry!’

City of Leeds Slammers! You are poets. We salute you!

The Slammers – Winners all!

All these young people attended the slam workshops and/or performed at the slam:

Farzad Ahmadi; Ikra Ahmed; Jeffrey Antwi; Antonio Bessa;Neelam Chohan; Maryam Dodo; Luke Edgar; Natasha Gogwe; Shirquilla Grant; Za Nyamande; Elijah Phillip; Unique Ruddock; Pinky Sibande 

Calligraphy at Left Bank

Simon Hall writes:
What is the relationship between the spoken and the written word? What is the relationship between the written word and the way we write it? These questions were bubbling under the surface as I picked up a piece of wood shaped into a primitive nib and tried to make a shape approximating to an Arabic letter. I was sharing a table with a very diverse group of punters - all complete novices - as we tried to get our minds and hands round the ancient practice of drawing words.

What made this particular session remarkable - in addition to the beautiful surroundings of Left Bank - was that the art was being done with a unique purpose. Gillian Holding is Jewish and local and Iman Meghraoua is an Eastern European Muslim, but they came together not just to teach calligraphy, but to demonstrate the common origins of Hebrew and Arabic script. If we share a script, can we not share our lives, they asked wordlessly as they gave unceasing encouragement to our group of faltering amateurs. As we hamfistedly tried to make beauty from the most basic of instruments we were being shown how much the romantic, flowing Arabic script has in the common with its precise - almost digitally precise - Hebrew sibling.

Just a few hours earlier, Gillian and Iman had welcomed young people from their own communities to share together and create huge collages of script to be taken to Israel/Palestine as a sign of peace and reconciliation. We, too, were able to make our own tiny contribution to the work. It felt hopelessly inept, tiny and insignificant, and yet here were two people from communities who are supposed to be at war with each other asking us to play our part. How could we refuse?

On your marks! Get set!

(Free House Event- Sunday 25 March)

Doug Sandle writes:

When I was a teenager I had pictures from an illustrated sports magazine on my bedroom wall alongside pictures of work by the likes of Paul Klee, Mondrian, Picasso and Magritte. While sport and the arts are often seen to occupy different and oppositional realms, as  portrayed in the popular stereotypes of the super fit  sports ‘jock and the arty ‘aesthete’, for me the arts and sport are twin passions. As an adolescent I wrote poetry and also ran cross country, played rugby and was a middle distance runner.  

So as a 'Beck Arts' contribution to the Headingley LifFest, following on from our 2011 Food for Thought, for this Olympic year it had to be the literature (and some songs) of sport as the subject of our presentation. As luck would have it, LitFest guest Anthony Clavane in his Sunday afternoon session talked about the often perceived divide between mind and body and the stereotypical assumptions that arts and sport necessarily inhabited different worlds. He argued that arts and sport had much in common and as an example cited author David Storey, who had been a Rugby League player for Leeds.  As I research the relationships between the arts and sport it is surprising how many artists, writers, dramatists, film makers, composers, dancers and poets have used sport not only as a subject  to be celebrated (and sometimes critiqued) but as a rich expressive and symbolic narrative of human experience. For Anthony Clavane, sport is theatre and a dramatic spectacle. For conceptual artist Martin Creed, whose piece entitled Work No. 850 in which every 30 seconds a runner ran through the galleries of Tate Britain, there is the implication that our experience of, and engagement with, art and sport may  have much in common. 

So in our sporty clothes and entering slow motioned to strains of Chariots of Fire we entered our arena (the welcoming front room of Richard Wilcocks's abode) to perform On Your Marks! Get Set!  to a full house. The performers who joined me were Sheila Chapman (who stood in generously for Lis Bertolla, who was unable to attend as advertised), Richard Wilcocks, John Milburn and Maria Sandle. The programme included poems on tennis, running, football, cricket and golf and readings of prose works on football and cricket featuring both well known and perhaps not so well known poets and authors. 

Richard also revealed in suitable dramatic style (in his piece The Führer's First XI) that Hitler had once had an interest in cricket and that he attempted to rewrite the rules and characteristics of the game. Following some particularly lyrical poems on cricket, John performed the poetic Roy Harper song When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease. Maria concluded a section on football with an example of a song that had had become ‘appropriated’ and associated with sport by singing The Fields of Athenry. This has become a feature of several sporting events and is performed by fans, notably for Celtic and Liverpool football clubs and also for Irish Rugby games. 

Some works, such as Lis Bertolla’s own poem Team Spirit (especially written for this event), reminded us that school experience of sport was not a comfortable experience for some, while nonetheless recognising its metaphorical import later in life. Other readings playfully poked fun at being too obsessed with sporting prowess and physicality or critiqued the celebrity culture of commodified sport. The performance concluded with a song and a poem about boxing, and we then moved on to indulge in the refreshments provided by Anna. It was a very enjoyable event for the last day of the main LitFest programme.

