Tell It Your Way, with the Yarnsmith of Norwich

Sheila Chapman writes:

4pm, Saturday 16 March, New Headingley Club

We were called from our lovely tea and cakes (thanks to Leeds Voice Day) by the beating of a drum to meet our mediaeval tale teller, Dave Tonge.

We sat in a semi-circle around Dave and the children sat on the sheepskin rugs on the floor. Dave started by asking us to solve a riddle. It was a long riddle (as befits a story teller) involving a bird asleep on the branch of a tree, our desperate need for the wood from the branch and , here’s the catch, the fact that the branch needed to be taken without disturbing the bird, for if the bird was disturbed  something nasty would happen. All our suggested solutions to the riddle were useless and we grew increasingly desperate. Someone even suggested shooting the bird but we passed on very quickly from that being all very sound Headingley anti-blood sport types.  In the end a wise-woman in the front row suggested we might wait until the bird woke up and flew away – of course that was the answer, doh!!!

And so the afternoon went on. Robin Hood won an archery competition (we gasped as he and his opponents demonstrated their skill and we applauded the final winning shots), a young man searched for and found his luck (it was NOT a happy ending), a man regretted finding a voice for his beautiful wife who had been previously dumb and, finally, it was proven that women are definitely brainier than men – wild cheers from the audience!

Throughout the event the children wriggled and squirmed on the rugs, they shot their hands in the air to answer questions, made off-the-wall suggestions for plot improvement and were so captivated by Dave’s performance that when he suggested, at one stage, that we might all draw closer they practically climbed in his pockets.

It was a terrific afternoon and Dave truly earned his title – Master Storyteller.

Sally Bavage writes:

Witty raconteur?  Life and soul of the party?  Dinner party leading light?  Thought not!  If you haven’t got one of those endless self-help books, then you should have come to this entertaining workshop giving hints and tips for those wishing to be any/all of the above, or intending teachers, or conference speakers …

One thing stood out amongst all the others at this afternoon event in the New Headingley Club – the sound of laughter.  Not polite, either – appreciative and joyful.  From first to last, Dave Tonge managed to coax a group of strangers to listen to him raptly, then interact with and perform to each other.

Tips on breathing, changes in voice, the use of gestures (appropriate for the age of the audience), the stance you use, using your eyes to capture and hold inclusive attention -  were all rehearsed.  The group tried telling a short story without using their hands or body movements – almost impossible.  Visualise the story you want to tell, chunk it down into comic-strip bite sizes – for if you The Narrator can ‘see’ the story then you can ensure your audience gets the picture too. And stories are pretty universal; there is not much alteration of the plotlines involved, more the adaptation of the tips above to carry the story to a mixed range of ages.

Record your story to hear it as a listener might, then refine it for pace, pitch and tone.  Write down keywords if it helps you to string it together coherently, using pauses and repeats to get the “Ooh”, the “Boo” and the “Hurrah” that you want. Above all, be yourself and share rather than perform.

Our Yarnsmith did indeed share and left a happy workshop wanting more. They got more too, as Dave went on to put his mouth where his tips were and, after tea and cake, led another session entitled Tavern Yard Tales. But that’s another story….

Our thanks to Leeds Voice Day who sponsored this event.

Hilary Spurling - Burying the Bones

Linzhu Deng (Felicity) writes:

Hilary Spurling

Before the lecture, I didn’t know Pearl Buck's work very well. I knew her name but I’ve never read her book, to be honest, because what I’ve read during my school years are those famous books written by Chinese writers like Mao Dun and Ba Jin. Today, I’ve heard a lecture about her life and books and I’ve got really interested in reading them, but one thing that I find very interesting is that she was the public enemy in China at that time and at the same time, not very welcome in the US because she stood up for China. The words “public enemy” caught my mind, and after the lecture I did a little bit of research about her and found that some of our well-known Chinese writers at her time accused her of being unrealistic in writing about Chinese society and of her limitation of vision which was from the perspective of a missionary’s daughter. Controversial as it is, it’s impossible for me to judge anything unless I read her books on my own. However, this lecture has indeed given me some views about China from a brand new perspective.

Jing Zhang (Maggie) writes:
After the talk, one word emerged in my mind: “bridge”. Pearl Buck built a “bridge” between the western world and China. But now my perspective has been directed to another way that it was indeed a difficult task to build this bridge, because she spoke Chinese with yellow hair and blue eyes in China, and she found herself failing to fit into American society when she had to go back. Nobody but Pearl herself knew how much misunderstanding, stress and other hardship she had suffered. Fortunately, she was accepted by both sides: she became a Nobel Prize winner as well as a great friend of the Chinese people

Li Hu (Lily) writes:
The speech given by Hilary Spurling is quite fascinating and inspirational, which is not only about Pearl Buck and her lifetime, but also a sketch of China's 20th history. At first, she talked about
her interest in China, which originated from a book read by her mother, The Chinese Children Next Door. Hilary thought Pearl Buck's books, especially The Good Earth, open a door for westerners to learn about China, which was not possible back in several decades. Nowadays, even most Chinese people have no idea what looked like in China in 1920s, because most people that time are illiterates so that they could not put down their daily life and their feelings. But Pearl Buck did the job, and to some extent, she offers a differing perspective as an American.

