Not the Booker Winner - Michael Stewart, author of King Crow

Alison Millar writes:

When publisher Kevin Duffy was asked how he decides what to publish he replied, “I pick a good story” and if King Crow by Michael Stewart is anything to go by he is an excellent judge of a good story.

Michael spoke about his debut novel, which is a mixture of bird book, thriller and romance. He read extracts from different sections and talked about what inspired him to write it. The book has received a number of accolades including winning the ‘Not the Booker prize’ from The Guardian as well as being the only new novelist nominated by one of the authors on the World Book Night Giveaway books. It is also described by novelist David Peace as "brilliant".

The audience enjoyed interacting with Michael and there was a lively Q and A session after the talk. He gave us a teasing description of his next book, which will be published next year, and shared with us the news (received by text while he was on the way to Leeds) that he had just been commissioned by the BBC to write another play for Radio 4. 

Kevin Duffy from Bluemoose Books, an independent publisher based in Hebden Bridge also answered questions on the publishing business and why he re-mortgaged his house to pursue the business. He gave a very interesting insight to the big publishing houses and also the big literary awards.

The event was very enjoyable and both Michael and Kevin spoke passionately about books and writing. I wish them further success with King Crow, it certainly deserves it.

The Lingo of Food at the Heart Centre

June Diamond writes:

This joint event between two creative-writing  groups, both tutored by poet Becky Cherriman, marks the third year of collaboration between the Osmondthorpe Resource  Centre and the WEA.

And it was quite an event. Around me the audience agreed that this was a deeply moving celebration of creativity and cooperation. As Carl put it, getting off to a rousing start, it was, “a chance to try”. We shared Carl’s dream, to live by the sea and eat fish and chips, with freedom and with choice. What more could anyone want?

Siobhan entertained us with an account of the food she was given as a child when she was poorly - butterscotch Angel Delight - and Suzanne evoked real suffering, and the nectar of the first food taken after a blinding migraine. Their group piece on starvation was a searing critique  of the modern world.

In the second group David Newton entertained us with a clever piece on the ironies of food and  the rules set down by religious groups. Fabian  moved us with the story of how he had got to be here, and the deliciousness of green bananas, and Michael gave us a great account of a meal in Dubai that was intensely memorable in many ways, including economically. Jane described  graphically to us a  stomach-curdling meal in Hell. 

Howard took a different line with a poem entitled Soul Food. If music is the food of the soul, then happiness for Cliff Richard is performing to a room full of look-alikes.  Again, the group talked about starvation with compassion and empathy.

In the next group Adrian read Jenny Jones’ very funny piece on the aspiration towards vegetarianism.....if it weren’t for the temptation of bacon butties, sausage sarnies and corn beef hash. Robert gave us a lovely description of eating fish and chips with his brother, and Richard and Elaine eulogised chips together. Julie F led us to imagine the bliss of ice-cream at any time of the day. 

A couple of clever poems in this group reminded us that food has feelings too. Linda represented the cappuccino as a gorgeous Italian lady (arch-enemy, tea). In Metamorphosis Adrian cleverly drew us into the experience of the pear becoming pudding, and the pleasure and pain of transformation. This session ended with an ode to greed by Richard and Linda.

Chris reminded us of the transformation wrought on ordinary food stuff as it becomes stew. Howard gave a clever wordplay on seasonal food. Vivian reminded us, unforgettably, that food does not come from supermarkets, and that every bit of it is valued in the rural economy, using time-honoured skills. Chris and Howard produced a graphic metaphor in  Full Sky.

The final group began with a deeply-felt reflection on starvation. Julie B reminded us vividly of the deliciousness of pie. David Maccoby  related a memory of a meal – all wanted, all delicious, and reminded us of where it goes. Angela gave the amateur cook’s point of view with an ode  to Delia, and a cry of anguish when somehow it never comes out like it does in book or on telly.

The presentation ended with a final piece by Jane and with fervent thanks, and of course applause.

Il Postino at Cottage Road Cinema

Richard Wilcocks writes:

For me, this charming, funny and touching study of the effect of the exiled Pablo Neruda on a poor, near-illiterate island where fishermen vote communist and also dress up to take part in a procession with a statue of Our Lady of Sorrows is about naivety and fundamentalism as well as about the use of metaphors and the wooing of women with poetry.

The story (based on a novel) is strongly rooted in facts: the great poet was forced to get out of Chile in 1948 after the Communist Party was made illegal there and tried to settle in a number of places in Europe before he landed (in this film that is) on the small island in the south of Italy in 1952. That part of Italy was much poorer than the north of the country, and still is. He wrote political manifestos and historical epics as well as beautiful, erotic love poems and was a recipient of the International Stalin Prize for Strengthening Peace Among Peoples, which puts him in the company of Pablo Picasso and Paul Robeson. He was not only a fervent admirer of Lenin and Stalin, but also (in the nineteen thirties) of Vyshinsky, the chief prosecutor during the Moscow Show Trials, in public at least.

At the time of the film, Stalin was just about to die, there was no thaw in the communist world and the revolts in 1956 against Stalinism and Soviet dominance in Hungary and Poland had yet to take place. There is no mention of any critical insights amongst the local communists in the action: their political feelings are largely gut reactions, of the sort which go with being dirt poor. The secondary plot is about a political campaign by an elegant, smart-talking Christian Democrat politician by the name of di Cosimo (he promises to bring running water to the island) who criticizes Mario, the love-stricken postman, for being in love with Beatrice after he admits that he is going to vote communist. He tells him that his preferred poet is d’Annunzio, who also had a muse named Beatrice. Gabriele D’Annunzio was a twentieth century nationalist poet who was very influential amongst the early Fascists, including Mussolini. In fact, the choice of the name Beatrice for Mario’s loved one and muse is highly significant, because that is also the name of the ideal woman of Italy’s national poet Dante Alighieri, the one who guides him through Heaven in The Divine Comedy. I think that Massimo Troisi, the actor playing Mario, actually looks a little like Dante Alighieri.

