Headingley Life Calendar

Thanks to Headingley Life - in particular, to Carole Carey-Campbell, for putting in the key weekends (crucial weekends? crux weekends? focus weekends?) for the Headingley LitFest. So, if you flip through this handsome beast of a calendar, you will be able to poke your finger at our name printed on March 21 and March 28.

At the moment, amongst others, we have Ian Clayton down for the first date and Beryl Bainbridge for the second.

Magazine Week at Borders

This Thursday - October 2 - issue 42 of The North will be launched in the Leeds branch of Borders as part of Magazine Week. There will be a day of writers' workshops and poetry readings. We're telling you this because if you are reading this, having come to the blog to find out about local happenings, you're sure to be interested. Borders is just down the road a little from Headingley, after all.

Peter and Ann Sansom, editors of The North- and directors of The Poetry Business- will be running two writing workshops during the day - just bring a pen - and there’ll be entertaining short readings in the evening. The workshops are at 12.30-1.30pm and 5.30-6.30pm. The readings by brilliant North poets Rosie Blagg, Kath McKay and Ed Reiss are at 7 - 8pm. There will also be magazine readings from the floor, so bring a poem or back issue of the North to read from.

Free entry and free wine - and, in line with the nationwide Borders magazine promotion, copies of the magazine will be 'Buy one get one half price'.

Click HERE for Poetry Business or ring 0114 3464038 if you want to know the fine details.

OR, look at what Rony Robinson from Radio Sheffield said about it all by clicking HERE.

Bringing it all back home

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Latest news is that Ian Clayton has been signed up for a talk and a workshop on Saturday 21 March 2009.  Ian is usually described as a "writer and broadcaster", but he is surely a lot more than just that. I think of him as a terrific raconteur after hearing him holding forth on the Luddites and reading from various chapters in Charlotte Brontë's Shirley in a hotel restaurant in Gomersal a couple of years ago. He created a fair amount of sympathy in his audience for those machine-breakers of a couple of centuries ago, often crudely depicted as mindless thugs, and spoke movingly  about his Featherstone childhood too.

He didn't read all that much out of Shirley, a good thing because he is at his best when simply holding forth. The book he will deal with next March is Bringing It All Back Home (Route Publishing, 2007 (Hardback) ISBN 978-1901927337 (Paperback) ISBN 978-1901927351). It is all about popular music, so it is quite likely that some popular musicians will be around at the same time Ian is talking.

It is also quite likely that the venue for all this (and a preliminary workshop) will be the Banqueting Suite at Headingley Stadium, and that an as yet unspecified sports personality will be on the bill as well.

Thanks to Mary Francis for contacting Ian.

Below, Ian and his book cover:

Celebrations

The wines went down well after being expertly tasted at the Bowery, Bassa Bassa was thrilling at the Supporters Club and the sun shone down on the annual al fresco barbecue at the New Headingley Club. Partners were happily taken during the ceilidh and most Headingley restaurants offered set meals for a tenner. Last Sunday came the finale, accompanied by fine weather: hundreds milled about in the Cardigan Triangle (mainly Chapel Lane), sat around eating home-made courgette cakes in an impromptu cafe in a back garden and tramped into each other's houses to look at works of art.

It was Celebrate Headingley - a superb eighth one. And although the Headingley LitFest was not on everyone's lips, because it is next year, in March, it was certainly talked about. "There's a real thirst for that sort of thing," I was told at the barbecue. Below, some of the more musical celebrants:

Have we got news for you!

Richard Wilcocks writes:

A packed out, slightly steamy Café Lento last night heard most of the details of the line-up for the LitFest 'proper' in March 2009 - but you, dear readers, must be a little tantalised. This is because we are saving our official news releases until after the summer, probably at around the time when Celebrate Headingley will be in full swing, in September.

This is when citizens listen to music, eat and drink in the open air outside the New Headingley Club and tap dance on table tops. It's a good time to talk about the events in store for them in the following spring. For now, let it be known that there will be a link with Leeds Rugby, that Bob Barnard will be returning to talk about crime fiction, that there will be something for very young children and that another Poetry Slam will take place. In addition, there will be big names - very big names.........

The Big Summer short story evening at the Lento went extremely well, I thought, judging from audience comments, but then I am biased because I was one of the contributors. Ted Marriott delivered an enthrallingly spooky story about a man who became a nobody, mine involved a tourist from Whitby who listened to vampire stories in Croatia and Doug Sandle read a story set on the Isle of Man from a published anthology. John Jones spoke to us from a tape - really interesting reminiscences from his autobiography - we travelled from London to Buenos Aires to Leeds.

Richard Lindley, the owner, a natural compere, made sure everything went smoothly and that all wheels were lubricated. He reckons he'll do it all again soon - that is before and during the LitFest proper. Improper too, maybe.

Rory McTurk

Headingley resident Rory McTurk has agreed to speak at the next Headingley LitFest in March 2009. He is Emeritus Professor of Icelandic Studies at Leeds University and a recent recipient (2007) of the Order of the Falcon (Hin íslenska fálkaorða) which is awarded by the Icelandic government for outstanding achievement.

The focus of his talk will not be particularly academic, he says. The subject (and the exact date and venue) have yet to be fixed, but it might be something to do with the Vikings in Yorkshire – their stories, their poetry, literary shenanigans at the court of Erik Bloodaxe, something like that – or it might have something to do with the Sagas

We shall see, but be assured that a treat is in store for us: perhaps hawk-sharp observations on part of our local history, insights into the literature of a millennium ago or news of the scene in modern Reykyavik.....