Besides, there are two things which drew my attention. One is the novel (The Good Earth) itself, which is somehow not qualified for some critics, as the language itself is quite magazinelike. But
what makes it extraordinary is its unique setting, which build a connection between the west and the orient. It also help people think the misunderstanding between peoples and possibly try to find a way to warm up relations. The other thing is that apart from the fact that the Pulizer Prize and Nobel Prize for Literature Pear Buck had won, the thing makes her so extraordinary lies in the fact that she did make huge contribution to understanding between the two worlds and few people have managed to do it. The realistic condition Chinese farmers in 1920s had endured arouses empathy among different groups, especially those who have similar life experience.

Sally Bavage writes: 
A chilly evening but a very warm welcome for a slightly jet-lagged Hilary Spurling, just back from Texas, as she braved the stand-up journey from London (no seats, no manners) and the flakes of snow to come to Headingley LitFest and give a rapt audience an insight into an extraordinary woman.

Her book, entitled Burying the Bones, outlines the life of Pearl Buck over the earlier part of her life growing up in China (and speaking Chinese, the ordinary language of farming folk, before she spoke English).  The title refers to the Chinese habit of burying the traumas of their life - 'inscrutable' is often used - as well as young Pearl's exploits as she played outside her missionary parents' home in the surrounding fields and interred, with dignity, the bones (and other gruesome body parts) left after feral dogs had devoured the mostly-female babies left to die or rot outside the village.  Her childhood and early years of marriage to John Lossing Buck (another extraordinary person committed to China and its people) were spent in a range of places, all providing endless degrees of hardship along with fascination for the society  and its culture.

Pearl S Buck

However, Hilary first outlined what had brought her to writing this biographical tour-de-force, winner of the James Tait Black prize, many five-star reviews and serialisation recently on Radio 4's 'book of the week'.  As a pre-school child she had adored a simple book The Chinese Children Next Door, where Pearl had used the many stories she had heard told to her missionary mother when a small child herself to craft a thinly-disguised fiction.  This picture book showed - to a child brought up in the wartime grey dullness of Stockport - an astonishing life full of colour, games, and exoticism.  Hilary's lifelong fascination for China began at three years old and has lasted for seven decades.

Hilary also gave the audience a brief contextual account, gleaned from her many research travels in the China of today, of the world that Pearl had inhabited and just how it has changed.  Pearl was always a passionate advocate of China, knowing the rural lifestyle from within, and foresaw it becoming a 'superpower' as early as 1925.  A pity, then, that she was regarded with some suspicion in the America to which she had to return in 1934 and which ignored her observations.   She was to become a Public Enemy in China, after the Cultural Revolution, where it was considered her frankness in writing about sexual mores and grinding, brutal poverty was unacceptable.  She was also outside the norm in an America that first rewarded her with a Pulitzer prize for her most famous novel The Good Earth, awarded her the Nobel prize for Literature and then put her under FBI surveillance for her advocacy of China.  Good, then, that in modern China there are now 'shrines' marking the places where she once lived.  There is still some ambivalence towards her in official circles but it is clear that her record of life during the early part of the 20th century is, quite simply, a unique record that could only have been written by the sharply-perceptive bilingual author who lived in two worlds.

In the end, Hilary felt, Pearl had cared more about her campaigning - for many causes unpopular at the time, including women, blacks, minorities, children - than fine writing.  Although she could have been a first-class writer she used her writing to explore the real lives of ordinary people - and became rich in fandom and finances in the process.  “I am an American by birth and by ancestry … but my earliest knowledge of story, of how to tell and write stories, came to me in China.” 

Pearl's writing style, immediate and vivid, was exactly mirrored by Hilary's prose in her biography and in her presentation; pacy, colourful, full of anecdote and brio, expertly built on the record of evidence that Pearl's many books and articles left us. The audience were treated to a real insight (I was going to say 'pearls of wisdom' but thought better of it) into the commitment a writer needs to illuminate the lives of others.  Pearl and Hilary both. 

Ray Brown - Maria's House

Richard Wilcocks writes:

In  a warm front room, we ate wedges of a chocolate cake which would have made Nigella green with envy, cursed the weather outside and listened to Ray Brown. It was my idea of a house event: friendly, intimate, stimulating and… sweetly nourishing.

Ray Brown

Ray began by talking about work in progress, about how writing plays is totally different from writing prose and about how playwrights often steal from each other. David Nobbs had, in fact, once slunk up to him to apologise for stealing a single word - 'seemly'. He told us about the creative writing class he had once run and about the rules he set: every member had to bring what they had written to every session and read it out, at risk of exclusion from the session. “It's always the ones who don't write anything who criticise the most.”

Then came the flash fiction, flash because it didn't last long and flashy because it was well honed. The first was set in the seventies, at a time when the leaders of the RAF (Rote Armee Fraction) in West Germany - Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof - had yet to commit suicide, and was about a mysterious someone traveling out of Germany to Schipol airport in the Netherlands who may or may not be a terrorist or a drug dealer. The second was set in Headingley, “which has always been a mixed area full of interesting people - the Hampstead of Leeds as it were…” Entitled The Gift, it was written, like the first, at a time when Ray lived in Headingley. “I used to write about dying and making love,” he said, “and I was fascinated by the heartbeat in this story. It has a basis in a relationship I had.” The repetition of words and phrases helps provide the heartbeat.

Maria's House came next. It is not flash fiction, but a longer piece which came out of a time when Ray was working as a writer-in-residence at Dove House in Chamberlain Road, Hull and another  hospice just outside Lincoln. He turned the story into a play for radio, which has never been produced. He read beautifully, using a credible Lincs accent where necessary, and explained to us that the character Maria was his opportunity for an imaginative link with a place which is like another home for him - Mala Brda (it means 'little hill') which is in Slovenia, near the famous Postojna caves, and not too far from the Italian city of Trieste. 