The island’s grim priest, the one with no feeling for poetry, has the fundamentalist right-wing views of the time, which were common amongst Catholics at the time of the Cold War. It’s all part of the film’s appealing 'retro' feel, with old black cars, early Vespas, the traditional wedding, the peculiarities of an Italy long before Berlusconi, all there for the savouring. But the main story is about the bored fisherman’s son Mario Ruppolo, who is fascinated, naively fascinated perhaps, with the famous visitor and the number of letters he receives from female admirers, in the pre-email days when people wrote them. The scene in which he asks Neruda “What is a metaphor?” brings to my mind many memories of teaching English, along with Neruda’s stock response – “the sky weeps” - but Mario gets it, and later makes attempts to do better than that.

The film is full of metaphors, not just the ones in Neruda's sublime poems, of which there are plenty: students of cinema would be able to spot dozens, for example the pinball which Beatrice pops into her mouth and which Mario carries around as a love token, and the statue of the Virgin in a fishing boat. Mario's personification of the fishing nets, using the adjective 'sad' recurs several times.

For me, a side-effect of the film is to bring to mind the terrible events of the seventies: Neruda died just after General Pinochet took over Chile in a violent military coup in 1973. He was already terminally ill in hospital with prostate cancer, and it was probably shock which finished him. Pinochet soldiers apparently wasted no time in diverting a stream through his house on the Pacific coast after ransacking it.

The acting throughout is superb, and Phillippe Noiret bears a startling resemblance to the real Neruda. He is absolutely credible in the role. Maria Grazia Cucinotta is just right as the innkeeper’s beautiful niece and Massimo Troisi is the ultimate in charm, for his lover on the screen and for his audience in front of it. His portrayal of the timid yet passionate postman must be the result of very careful Stanislavskian preparation, because it is just brilliant.

It was a great tragedy when he died shortly before the film came out, in 1994. He was a poet himself, as well as a great actor.

 

At the 68th Academy Awards in 1995, Il Postino received five nominations and one Academy Award. It also won the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language.

 

Under Milk Wood in New Headingley Club

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Trio Literati’s and Theatre of the Dales’s current production of Dylan Thomas’s beautiful, funny and moving radio play from 1954 - Under Milk Wood – is one of the best I have seen on stage, intelligently directed, with much attention to detail, and impeccably acted. Every character lived life to the full in front of the audience last night in the New Headingley Club, even the dead ones, and it did not matter that the lighting was not up to playhouse standards, because Trio Lit and Theatre of the Dales can survive very well without it if necessary: they are veterans of pub and club rooms.

The play was sliced to about half of its original length by Adrian Metcalfe and David Robertson, and all the stitching was invisible. It was a wise, if not inevitable, move to manage without costumes and set (expensive, hard to cart around) although the cast wore a variety of striped tops to bond them together. They relied on the sort of movement which can be done in a small performance space, and the usual actor’s repertoire of voice, gesture and facial expression. It worked all the time. Nothing was ever touch-and-go. 

The Welsh accents sounded authentic enough to me, nicely varied to fit each member of the population of Llareggub. To pick out individual performances in a strong ensemble piece is difficult, but I have to record how much I loved the Reverend Eli Jenkins and his prayer, Butcher Beynon with his macabre sense of humour, Mr Mog Edwards the writer of letters, Mrs Pugh, at constant risk of ingesting poison, and Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard. I was moved to tears as always by Captain Cat’s memories of his dead lover Rosie Probert, and captivated by Myfanwy Price.

The cast included all of the Trio – Maggie Mash, Jane Oakeshott and Richard Rastall – together with Theatre of the Dales founder David Robertson and Arif Javid, a terrific Nogood Boyo.

Punk Publishing with Mick McCann - House Event

Sally Bavage writes:

Just as many groups in the digital age produce and distribute their own ‘indie’ music, resisting the control of the large conglomerations, so too an increasing number of writers are taking the self-publication ‘punk’ route to having their voices heard. 

Mick McCann described for us the joys and pitfalls of ‘punk’ publishing and envisaged a future not too far off when you can call in to a coffee house, order up your book and have it printed on demand whilst you sip your latte.  He designs his own covers and organises his own help with proofreading and typesetting.  Costs are favours called in and about £50 for support from an online company with details of copyrighting and so on.  His books – Coming Out as a Bowie Fan in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, Nailed - Digital Stalking and How Leeds Changed the World are all available on Amazon and all with 5* reader ratings.  We could have heard more about self-publication but the session timed out because of other LitFest commitments.

His session was also a play upon words as he described his adoption of the punk subculture in the late 70s in Leeds.  All teenagers try to be different, but full-on make-up, spiked hair and his sister’s dresses were, well, a bit out there!  Physically very fit from his years on an early morning milk round – a two hour extreme workout every day hefting crates and running fast to keep up with the float which did not bring Benny Hill’s Ernie, the fastest milkman in the west to mind! – Mick had no fear of getting any bother from skins or other subculture groups.  He was right! He spent his teenage years as a committed Bowie fan, still able to quote every song lyric from any album, though the dresses and make-up have gone. 

Mick has always needed to write down his ideas, though he shrinks from calling himself ‘a writer’ - like nearly all wordsmiths he has a day job.  He has a lively perspective on working class life, often the least likely to get a publisher’s sweetheart deal, and which should be heard.  There will be many young people today who have a view of life not widely represented by our media and ‘punk’ publishing offers us hope that alternative voices can enter our lexicon. ‘Never Get Old’, David Bowie said – or if you do, publish the story!

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.