Food for thought

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Food appears to be playing an increasingly important part in the LitFest. We began in a restaurant this year, compliments about the home-made cakes and dainties provided last year were commonplace, and similar praise has been drizzled upon us this time around. Perhaps we should finish in a restaurant as well. Or in a house with a good cook in residence.

This particular house event on Sunday afternoon was so successful that there had to be a repeat performance. Fortunately, the first lot through the door did not scoff everything, and there was plenty of Oyster Bay left to drink, because I was there for the second session. Lis Bertolla and Doug Sandle performed a well thought-out poetry programme, Maria Sandle sang and played guitar, and a couple called The Retrolettes sang and played the ukelele. At one point, Doug played a Jew’s Harp!

There were poems written by Lis and Doug themselves and by the likes of Geoffrey Chaucer, Jonathan Swift, John Keats, Edward Lear and Roger McGough, and occasional ventures into prose, with short extracts from Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie. Maria was particularly charming with her rendition of Junk Food Junkie, and the Retrolettes brought us Trinidadian sunshine with the Andrews Sisters’ version of Rum and Coca Cola.

The session concluded with Lis’s own beautiful poem After the Poetry Reading. Then it was time for the nosh. We’ll have to do this every Sunday afternoon now.

Words and music melted together

Sheila Chapman writes:

A member of the audience said that The Shire Oak Room at HEART ‘had the enticing atmosphere of a New York Jazz Club’ on Saturday night and thus the stage was set for a very special event .

When I was researching the evening I had checked out reviews of The Fruit Tree Project jazz band  (Dave Evans on keys, Colin Sutton on Bass and Alex Wibrow on drums), and came across this comment:  ‘...they take on grooves and at times semi-free excitement equally to create a thrilling array of sounds’. Not knowing a great deal about jazz I was a bit puzzled by these words, but as the band kicked off the night, playing compositions by Dave Evans, I began to understand exactly what they meant. As one member of the audience (Terry Bridges) commented, they were ‘polished and consummate performers’. They entranced the audience and I, for one, found their array of sounds both thrilling and absorbing.

After a few numbers they were joined by the poet Rommi Smith, who explained that her poems for the night were taken from her pamphlet Mornings and Midnights. These poems are based on the lives of female legends such as Billie Holliday, Bessie Smith and Josephine Baker. They do not seek to tell the biography of these women, because that would demand too much ‘truth’, but rather to illuminate and narrate their lives through the life of Gloria Silver, a mythical diva whose experience and history is the backbone of the book.

Rommi’s collection of mornings and midnights poems is growing. We were treated to some poems from the pamphlet such as: Any Old Death Will Do, ‘...and maggots are the jewels against my skin’,  which explores Gloria’s reaction when she reads her own obituary while still very much alive (apparently something that actually happened to Peggy Lee); and when Bessie Smith Came Face to Face with the Klan ‘... stark white hooded exclamation marks’. We also heard new poems such as Fur Coat, Moonsong Jelly, and Rain  - where the musical rendition of the sound of rain in the intro was restrained, and incredibly evocative.

The poems, whether spoken or sung, were interwoven with the music with power and passion, and true musicality. Some written comments from the audience will tell you what it was like:

Words and music melted together like an ice-cream fruit sundae. But do not be misled as the core is as hard-hitting as a bullet (Glo Simons)

Moving, angry, engaged. The coherence of music & word & song was the best I’ve heard. (Murray Edscer)

Such professionalism in the execution of performance. Such knowledge in the poetry and background itself. (Jane Austwick)

It was a brilliant night. Once again some members of the audience say it all:

A moving and exciting performance ... more please.  (Anon)

Overall, a wonderful & moving performance – very inspiring! (Anon)

What a fantastic combination of the spoken word and fab music. (Bev Robinson)

Rommi so soulful. (Selina)

This event was absolutely outstanding. (Jane Austwick)

An inspiring evening and wonderful to have this on our doorstep! (Anon)

Inspired – a great addition to a literary festival. (Beatrice Schofield)

As Murray Edsecar said: "This was inspirational. ... an entrancing evening."

The Fruit Tree Project: Mornings and Midnights by Rommi Smith is published by Peepal Tree Press, Leeds (2005, 2008)

Ben Okri in Headingley

Cocktail in the Café

Richard Wilcocks writes:
Trio Literati provided plenty of gourmet material on Friday evening. Everything was professionally prepared and served up stylishly.

The key word for it? Zingy, like the excellent cocktail, which had something of everything appropriate in it, along with an ingredient which can not, should not be identified. The venue – Hawker’s Green Café in the Heart Centre – was ideal, lacking only a few directional lights, but that didn’t matter because this was delicious entertainment for a discerning audience.