He gave Maria, an old woman who lives in a hospice, a really convincing Italian accent in his reading - she calls him "Ha-Ray". She had, long ago, been part of the Italian community in Istria, which had once been overwhelmed by Mussolini's fascist forces and which had now been reclaimed by Slovenia and Croatia. Ray is a frequent visitor to those parts, so when, in his fiction, he visits Maria's house, having been given the key by Maria, he is visiting a real house from his experience. It is “overshadowed by a giant chestnut tree” and he rides a Tomos moped (the headquarters of the company which makes them is in Koper, Slovenia) on the roads near it. “Sretan Put!” he is told: “Pleasant journey!” in Croatian. Yes, Ray knows those parts, and something of the tortured history: one character makes a reference to when “Stalin was threatening to shake his little finger at Tito”. 

“I wanted to hint at the enormous richness of experience in that country,” he told one questioner when he had finished.

Theatre of the Dales - Literary Lovers

Jane Oakshott, Dave Robertson, Maggie Mash 

Mary Francis writes:
This was a performance by members of Theatre of the Dales in association with Trio Literati - and, as always, they were a joy to watch! Literary Lovers is the very apt title for the adaptation of letters between George Bernard Shaw and two very famous actresses of the day - Ellen Terry and Mrs. Patrick Campbell (who seems to have been known to her friends as Mrs. Pat).

Dave Robertson was a wonderful Shaw, with his delightful leading ladies being Maggi Mash as Ellen Terry and Jane Oakshott as Mrs. Pat - both inhabiting their roles beautifully.

From today’s perspective, it is quite remarkable that Shaw - a prodigious worker in so many literary fields, - should have written over 250,000 letters apparently and conducted such amazing correspondences with a range of different people. Over 3000 letters survive from his relationship with Ellen Terry, whom he vowed never to meet in person, and in them he is sometimes loving, sometimes chiding, sometimes full of advice, sometimes exasperated. With Mrs. Pat he seems to have begun, in his role as theatre critic, by praising highly or criticizing strongly her various stage performances, but later became quite infatuated with her. With both women, though sometimes they appear to have been grateful for his advice and suggestions, one senses his exasperation as they ignore his business ideas in particular - and indeed his feelings about the men in their lives!

But it is not only Shaw’s character that comes across so strongly from these letters and their adaptation, for the two actresses write with equal affection, passion and, very often, equal conviction, - and they generally know their own minds very well indeed! They are very real women and it is so good to hear their voices.

Many thanks to the three performers for an entrancing show! 

George Szirtes and Kim Moore in HEART Café

Doug Sandle writes:

Kim Moore and George Szirtes

The yellow daffodils on the HEART café tables provided a freshness and uplifting ambiance to contrast to the damp and cold of a winter outstaying its yearly visit, a fitting setting for an evening that lifted the spirits and warmed the soul with readings from George Szirtes, ably supported by Kim Moore.  Bringing together one of our foremost poets with a prodigious body of a lifetime’s work and literary achievements with a young poet, successfully emerged rather than emerging but one nevertheless at an earlier stage of her poetic journey, worked very well for a LitFest whose aspiration is both to bring to Headingley established writers and also to encourage and nurture younger talent.

I was delighted to introduce George, having been one of his lecturers and tutors at the Leeds Polytechnic (now Leeds Metropolitan University) when from 1969 to 1972 he was a fine art student. Both his life at Leeds and continuing interest in visual art featured among several of the poems he presented. A connection with his former student days was the poem Poet about Martin Bell, who was Gregory Fellow in Poetry at Leeds University 1967 to 1969 but who thereafter taught at Leeds Polytechnic for a time and who was very influential in nurturing  creative writing among the students (and staff) of the art and design department. Poet makes reference to James Thompson's City of Dreadful Night which was parodied in the title of Martin’s powerful response to and critique of the Leeds of the sixties, the City of Dreadful Nothing. Bell’s poem refers to the  ‘Merrion Centre with its special subways for mugging’ and the Merrion Centre receives a mention in another Leeds related poem read by George, Chuck Berry Live, which begins

            Too tired to dance with anyone right now

            After the gig, here in the Merrion Centre

            Where Chuck Berry has just taken his bow.

The poem goes on to describe a bleak experience of Leeds, which has much of the tone of

Martin Bell’s City of Dreadful Nothing.  Another poem, Girl Flying recounts an incident when George witnessed a girl student caught by a fierce wind on the steps that led up to the Leeds Polytechnic’s H Block, to such an extent she was blown into the air and which stirred his imagination to imagine her flying:

            When she stood at the top of the stairs by the door

            of the college, the wind caught her up and so

            she flew all the way down, as if no more

            than a micro-detail on a map that any breeze could blow,

            and if she could have flown of her own will

            at any time she chose, this was how she’d go,

            

These two poems are one of five grouped together under the title Yorkshire Bitter and another read was Night Out, about his experience of a notorious Leeds Pub of the sixties, The Hayfield, a poem, which as in several of his poems, contained references to popular culture of the time with mentions of Jack Palance, Pat Phoenix and Leeds United footballers Sniffer Clarke and Norman Hunter. The poem begins:

            Everyone wears drag around here. The barman

            In gold lamé and vast peroxide wig

            serves pints of Sam Smith to a local Carmen

           

            wearing the cruiser’s full authentic rig

            of white blouse, fish-nets, tiny leather skirt,

            with three day’s stubble, mouth like a ripe fig.

