The Seventh Sense

This was on Thursday after the Poetry Slam at Lawnswood. A contrast! What has impressed me during the LitFest is the diversity of our audiences, which have encompassed many groups living in Headingley and outside it. The Seventh Sense - A Sense of Place was performed by Lucht Focail and Friends, and was organised in association with Irish History Month. The theme was perfect for the occasion. It wasn't all Ireland, though there was a reading of a poem in the ancient Erse language (Sean Dún na nGall) by Annie O'Donnell, and I listened to Yeats's The Lake Isle of Innisfree (eternally good for a recitation, that one) for the second time this LitFest, from the same eloquent mouth. Bel Connolly read Moiza Alvi's very relevant The Laughing Moon with sensitivity, Linda Marshall read her Headingley Rocks and Síle Moriarty referred to one of the places she comes from in The Mermaid in Birmingham.


Dancers from the Joyce O'Donnell School of Irish Dancing took the floor a couple of times, accompanied by Des and Kevin Hurley and the evening closed with a welcome reading of Seamus Heaney's Bogland by Síle. Here's her apt poem for the occasion, which was printed on the back of the programme -


Place names carry history:


the trail from Kirkstall to Monkbridge;
the slow wind of pack horse to wagon
tracked earth to tarmac;
the greedy dissolution of Kirkstall
on Cromwell’s report
and the later distaff despoliation of Ireland;
the estates of Cardigan and Beckett
summed by semis and terraces
and the oaken wapentake
quenched in the Skyrack;
the Norse mermaid of legend
sanitised by Starbucks now
drinks latte and mourns her breasts;
the lane at the Three Horseshoes
opens the Wetewood
which killed a prince of Abyssinia
with cold miasma;
the Lounge, eclipsed by the Arc
lingers in local politics
while the Cottage Road,
a refugee, has screened since 1912.


These place names carry history -
they start with capital letters.


Síle Moriarty 2010

Lawnswood's excellent rhetoricians

They just grew on that school stage - into new, self-assured beings! Talented as well, at least as talented as the adults in other LitFest events, and in some cases more so. The Lawnswood Poetry Slam was much more than an extracurricular frivolity (and there's too many out-of-touch people who think that arts events are frivolities generally, look out for creativity-numbing cuts after the election), it was essentially educational. These kids do not stunt their creative growth on PS3s, obviously. All the poems, songs and dances were original, many of the words were learned by heart, and the emotion all around us last Thursday evening was absolutely authentic. Nothing contrived - it came from the heart. I saw a teacher crying, and not from stress this time!

Judging the event was a great pleasure for myself, Richard Raftery and Donna Cartwright, and as I said at the time, you couldn't put a whisker between some of those kids. I nearly described them as contestants, but they weren't really. This is not the Slam Factor, and none of them were really doing it for any kind of prize.Michelle Scally-Clarke was as charismatic and inspiring as ever - a great teacher of rhetoric, you might say.

Rhetoric is the ancient art of communicating effectively with language. It was the basis of education for young people for many centuries, so it is old, old as well as new, new. Lawnswood has been slammed (in the crass tabloid sense) recently. These lovely slammers went some way to putting the record straight, because it was obvious on Thursday evening that Lawnswood students are terrific!

Below, Michelle Scally-Clarke with some of the slammers: 

Phyllis Bentley on Tuesday

Richard Wilcocks writes:
Dave Russell from Leeds Met made plenty of assumptions about his substantial audience on Tuesday in Headingley Library - that most of us had read the 'textile district' novels of Phyllis Bentley, for example. Winifred Holtby (she of South Riding) as well. Vera Brittain? Hah, Vera Brittain! Heads nodded: everyone knew Testament of Youth.


There was tension between Bentley and Brittain, Dave Russell explained. Brittain had nice vowels, nice standard sounds, blending in well with the London lot, whereas Bentley was distinctly Halifax, and thought of herself as rather tweedy down there. Strangely enough, Brittain originated from Buxton, which is hardly southern. We saw a fascinating photo of the two of them with a toddling daughter - Shirley Williams, who is now Baroness Williams of Crosby.


Bentley was not just a 'regional novelist' (a fading category) but a novelist who dealt with class issues, and who came with a J B Priestley seal of approval. Her Inheritance (and yes, some of us have read it) was the big thing more than half a century ago, and was made into an impressive Granada TV drama series which was most ambitious for its time, which was 1967. The story of the Oldroyds covered 153 years, from the Luddite machine-breakers of 1812 to Churchill's death in 1965. Very young versions of John Thaw and James Bolam were in it. Many authentic workers' houses were still standing when filming took place, and the muddy killing fields of the Battle of the Somme were recreated just outside Wigan, which was not too difficult.


Bentley was also a significant writer of non-fiction: The Brontës and Their World still reads well today. 


Bentley is due for a revival, it was hinted - a major, if not really great, novelist should not be lost to us. There seemed to be general agreement. Thanks to Dave for his fascinating talk and useful (if sporadic) Powerpoint.




Below, Dave Russell with his LitFest bottle of Aurvin Winery Firebird Legend Cabernet Sauvignon 2007, Phyllis Bentley on a cigarette card and Vera Brittain in nurse's gear:

Wonderful sofa

The Saturday Sofa broadcast from ELFM is wonderful, especially the excellent contributions from the children of Shire Oak and Spring Bank primary schools. Thanks to everybody in the caravan parked outside St Michael's!

It was Dmitri Hvorstovsky

The music for Gaby's reminiscence in Déja-vu last Sunday caused a bit of a stir. This is what it was - Non ti scordar di me sung by the Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. It is on a CD entitled Passione di Napoli.

North Noir

Re-watching the discomforting Red Riding television series, I couldn't help thinking of Martin Wainwright's talk at the LitFest last week, on people's perceptions of the North, and his passing mention of David Peace, "who might be a brilliant novelist, but....."  No doubt there will be audience members tomorrow (New Headingley Club at 3pm) who will ask suitable questions and make appropriately pithy comments on bloodstained depictions of Yorkshire, although the focus will be 1948 Tokyo and the 1984/5 Miners' Strike. A different kind of bloodstained.

Anyway, the TV backroomers really got it right when it comes to seventies clothes, interior design and tobacco, I am thinking. The wallpapers are authentically nightmarish. And I used to drive one of those Zephyrs. And all those smoke-filled rooms and characters with cigs drooping from their mouths... was it that bad?