I arrived from the evening with Persephone Books in the nearby library, accompanied by the speaker and several others, to find people already browsing on the delicacies on every table, waiting for the main courses from the group. Here is an idea of what they were like:

The first course was poems from Wendy Cope, June Carruthers, Philip Larkin, Stevie Smith and Frank Polite. Frank Polite? His Carmen Miranda was beautifully, fruitfully performed by Maggie Mash. We saw the pineapples and the bananas. The second course was about acting, stage uncertainties and thinking on your feet as the boards are trodden, with pieces by Nicolas Craig, Hugo Williams (Richard Rastell in Waiting to Go On... “they recast the suit”), George Burns (on faking sincerity), Victoria Wood (advice to the Piecrust Players... Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on a tandem) and Hillaire Belloc.

The poem with the longest title was performed during the third course – On seeing a collection of ironmongery in the Tate Gallery labelled “Woman” – written by Richard Rastell’s father, performed by his son. Other poems were by Frank O’Hara, Steve Ellis, Helen Burke, Roger McGough, and William Carlos Williams (The Artist, an inspired choice).

After a chatty interval, there were substantial servings in fourth and fifth courses of Paul Munden, head chef Carol Ann Duffy (Big Sue and Now Voyager), Roger McGough, Liz Lochhead, Lee L Berkson (the shade of Humphrey Bogart appeared), Linda France, Louis McNeice, Margaret Hobbs, Peter Spafford, Elizabeth Alexander and Alfred Brendel, who turns out to have been a closet poet as well as a rather famous pianist: his The Coughers of Cologne proves that he was rather good at it as well.

By the end, we were all happily pogged. Jane Oakshott, Richard Rastell and Maggi Mash (pictured below) were exquisite. See their website here.

An evening with Persephone Books

Mary Francis writes:

Persephone Books reprints neglected novels, diaries, short stories and cookery books by women writers such as Dorothy Whipple and Katherine Mansfield. They are all carefully designed with a clear typeface, a dove-grey jacket, a ‘fabric’ endpaper and bookmark and a preface by writers such as Jilly Cooper, Adam Gopnik and Jacqueline Wilson.

Founder Nicola Beauman was due to talk to us on Friday, at Headingley Library, about the origins of Persephone, how books are chosen and about some of the authors. Unfortunately, Nicola then had a pressing commitment across the Atlantic, but in her place came one of her team, Miki Footman.

Miki told us something of the beginnings of Persephone - of how Nicola Beauman, while researching for her own book - A very great profession: the women’s novel 1914-39 - realised how very many titles from that period were out of print. She founded Persephone Books in 1998 to reprint (mostly) women writers and (mostly) of the inter-war period - and now has 90 titles in print.

Persephone is an unusual publishing house. It has remained small and independent - and its books are distinctive. For those who love the feel and the look of a well-produced book, they are a delight. The quality paper and the jacket, the typeface and those beautiful endpapers - and also the wonderful binding (apparently called Dispersion Binding - I hope I have that right) that enables the book to lie quite flat when open, without any cracking of the spine. 

There is now also the Persephone Classics series, with illustrated jackets, which may appeal more to those who are slightly unnerved by a plain dove-grey cover.

Waxing lyrical about book production is wont to provoke some puzzled looks from e-book enthusiasts - and, indeed, it was a surprise to hear from Miki that nowadays Persephone is not only producing audiobooks (very worthwhile) - but is venturing into the field of e-books also, in response to at least five email requests per day. So it seems there is definitely a demand for these titles, written so long ago, to be read with the current technology.

Miki told us a bit about working for Persephone. The staff consists of just five people, including Nicola, and the office where they work is also a shop, in Lamb’s Conduit Street in London, where passers-by are ‘encouraged to come in and take notice’. It sounds a delightful place to work, with everyone doing a bit of everything ... actually, Miki referred to painting the toilet floor as one job she’d undertaken recently!

Persephone also produces a free magazine twice a year. Called Biannually, it contains articles, reviews, details of forthcoming titles and any events - and usually a short story.

So how do Persephone choose their titles? They concentrate mainly on books that reflect women’s everyday lives. Their titles are ‘realistic, not idealistic,’ ‘more accessible, more domestic’ and they see the feminism in them as ‘softer’ than that from the other feminist publishers. They try to have many different genres, they do include books by men (generally ones concerning women’s lives) and they don’t overlap with other publishing houses. They also have to love every book they publish. There is no hope of a book selling well ‘unless someone is passionately behind it’.

Miki talked about some of their titles, such as the best-selling Miss Pettigrew lives for a day. There were Monica Dickens and Marghanita Laski - names I knew - and others, like Mollie Panter-Downes, that I did not. Nor did I know about Noel Streatfield, other than as a writer for children, or Betty Miller, mother of Jonathan. And I must read some Dorothy Whipple sometime .... she is a favourite of Nicola’s, it seems.