                                   

Visual art, the visual and the painterly is also still a concern as exemplified by poems from A Howard Hodgkin Suite and also from  Minimenta –postcards to Anselm Kiefer. The sensual synaesthetic relationship between colours and the sound of words was evident in a poem entitled Colours, which beings with fourteen lines of colour names – some as in common use and others made up.

            Burlywood, Charteuse, Gainsboro, Ghostwhite, Greenberg,

            Maroon, Orchid, Moccasin, Peru, Demosthenes, Snow,

            Papayawhip, Popper, Peachpuff, Hotpink, Hothot,

            Darkred, Darkgrey, Dodgerblue, Drudgery, Derrida,

         

Some of the poems presented also related to photographs and film or were structured around a  

celebration and exploration of the interrelationships among the forms, patterns and sounds of words. His final poem Say So was much enjoyed by the audience for its musical resonance.

However while the imagery and pictures in his poems are powerful as such, they often rapidly develop and lead us on a journey into the metaphysical and in the case of his reading Seeking North from a sequence entitled Northern Air: A Hungarian Nova Zembla a journey is itself the means for this. His poem Allotment from the Mimimenta –postcards to Anselm Keifer is another example, which begins

            When I glimpse from the train a clutch

            of allotments, a tight row of cabbages or spuds

            or garden peas, I think there are gods

            beyond gods who live in the bones

            of men and women, shivering at their touch;

            that when rain falls it weeps hailstones;

There was much variety in the reading and a personal and moving Prayer for my Daughter will have resonated with parents in the audience and such as Madhouse had political implications.

All together it was a very powerful and inspiring reading and while it was George Szirtes’ first visit to Leeds for a long time, let us hope that it will not be too long before the next one.

Click here to hear six early love poems. 

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Two things in particular struck me as I was listening to Kim Moore read. The first was that she, a mistress of the lyrical, should team up with another musician, or an ensemble, to create new material for new performances: Teaching the Trumpet would be an obvious starting point. It provides good, professional advice:

Imagine you are spitting tea leaves

From your tongue to start each note

 

So each one becomes the beginning of a word.

Sing the note inside your head then match it.

It’s advice which is brought into a new dimension by the closing lines about remembering… the man who played so loud/ he burst a blood vessel in his eye… lines which invite much surmise. Who? When?

The second was the confident way in which she can speak from her own dark depths, like a cave-based oracle or a priestess well in touch with the lupine side, which has been noted by plenty of commentators, lifting off from the terrific title poem of her 2011 pamphlet If We Could Speak Like Wolves. Lupine could indicate sensual or fleshly, but it’s a lot more than that: Today at Wetherspoons demonstrates how tellingly she observes the people she encounters on the shore, in the street, on trains, in pubs:

…The women tilt

in their chairs, laughter faked,

like mugs about to fall, cheekbones

sharp as sadness…

The poem goes on to address matters lupine, or perhaps just seedy:

…My feet slide towards a man

with one hand between his thighs…

The key poem for me on this particular evening was Hartley Street Spiritualist Church. The interest in the dark depths is in there, of course, how could it not be when the church in question has a psychic artist, shudder-inducing mediums (who were trainees, we were told afterwards) and a voice whispering to her that a drawing of an elderly woman with a perm is a depiction of her grandma? But the poem is not really in any gothic domain: there is a hymn by Abba (I believe in angels) and a spirit dog wandering around. The dry humour is delicious.

Her personal narratives – for example one of her more recent poems which is centred on when her husband had a nasty fall in the bathroom – often celebrate the unexpected, or the odd, and then there is always the landscape of  her part of Cumbria looming somewhere behind the characters, a cloudy cyclorama.


Photos by Richard Wilcocks

Blake Morrison - Fiction or Life Writing

 Rebecca Cronin writes:

Softly spoken Yorkshireman Blake Morrison, in conversation with Richard Wilcocks, began with an introduction to Life Writing – what it is, and most importantly, how he makes it interesting. He shared anecdotes concerning his two books about his parents – Things My Mother Never Told Me and When Did You Last See Your Father? – and read passages from both. He centred his discussion around the use of embroidery, which he asserted to be important when fictionalising your characters, yet also spoke strongly about how the personal truths he experienced, and detailed in both books, often resonate well for other people.

Blake Morrison signed dozens of his books

Life writing, when the subject and main characters are not only no longer with you, but are also your parents, would perhaps strike most of us as odd, and perhaps even a task that could be beyond difficult.  But Morrison carried the notion of how for him, writing about his father, and then mother, proved to be a therapeutic and helpful experience, and in many ways, a coping mechanism for their deaths. Writing, he said, is a way to let someone tell a story they need to tell, as well as shaping it, and keeping control of it. Oddly enough, in the beginning, writing existed for him as a mechanism to escape his family, but they ended up being the main characters and roles within his work; they were inescapable. 

When discussing Things My Mother Never Told Me, he explained how his main plot line had revolved around a box of letters his father had left him. The letters provided the majority of the details which make up the book, but naturally left gaps that needed filling. As a forty year-old, reading about the lives of his twenty year-old parents, he expressed almost parental feelings towards them, and often felt that their marriage and his birth were exceptionally unrealistic results of their growing lives. 

