Gathering Voices - House Event

Once again, Maggie Mash’s front room in Weetwood was the venue for a surpassingly satisfying house event – Gathering Voices – which was entirely appropriate for the LitFest because it took the official theme – Lingo – very seriously. The amazingly large audience was presented with a geographically-based programme which had been slotted together with admirable professional skill, and although for some individuals it might have been very slightly uncomfortable to watch and listen with someone’s knees in the back, or an elbow in the ear, for just about everyone it was a wonderfully entertaining afternoon. 

Music was wafted at us as we came in, and was introduced into every crack, provided at the start and at the finish by Ben (with guitar in photo) and by Kerry (a lovely jig), Lynn Thornton (acapella If music be the food of love, Cleo Laine) and by Lynn and Maggie together as Wordsong. Lynn and Maggie (both in photos below) did not need music for many numbers, for example a Cockney rhyming slang piece and a morsel of T S Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

To select a few items from an impressive list of performances, I particularly liked the short extract in English and French from Waiting for Godot/En attendant Godot by David, Feargal and Guillaume (photo) in bashed-up bowlers, Theresa’s song, Síle’s poem Collateral Damage, which had an uncanny ‘ancient’ feel to it, Linda’s Café Italy, the R S Thomas poem (the inbreeding bit was controversial once), and Maggie’s all-too-brief reading of some of Tolkien’s Elvish, which sounds like Welsh, and Maggie should know because she is one of the few people this side of Offa’s Dyke who knows how to pronounce Llareggub absolutely correctly.

Scriptophilia in the Heart Centre

Steve Ball writes:
What a marvellously entertaining evening Scriptophilia was at the Heart Centre, Headingley, last night! Wordsmith Peter Spafford made sure that there was a comforting and supportive atmosphere throughout the evening that complemented the intimacy of the Shire Oak Room; a lovely venue for such a showcase of talent.

Peter’s love of words was evident but the music was not left out due to the prodigious talent of multi-instrumentalist Richard Ormrod – is there any instrument he cannot play?

Helen Burke is the female equivalent of Ian McMillan, who had appeared at the LitFest on the previous evening, and her take on French cats was hilarious. There is always poignancy to her work and it was never more appropriately and eloquently displayed on St Patrick’s Night when she paid tribute to her mother and father, both born in Ireland. Helen is an inspiring poet.

Peter’s guest artistes, Seas-of-Green, raised their game and charmed the appreciative audience, most of whom had never heard of the young Leeds band. A very tight acoustic set was inventive and engaging and there is a special gift of being able to get an audience to sing along to an original song that the vast majority had not heard before. This was a performance that showed what promise they have.

Richard Ormrod is a virtuoso performer and his breadth of expertise provided an extra depth to Peter’s choice of song and poetry. It was obvious that there was a warmth and affection between Peter and Richard and this captured the audience from the off. There was humour, originality and poignancy that kept everyone enraptured through to the finale of their suite of poems set to music.

A very enjoyable evening: thank you one and all.

Helen Burke; http://www.poetrypf.co.uk/helenburkepage.html

Seas-of- Green; http://seas-of-green.com/s/Seas-Of-Green_-_Official_Website.html

Peter Spafford; http://www.peterspafford.co.uk/


Below, Helen Burke, Peter Spafford, Richard Ormrod and Seas of Green. Photos by Richard Wilcocks.

Telling stories with (funny) pictures

The cartoon workshop for children in Headingley Library on Saturday afternoon with local artist Kate Pankhurst was great fun. Kate has illustrated children's books by many very well-known authors, such as Judy Blume, Ian Whybrow, Marjorie Newman and Steve Hartley.

She began by showing some of her work and explaining a little of how the book-illustration process works. She then got her audience imagining their own weird and wonderful characters, thinking of how to illustrate strange story ideas and incidents, making funny flip-books and designing their very own comic-strips.

Everyone involved had a great time ... and also completed some highly-imaginative cartoons! As one parent said - ‘Be very happy to spend every Saturday afternoon like this.’

Below, Kate Pankhurst with Willow, Harry, Alice and Isaac. On the wall, a many-eyed alien monster.

World Story at New Headingley Club

June Diamond writes:

You are three feet tall. The room is crowded. You wrap your arms around the legs of someone in a coat like your mother’s. But it is not her. The room laughs, kindly, but you are humiliated.

Do all children have a similar experience? The group of us taking part in the world story workshop thought that we all had.

In the first workshop we explored the universals of story-telling; scars, epiphanies and transformative moments. Ice-breakers, games and props supported the experience. 'Inspiring', was the feedback.

The second workshop moved past plot (after all, Jeffrey Archer is the master of plot) to explore how moments are made vivid through language. The group turned to memory here . Perhaps not all groups would, but we did. Childhood cruelty and the tale of the solitary guineapig were the basis for some memorable story-telling. 

A terrific creative experience.

Talking Myself Home

Richard Wilcocks writes:

If priests could be as constantly, persistently entertaining as Ian McMillan, they would have no problems filling churches. People would come early and sit sleeplessly at the front, every week, and their responses would be toothy grins, laughs and sporadic shouts of recognition. He held us yesterday evening for an hour and a quarter, and we writhed with pleasure as he walked, hands flying, in front of the crossless altar in this magnificent, deconsecrated church in Cardigan Road, which still retains its name - St Margaret of Antioch - but which is now known as Left Bank Leeds, an award-winning venue for music and the arts brought into being by a group of hardworking volunteers, when the alternative would have been a decline and fall.

Ian McMillan is what a stereotype of a Yorkshireman should be, not a 'vinegar-faced' and narrow-minded character (like Joseph in Wuthering Heights?) but really friendly, warm-hearted and, yes, homely - the sort of bloke you wouldn't mind at all eating at your table with, or watching the match with, unless, of course, if it was Barnsley thrashing Leeds 5 - 2. He's the exact opposite of crabby, and he lets the imagination take the initiative.

He goes far beyond the homely and you only notice this afterwards, when you recollect his words in tranquillity. He transcends Darfield, you might add. Universal themes are in there. Love and affection?

To select gobbets of delight from his programme, in which well-worn, endlessly hilarious material (like his observations on new pupils in infant schools) was mixed with the newly-created, I would fish out his nursery rhymes, in which words are randomly replaced with 'fish', his stories about when he worked on a building site, his mention of Sir Alec Clegg, who founded Bretton Hall College and who ensured that the West Riding Education Authority was the most innovative in the country, and his poems and stories about his mother and her funeral which were so funny, so funny, and so poignant, so poignant. Love and affection.

There was an experimental aspect, because our partners at Left Bank were trying things out, like the new PA system, which did not serve the back two rows very well. Accoustics are always a problem in churches. The cold was kept at bay efficiently, with two gas-powered tubes which fired warm air in to the space for hours before the performance. Choral music should work at future events.

On arriving home at ten, The Verb was on Radio 3, and Ian McMillan was interviewing our guest from last year, Ben Okri. 

Talking Myself Home at Left Bank

Paul Hudson writes:
Assault on Cardigan Road - were you there?


Have you ever been battered by words?

If not you missed a great evening when Ian McMillan assaulted a packed
audience at the Left Bank last night. The pauses were far and few between so breathing became rather difficult especially when the laughter was taken into account. It was never ever a 'poetry reading' more a glimpse into the life and experience of Ian.

He took us all to places he visits and people he meets as well as some
special moments.

A lot of people were tired at the end of the attack, tired from laughing so much on this whirlwind tour of everything and anything.



(More to follow on Talking Myself Home!)