The Lingo of Sport in New Headingley Club

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Sunday Mirror sports writer Anthony Clavane spoke about his best-selling Promised Land: A Northern Love Story which is about the city, its football club and its communities, and about what it means to be a writer who wants to celebrate Leeds. We need to relish our ‘Leedsness’!

His heroes were not all taken from the sporting world: Mick McCann’s How Leeds Changed The World was mentioned, and David Storey was flagged up, even though he came from Wakefield, which according to Clavane is “almost Leeds, well all right, it’s West Yorkshire... well anyway he’s been a big influence and he wrote This Sporting Life on the train to London... every time I go down to Kings Cross on the train, which is often, I am reminded of how he wrote the novel sitting in a seat just like mine, on the train. He played Rugby League at weekends and was a student at the Slade School of Art during the week.

“The worlds of sport and art can be brought together. There are so many connections and so many false dichotomies.” He went on to illustrate his point.

There was Brian Clough, the manager who did not actually burn Don Revie’s desk, even though David Peace had him do it in The Damned United (look up David Peace in the search box above to find his contribution to the 2010 LitFest), and there was mention of Matt Busby, who once managed a certain bunch of footballers on the other side of the Pennines, and who described football as theatre: “...in which case Elland Road is the Theatre of the Absurd.”

“The Kop at Elland Road – remember? A Greek chorus!” We shared our memories of chants. He did not mention all of them because he considered that we were “a family audience”, which provoked one or two surprised looks.

Clavane aired personal anecdotes, of which he has a great archive, drawn upon extensively for the book. He once sold lollies and ice creams in the old Leeds Playhouse, one half of a sports centre. Quiet, significant moments in plays were often less than tense when the audience could hear the clink-clink of weights being hoisted and dropped by those training at the other side of breeze-block walls. “I saw Comedians by Trevor Griffiths and Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of An Anarchist when I worked there. Fo’s play changed every night because the actors had to react to contemporary events. You never knew exactly what was going to happen. As in a match.”

Questions and Answers was interesting, given equal time with the talk. He tackled a lengthy one about all sport being too male-orientated with professional skill and declared that he had given adequate space in Promised Land to the violent and racist elements who once gave Leeds United such a bad reputation, back in the seventies. “It’s changed such a lot. It’s more family orientated now,” he said. Someone pointed out that rugby had been like that for decades.

Promised Land is about to be adapted for the stage this summer by Clavane and co-writer Nick Stimpson. The adaptation will tell the same story through the eyes of Nathan and Caitlin, two young idealists growing up in mid-1970s Leeds, living in the same city but on opposite sides of a cultural and religious divide. Nathan is a third generation Russian-Jewish immigrant and a Leeds United obsessive who dreams of making it as a writer, and Caitlin is a political campaigner and a third-generation Irish Catholic immigrant. Against all the odds, they fall in love, united by their hopes and dreams – the kind of aspiration that drew their grandparents to the industrial city in the first place.

The play, which is going to be full of music and dancing, with a large community cast and a band, is a co-production between Red Ladder Theatre Company, Leeds Civic Arts Guild and The Carriageworks. It will be performed at The Carriageworks between 22 and 30 June 2012.

Endymion launch at the Flux Gallery

Sheila Chapman writes:

The Flux was its usual self on Saturday night: skewiff, tilted, slanted and full of poets. We greeted each other with immortal lines like, ‘nice to see you’ and ‘god it’s been a long time’, sipped/glugged our drinks, nibbled nuts and partook of divine cheese and pickle sandwiches.

The poetry and readings were divine too with ten artists taking to the floor to celebrate the launch of Endymion by Flux Gallery Press. Endymion is an Arts and Poetry magazine which is packed with poems, reflections, critique and illustrations. This first edition focuses on romance, not just the romance of love but romance in its broadest sense.

As the Foreword to the magazine says:

‘In its original historical context the word romantic encapsulated a richly nuanced set of meanings ranging from the revolutionary to the notion of the sublime. Above all, it stood for the complex of emotional and psychological responses that defined a new conception of humanity characterised by a heightened sense of individualism'.

Each of the people who read last night had contributed to the magazine and they brought it to life before us. Their readings reflected its wonderful variety taking us through a range of emotions as well as perceptive observations, inspired language, evocative imagery and great good humour.

Iakovus Brown, Dave Cooke, Cathy Galvin, Lisa Geddes, Tony F Griffin, Dougla Houston, Linda  Marshall, Ian Parks, Ian Pople, Pam Scobie,  and Angela Topping were the readers.

Des the Miner played their hearts out and we talked, laughed and listened our way through the evening. As an audience member said:

‘Superb. Convivial, intelligent, wonderful atmosphere’.

Endymion can be bought on Amazon, and Kindle is coming soon, subject to the resolution of some software problems!

Ross Raisin in the New Headingley Club