The novel of his mother’s life was never something he had expected to write, and he described her as an elusive woman who didn’t enjoy being the topic of conversation. Yet his motivation for writing the book was concentrated around the growing question of why she had buried her Irish Catholic past; a question he strove to answer after learning more and more from the letters. He followed the discussion about the book with a harrowing reading about the immensely high infant mortality rate his grandparents experienced with their own children.

When the discussion turned to the film adaptation of When Did You Last See Your Father?, starring Jim Broadbent as his father and Colin Firth as himself, Morrison spoke earnestly of how impressed he had been with Broadbent’s portrayal of his Father. Before filming, the two had met and discussed his father at length– his clothes, accent, mannerisms  - and as a result, Morrison thought that Broadbent brought a new understanding to the role that he himself had not fully realised in the book. His parting remark about the film was that now, when he thinks of his father, he sees Broadbent’s face, and finds it difficult to see past that. His only regret is that when he looks in the mirror, he does not similarly see Colin Firth staring back at him.

The evening drew to a close with Morrison speaking briefly of his time working for The Observer, where a passage from When Did You Last See Your Father? appeared, alongside a photograph of the two of them. Seeing his work there, he remarked, proved to be shocking, as he often felt possessive over the story. By the time the film adaptation appeared fourteen years later, he had accepted how he could, and would, share the story with the public. A final round of questions concluded with “can you imagine your own children writing about you in a similar fashion to how you wrote about your parents?”, to which he answered, with an astonishing truth, “when writing about real life, and people in your real life, you have to be careful. But I’d hope they’d cast me in a good light – the truth is important, after all.”

The Hunchback of Notre Dame at Cottage Road Cinema

Partnership event with Far Headingley Village Society and Cottage Road Cinema

It was originally known as The Headingley Picture House

 Sheila Chapman writes:
We came in from the street muffled up to the eyeballs to escape the freezing cold and occasional snow of this March evening. We entered the panelled foyer of this 100 year old cinema complete with its ticket booth and ‘authentic’ tickets to be greeted by the welcoming warmth of its staff who were resplendent in evening attire. What a great start to an evening full of the atmosphere which you can only find in a cinema of this vintage!
We had come to watch The Hunchback of Notre Dame, chosen by the cinema (together with its partners, Far Headingley Village Society and Headingley LitFest), to reflect the Headingley LitFest’s 2013 theme – Lives and Loves.

But before the film we were treated to the adverts. Normally cinema adverts could hardly be described as a treat but these were vintage and so were tinged with nostalgia and, from this distance, were very amusing.

This version of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, based on the novel by Victor Hugo, is a testament to Charles Laughton’s portrayal of Quasimodo. Laughton’s performance, though often caricatured, drives the film by engaging us with the desperate and abused character who is the hunchback.  The film tells the story of Esmeralda, a gypsy girl in fifteenth century Paris, who becomes entangled in the machinations of the evil judge Frollo who both desires and hates her. She in turn loves Phoebus, a philandering soldier, while Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bell ringer of Notre Dame, loves her because of her kindness to him (she gave him water)  after he had been publicly flogged and left in the stocks.  Quasimodo demonstrates his love by saving Esmeralda from hanging. The greatest tragedy in the film is that of Quasimodo. He is mocked and brutalised because of his appearance and denied love despite the greatness of his heart and his courage.

The film’s plot differs considerably from that of the original novel – including a happy ending for Esmeralda. In addition, much of the social commentary in the novel has also been ‘Hollywoodised’ but sufficient remains to portray, in a fifteenth century setting, the social ills of poverty and exploitation and the corrupt use of power.

Quasimodo’s physical relationship with Notre Dame and its bells is a constant presence in the film. He clambers in and around the cathedral with ungainly dexterity. He plays the bells (which have deafened him) by lying on his back and pushing them with his feet and in one scene he actually jumps onto a bell and rides it. This physical portrayal of Quasimodo by Charles Laughton together with his evocation of the hunchback’s bewilderment and humanity is the lasting impression of the film.

As one member of the audience said ‘I can now appreciate why this film is a classic’.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), RKO pictures – directed by William Dieterle 

Museum of Untold Stories - in HEART Café

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Urwin Watt (U Watt?) begins the show with an energetic warm-up, as the children are still coming into the HEART Café, already bubbling. He looks like the sort of person who could fix everybody and everything, prancing up and down, eyes glittering with what we hope is good humour, leather belt loaded with interesting tools. So what might happen? Any time traveling involved? The door of the structure in the corner which brings Tardis to mind - for some parents anyway - is apparently locked, and can be opened only when the right buttons are pressed. There is a countdown, with five minutes to go. Long minutes, giving time for a steel colander to be worn by volunteers, which might bring electrical strikes and cause explosions, not to worry…

There’s someone in there! You can tell by the noises. It turns out to be Stokely Pilgrim, teleported from Brazil, whose naval uniform signifies some kind of rank but who spends his time in an engine room stoking a ship’s furnace (cue for child to make an arch with his arms and become its entrance) and inviting people, all of them “sir” and “madam” in spite of the fact that some just about come up to his knee, to think about what the world would be like without stories.

Not much fun, of course. Soon, aided by an Urwin who is now called  ‘Mother’, he is addressing a gang of pirates (Ha – haaarr!) and then a sea full of sharks. Invisible bottles are picked up and hurled into the water, all of them containing stories to be found. “Do mermaids, do mermaids!” nags one of the tinier participants, dancing in and out of the action.  The ship’s bell clangs loudly. A broken crown is brought out. Who could that belong to? Could it be…

It’s obvious to nearly everybody: “Richard the Third!” they shout en masse. “Mermaids!” shouts a lone voice. A king in waiting is found – no matter about the gender – and a story about how the crown came to be broken is found. It seems that it fell off the king’s head when he (she) sneezed. That’s what the kings tells us, before ordering everybody to go to the castle on the hill immediately, or else their heads will roll.