The session ended with lots of interesting questions from the audience - and only the slightest whiff of controversy as to whether their list might be a little middle-class and why works such as Phyllis Bentley’s Inheritance (that featured in one of the LitFest events last year) were still out of print. Or might it be that such works simply don’t fit with the criteria? But it was obvious there was a lot of interest in the great work that Persephone is doing in rescuing some splendid titles from obscurity and bringing them to our attention.

Many thanks to Miki. Thanks also to Radish Bookshop, who regularly stock Persephone titles, for bringing along some books for us to buy. And for anyone who couldn’t get to the talk, do take a look at www.persephonebooks.co.uk - and maybe, if one day you have some spare time in London, why not visit that intriguing shop in Lamb's Conduit Street?

I wish I was in Dublin then

 Brendan Behan

 Flann O'Brien

Patrick Kavanagh

Sheila Chapman writes:

I was at Flux gallery again last night (Thursday) as part of my, not all onerous, LitFest duties. As I entered the room, (is it a hall, a Tardis or a wedge of cake?) the stage was being set for a great evening. The usual Flux Gallery hospitality was on display and we were ready to be treated to a night on the theme of A Literary Dublin, which is appropriate as Dan Lyons is a Dubliner who brings the literary life to Leeds.

First of all there was music from Des Hurley, Chris O’Malley, Jim Doody and  friends and songs from Jim too - unaccompanied of course.

Jim Doody introduced the theme of the film, the literary life of Flann O’Brien, Patrick Kavanagh, and Brendan Behan in the Dublin of the 1950s/1960s. Dan Lyons then stood up and apologised for the poor quality of the film – picture and sound – and its tendency to stop at random intervals. But he thought it was worth watching. Of course he was right because what it lacked in packaging it more than made up for in content.

The film, in the form of a documentary,  was narrated by Anthony Cronin and he guided us through a feast of song, humour and history where the main characters spoke for themselves and were amply supported by contributions from friends and family and by the Dubliners and Dublin of yesteryear.

I had meant to take copious notes about the film but, as the lights were turned out,  I realised that this was a bad plan and so I am relying solely on my impressions and memories for this blog.

The first thing  I remember is that Bloomsday, that annual Joycean pilgrimage around Dublin,  was instituted by the characters in this film, although it seems that Brendan Beehan never actually got started as there were shots of him sound asleep (head flung back, mouth open) in a car. I think the others just dumped him. They then went on to follow the route of the funeral procession, succumbing in the end to some mysterious ailment which caused them to urinate copiously (against the nearest wall), laugh uproariously and generally fall about.

This set the tone for the rest of the film showing, as it did, the way in which the lives of these three literary greats were defined by their surroundings, their passion for the written word and their increasing involvement with alcohol.  In one scene a very courteous Irish civil servant, when talking about Flann O’Brien referred to this as ‘his little problem’.

Flann O’Brien, real name Brian O’Nolan,  wrote under many pseudonyms including that of Miles na gCopaleen, (Miles of the small horse as a member of the audience helpfully translated) who was a columnist for the Irish Times  famed for his satirical wit. O’Brien though, struggled to be accepted as a serious writer during his lifetime although he did eventually leave the civil service to write full time. It was suggested that he was negatively influenced by the fact that his novel, The Third Policeman, was not accepted for publication although it is now an aclaimed piece of work.

Brendan Behan was a Dubliner who came from a family with a strong republican tradition, his uncle wrote the Irish National anthem and his mother said that ‘she didn’t like the English’ - several times. She also sang during her interview and much was made in the film of Behan’s fine singing voice. Beehan also spent time in Mountjoy gaol and there were sequences from the Quare Fellow which was based on his time in the gaol. There were also extracts from interviews with Eamon Andrews who tackled him about his drunkeness on television with suitable unapologetic ripostes from Behan.

In contrast to Behan, Patrick Kavanagh  was a country boy who was born in Monaghan and came to Dublin only later in life. His early poems were based on his country experiences and in one sequence he was shown walking through a field and picking up a small bird, which was so comfortable with his touch it just nestled in the palm of his hand. Kavanagh lived in one of the old Dublin Georgian terraces and he had rigged up a large wing mirror on an outside wall angled to show who was calling so he could decide whether or not to answer the door! After a major operation Kavanagh experienced a renaissance in his writing when he was resting by the side of the Grand Canal in Dublin – the same place which inspired Lines written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin.

These three greats swept aside the heavy shadow cast by Yeats and brought about a renaissance in Irish writing. Their lives reflected the creative brilliance of their minds and their enduring love for ‘a pint of plain’.

Des Hurley, of the Irish Arts Foundation made an inspired choice with this film.

A Literary Dublin was a partnership between Irish Arts Foundation and Headingley LitFest.

Eamonn Hamilton brought a display of Irish Literary books to the event