And so the show continues, some of its elements constant, but with plenty which is unique to this particular performance, a tune with improvisation. Alive and Kicking Theatre Company Leeds has worked in primary schools, more recently in Kirkgate Market (just the sort of thing to revive the place), but to my knowledge does not do cafés very often. They’ll be doing this one again soon. It was terrific! My only criticism is that they didn’t get around to the mermaids.

To book Alive and Kicking ring John Mee at 0113 265 8631

www.aliveand kickingtheatrecompany.co.uk

And here is a photo of the performance the following day (14 March) sent by Liz Fox:

'Biking with Che' in Café Lento

Sean Hayes writes:

MESTISA - Beautiful songs from South America

Taking refuge from the surprisingly crisp winds of an early spring evening in the warm confines of the Café Lento was a perfect prelude to the sun-scorched journey of one Ernesto Guevara, (later to re-moniker himself 'Che', which he adopted because it was an Argentinian colloquialism for 'hey you' and used as a general term in other areas of South America to address Argentinians) from Argentina to Florida, taking in much of the continent along the way. 

Our introduction into the world of the young Che began with the specially decorated Café Lento, which featured pictures and illustrations of Guevara (yes, including that one) and as the centre-piece a large-scale map of South America, with the course of Ernesto and Alberto charted via illustration. Mestisa, the band made up of Barbara, Ana Luisa, Mike and Tenley, were setting out their assortment of weird and wonderful authentic instruments as the audience arrived. Amongst their inventory, as they explained during the course of the performance, was a quijada - the jawbones of a donkey played using the teeth, a charango - a small lute-like instrument which traditionally would have been made from the shell of an armadillo and a cajón - a box-shaped instrument developed by slaves whose other instruments had been taken away. To complement the music, wine and food prepared by Jose Gonzalez was served to complete the authentic atmosphere.  From there, we were introduced to an evening immersed in all things Che, as a narration of the biking trip, concisely scripted and read by Richard Wilcocks, based on and featuring extracts from Guevara's own Notas de Viaje (Motorcycle Diaries) provided a combination of irreverent insight and deep historical context to the life of one of the most iconic figures in modern history. 

Our story began with the son of a wealthy property developer. During his days as a medical student at the University of Buenos Aires, Ernesto met Alberto Granada, who was in charge of the distribution of medical supplies in a nearby leper colony. In 1952, after deciding to take a year off from his studies, Ernesto joined Alberto on a trip which had long been their shared ambition: an odyssey across Latin America on a motorcycle, namely their occasionally unreliable 1939 500cc Norton, which was christened La Poderosa - The Mighty One. What followed was a surprisingly funny series of mis-adventures, as Ernesto doggedly journeyed on, not at all resembling the noble freedom fighter that the colossally famous portrait would later depict. Instead, he and Alberto were mangueros motorizados - motorised scroungers - and amongst other exploits they accidentally shot one of their hosts' beloved German Shepherd dog, passed themselves off as expert researchers of leprosy and suffered through an unfortunate vomiting incident while stowed away on a cargo ship. 

This was far from a simple tale of gap-year shenanigans, however. Over the course of Ernesto's journey we saw the origins of his revolutionary leanings, as he encountered the harsh callousness which poverty can bring about in the form of an elderly, dying servant whose chronic asthma was met with apathy from her burdened family. Later, as Ernesto and Alberto's journey took them through a Chile on the brink of a massive presidential election, they encountered a stranded miner and his wife - outcast after being held in prison for his allegiance to the Chilean Communist Party - on their way to seek work in the terrible conditions of a sulphur mine deep in the Chilean mountains. The encounter led Ernesto to describe the couple as “tragic” and “a live representation of the proletariat of any part of the world”. 

Inserted into the narration was one of the poems (in English translation) by Pablo Neruda which Ernesto probably read on his travels, perhaps while dreaming of Chichina, the girl he left behind in Buenos Aires and who dropped him - 'Poem 20', which begins:

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, "The night is starry

and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance"

...

The music beautifully and powerfully represented Ernesto's feelings in this section of his journey, expressing not just his sadness with the mourning vocals but also using a rhythmic pounding to represent his rising anger and revolutionary spirit.  The music expressed perfectly the emotion of Ernesto's journey, as well as giving an authentic flavour, the songs being interspersed not only with the narration but with traditional Colombian dancing. Participation from the audience lent a sense of distinct camaraderie to the evening. Indeed, 'Biking With Che' was a witty and occasionally wry insight into the early days of an iconic legend, which gave us a powerful impression of the man behind the T-shirts and student posters. 

Sally Bavage adds:

The audience feedback, the delicious food and the atmosphere were fantastic.  Well done yet again to Café Lento, host Richard Lindley, and narrator Richard Wilcocks, for another splendid LitFest event which attracted a wide age range!  Interesting, too, that the importance of having time to read poetry was emphasised as Ernesto developed the foundations for Che.  

To book Mestisa contact Ana Luisa Muñoz  mestisauk@gmail.com  

Ravishing sounds of the Oud in Mint Café

Jacqui Agate writes:

As hordes of people took refuge from the snow to enjoy an authentic Arabian night in Mint Café, the first thing they were greeted with was a colourful array of Lebanese food.  The venue was absolutely full to the brim, with the attendees spread across two rooms. 

With walls adorned with pictures and an assortment of retro items available for purchase, the venue itself provided plenty to look at. The atmosphere was lively as we waited in anticipation of authentic music and beautiful Arabic poetry. Needless to say the entertainment did not disappoint.

Mint owner Marcos with oud-player Yasser Audhali

The master Yasser Audhali entered to a ripple of excitement and, after introducing himself, began to play the Oud. The room was filled with enchanting melodies accompanied by passionate vocals and two drummers, one of which was the owner of Mint, Marcos. Hand-made and decorated with intricate Egyptian designs the Oud is a treat to look at as well as to listen to. The group was clearly captured by the authentic melodies, with much foot-tapping, head-bobbing and eye-closing adding to the spirited, yet intimate, atmosphere within the room.

An added delight was Marcos explanation of the history of the Oud. The legend goes that it was invented by Lamech, the sixth grandson of Adam. Grieving for the death of his son he hung the body upon a tree. The shape of the Oud was inspired by the shape of his son’s bleached skeleton.

The oud (عود)and the lute both descend from a common ancestor 

Moreover, the beautiful music was punctuated by some of the Arabic love poems written by the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, read by Richard Wilcocks in English.  The first, When I Love You, was an incredibly romantic poem crammed with curious, thought-provoking similes and metaphors such as ‘hours breathe like puppies’ and ‘caravans ride from your breasts carrying Indian herbs.’ The second was Little Things. This sensual poem sees Qabbani take on the voice of a woman,  with the point being to stand up for the rights of women by communicating such things as a female might want to, but not be able to, express.  Finally, we heard the emotive poem Beirut Mistress of the World addressed to a city devastated by the Lebanese civil war:

We now realise that your roots are deep inside us,
We now realise what offence we've perpetrated;
Rise from under the rubble
Like an almond flower in April!

Packed full of rhetorical language and organic imagery this poem was another real treat. The evening ended with a short Q and A session which allowed everyone to gain further insight into the deeper meanings of the poems and the music. All in all, it was an inspiring night with an authentic feel, which truly left my mind stimulated and my spirit relaxed.

Caroline Owens - 'If You Fall, Run On'

Sally Bavage writes:

Caroline Owens

Hosted by Salvo’s in the salumeria and accompanied by a most appropriate supper – for a book launch - of pasta scrolls in sauce, Caroline Owens was able to share with us some anecdotes about her book, titled as above. Written at first as a tribute to her own mother, it also became a personal journey informed by Caroline’s expertise both as a child psychotherapist and a child of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It also celebrates all the other mothers who tried their best to bring up their children to hold fast to their values when chaos sometimes surrounded them. Then, as now. Growing up in 60s Northern Ireland and coping with 21^st century childhood involve challenge and change, difficulties and doubts.  

Caroline was only eight years old when the thirty years of the Troubles began.  She remembers her mother’s maxim of getting out of a tight spot quickly: “If you fall, run on.” She remembers vividly the day her mother challenged the balaclava-wearing armed gunmen who stopped the car in which they were off to school.  They wanted the car to burn in a blockade.  Her mother reached into the car and, picking up her umbrella, pointed it at them in defiance.  “I bet if you took your balaclavas off your mothers would stop you.  Now step aside; my children are going to school.”  And they did. Step aside. Go to school. Normality within the surreality.

Surreal too, she said, to see a memoir you have written in the window of Waterstones, after you have come to terms with the dissent that writing about real people and real events can cause within families. Power strikes after the power stations had been bombed led to evenings sitting by candlelight, the flickering of the turf and coal fire, the eldest children allowed to stay up late going quietly about small hobbies. The tick of the clock, the clatter of knitting needles, the rustle of paper as an origami paper bird was constructed and revised, over and over again.  Lessons in industry and perseverance that served as a metaphor for her life.

Caroline Owens with John Dammone (MD Salvo's)

Hard times in an area where, if you were Catholic, your hopes for employment were slim. Caroline came to Leeds in the late 70s, jobhunting at the age of eighteen, and was attracted by the wonderful Italian music flowing out of Salvo’s to sit outside and listen.  Drawn in by Salvo senior (Salvatore Dammone), and asked if she could work in a restaurant, the only answer had to be “Yes”, though of course in reality all the cafés and restaurants where she had lived had been bombed and closed.  No matter, the warm family atmosphere supported her and gave her a chance to try, to succeed and to move on in her own story.

“Don’t write a book because you want to be famous, write a book because you have a story to tell and a passion for writing.”  Caroline did, she has and we were fortunate to enjoy the genuine warmth and the honesty of her heartwarming and thought-provoking insights.

Buy the book now through the website - www.carolineowens.co.uk

Love changes everything... or does it?

Doug Sandle writes:
House Events have become a well established tradition for the Headingley LitFest – open up your front room and throw in a few poets, writers, musicians and performers and you have a friendly intimate atmosphere for an enjoyable hour or so on a Sunday afternoon. Wordsong, aka Maggie Nash, Lynn Thornton and guests once again provided a well crafted presentation and professionally-enacted medley of poetry, readings and songs around this year’s Litfest theme, Lives and Loves.   


Presented in 5 sections  (Waiting for Love –Looking for Love?, Difficulties of Love, Make Up or, Break Up and finally  Sustaining a Relationship) we were provided  an engaging  narrative around both the dreams and realities of  falling in love with all its foibles, ironies, humour, delight and inevitably at times disappointments and difficulties. Aptly punctuating the sections Maggie and Lynn, accompanied expertly by John Holt on the piano, sung us well known songs that fitted nicely with the theme and the ‘drawing room’ atmosphere, including My Funny Valentine, Makin Whoopee and appropriately to end the proceedings, Let There be Love.

There were readings from many established and well known poets and writers such as Adrian Henri, John Betjeman, Joyce Grenfell, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Philip Larkin as well as contemporary poets such as Wendy Cope and Carol Ann Duffy. Local writers were also featured such as James Nash and in person Linda Marshall and Bill Fitzsimons, both members of Lucht Focail (People of the Word), who read us their own work, which was particularly appreciated and very well received. 

The audience  were also treated  by  two delightful little dramatic cameos, one from Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford and one from a Ian Fleming James Bond short story, Quantum of Solace, the latter surely producing an Oscar winning performance by Maggie as James Bond!  Mention should also be made of the contributions of David Robertson and Bob Holt to what was an event to warm the heart on a particularly cold Sunday afternoon.

Remember that next Sunday 17  March there will be another free Litfest House Event featuring Leeds playwright, writer and raconteur Ray Brown who will informally chat about and read from his award winning story Maria’s House and an assortment of ‘flash fiction’, some of which is set in Headingley. For details of location and to book a place ring 0775 252 1257 

Chartist poetry and song in HEART Café

Sheila Chapman writes:

The Voice of the People 9 March, Heart Café

We were all Chartists on Saturday night. We listened to a talk about their movement, their beliefs and their values, we listened to their poetry/lyrics, we discussed their ideals amongst ourselves during the break, we sang their 'hymns' and we endorsed their six-point charter demanding suffrage for the working man with three rousing cheers.

Jeff Beaumont, Ian Parks, Richard Wilcocks, John Hutton

Ian Parks, drawing on research for his new anthology of Chartist poetry The Voice of the People, evoked not only the history and intellectual core of the Chartists but also their humanity and their love of poetry. The Chartists were the voice of the people but their poetry cannot be found in anthologies of English verse - it was poetry by the people for the people and it is largely ignored. 

For the Chartists, poetry was not an inaccessible 'highbrow' activity but an essential part of their movement. The movement grew out of unrest about the conditions of the working classes, the restriction of suffrage to the middle and upper classes and various oppressive measures such as the Poor Law of 1834. 

They spread their message in a number of ways: through mass meetings e.g. the Kennington Common meeting of 1848 (the first crowd photograph ever was taken of this meeting); through smaller local meetings; through discussion groups and through newspapers - now more widely available because of reduced taxation. Poetry was an important of the message. It was published in their newspapers, it was written in response to important events and it formed the lyrics for their songs. Song was a binding force in the movement and it was underpinned by poetry.

Ian's talk was accompanied by sung poems. These songs (vocalist Richard Wilcocks, with Jeff Beaumont, mandolin, and John Hutton, guitar) were set to the tunes actually used by the Chartists and where these were unavailable alternative appropriate tunes had been sourced. The songs roused us today as they would have roused the Chartists of the mid nineteenth century. As one member of the audience said, they made sense of the Chartist poems. One such song was called The Steam King by Edward P Mead sung to the tune of We Plough the Fields and Scatter. It contains memorable lines such as:

There is a King, and a ruthless King;

Not a King of the poet's dream:

But a tyrant fell, white slaves know well,

And that ruthless King is Steam.

...

Like the ancient Moloch grim, his sire

In Himmon's vale that stood,

His bowels are of living fire,

And children are his food.

We listened to these songs as Ian unfolded the history of the Chartists. There were two tendencies within the movement. William Lovett espoused the 'moral force' tendency arguing that working men would get the vote through self improvement, temperance and hard work while Feargus O'Connor was more revolutionary and supported the 'physical force' tendency calling for direct action and armed insurrection. The activities of the Chartists reflected these two tendencies ranging from: peaceful mass demonstrations and petitions to parliament, to the Newport rising in November 1839, in which 22 Chartists were shot dead by soldiers. The poetry also reflected these tendencies some of it being 'quietist' and some more revolutionary.

The poetry appeared in Chartist newspapers and notably in The Northern Star newspaper edited out of Leeds and owned by Feargus O'Connor. Every edition of this eight page newspaper carried a page of poetry.

The Chartist movement culminated in its final petition, with six million signatures (although a number of these were later found to be fake), presented to Parliament on 10th April 1848 after the huge meeting on Kennington Common.

The demands of the Chartists were

1. A vote for every man over the age of 21;

2. A secret ballot;

3. No property qualification for members of Parliament;

4. Payment for MPs (so poor men could serve);

5. Constituencies of equal size;

6. Annual elections for Parliament.

None of these demands were granted during the lifetimes of most Chartists, and Chartism gradually faded away, or was absorbed into other movements, but all of us now take the first five of their demands for granted. 

We ended the night singing (to the tune of Auld Lang Syne) the chorus of All Hail Fraternal Democrats written in 1846 by John Arnott, who was General Secretary of the National Charter Association, and a noted singer:

That mitres, thrones, misrule and wrong, 

Shall from this earth be hurled, 

And peace, goodwill, and brotherhood, 

Extend throughout the world. 

All in all this was a moving, educational and uplifting evening! Thankyou to Ian, Richard, Jeff and John.