George Szirtes and Kim Moore in HEART Café

Doug Sandle writes:

Kim Moore and George Szirtes

The yellow daffodils on the HEART café tables provided a freshness and uplifting ambiance to contrast to the damp and cold of a winter outstaying its yearly visit, a fitting setting for an evening that lifted the spirits and warmed the soul with readings from George Szirtes, ably supported by Kim Moore.  Bringing together one of our foremost poets with a prodigious body of a lifetime’s work and literary achievements with a young poet, successfully emerged rather than emerging but one nevertheless at an earlier stage of her poetic journey, worked very well for a LitFest whose aspiration is both to bring to Headingley established writers and also to encourage and nurture younger talent.

I was delighted to introduce George, having been one of his lecturers and tutors at the Leeds Polytechnic (now Leeds Metropolitan University) when from 1969 to 1972 he was a fine art student. Both his life at Leeds and continuing interest in visual art featured among several of the poems he presented. A connection with his former student days was the poem Poet about Martin Bell, who was Gregory Fellow in Poetry at Leeds University 1967 to 1969 but who thereafter taught at Leeds Polytechnic for a time and who was very influential in nurturing  creative writing among the students (and staff) of the art and design department. Poet makes reference to James Thompson's City of Dreadful Night which was parodied in the title of Martin’s powerful response to and critique of the Leeds of the sixties, the City of Dreadful Nothing. Bell’s poem refers to the  ‘Merrion Centre with its special subways for mugging’ and the Merrion Centre receives a mention in another Leeds related poem read by George, Chuck Berry Live, which begins

            Too tired to dance with anyone right now

            After the gig, here in the Merrion Centre

            Where Chuck Berry has just taken his bow.

The poem goes on to describe a bleak experience of Leeds, which has much of the tone of

Martin Bell’s City of Dreadful Nothing.  Another poem, Girl Flying recounts an incident when George witnessed a girl student caught by a fierce wind on the steps that led up to the Leeds Polytechnic’s H Block, to such an extent she was blown into the air and which stirred his imagination to imagine her flying:

            When she stood at the top of the stairs by the door

            of the college, the wind caught her up and so

            she flew all the way down, as if no more

            than a micro-detail on a map that any breeze could blow,

            and if she could have flown of her own will

            at any time she chose, this was how she’d go,

            

These two poems are one of five grouped together under the title Yorkshire Bitter and another read was Night Out, about his experience of a notorious Leeds Pub of the sixties, The Hayfield, a poem, which as in several of his poems, contained references to popular culture of the time with mentions of Jack Palance, Pat Phoenix and Leeds United footballers Sniffer Clarke and Norman Hunter. The poem begins:

            Everyone wears drag around here. The barman

            In gold lamé and vast peroxide wig

            serves pints of Sam Smith to a local Carmen

           

            wearing the cruiser’s full authentic rig

            of white blouse, fish-nets, tiny leather skirt,

            with three day’s stubble, mouth like a ripe fig.

                                   

Visual art, the visual and the painterly is also still a concern as exemplified by poems from A Howard Hodgkin Suite and also from  Minimenta –postcards to Anselm Kiefer. The sensual synaesthetic relationship between colours and the sound of words was evident in a poem entitled Colours, which beings with fourteen lines of colour names – some as in common use and others made up.

            Burlywood, Charteuse, Gainsboro, Ghostwhite, Greenberg,

            Maroon, Orchid, Moccasin, Peru, Demosthenes, Snow,

            Papayawhip, Popper, Peachpuff, Hotpink, Hothot,

            Darkred, Darkgrey, Dodgerblue, Drudgery, Derrida,

         

Some of the poems presented also related to photographs and film or were structured around a  

celebration and exploration of the interrelationships among the forms, patterns and sounds of words. His final poem Say So was much enjoyed by the audience for its musical resonance.

However while the imagery and pictures in his poems are powerful as such, they often rapidly develop and lead us on a journey into the metaphysical and in the case of his reading Seeking North from a sequence entitled Northern Air: A Hungarian Nova Zembla a journey is itself the means for this. His poem Allotment from the Mimimenta –postcards to Anselm Keifer is another example, which begins

            When I glimpse from the train a clutch

            of allotments, a tight row of cabbages or spuds

            or garden peas, I think there are gods

            beyond gods who live in the bones

            of men and women, shivering at their touch;

            that when rain falls it weeps hailstones;

There was much variety in the reading and a personal and moving Prayer for my Daughter will have resonated with parents in the audience and such as Madhouse had political implications.

All together it was a very powerful and inspiring reading and while it was George Szirtes’ first visit to Leeds for a long time, let us hope that it will not be too long before the next one.

Click here to hear six early love poems. 

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Two things in particular struck me as I was listening to Kim Moore read. The first was that she, a mistress of the lyrical, should team up with another musician, or an ensemble, to create new material for new performances: Teaching the Trumpet would be an obvious starting point. It provides good, professional advice:

Imagine you are spitting tea leaves

From your tongue to start each note

 

So each one becomes the beginning of a word.

Sing the note inside your head then match it.

It’s advice which is brought into a new dimension by the closing lines about remembering… the man who played so loud/ he burst a blood vessel in his eye… lines which invite much surmise. Who? When?

The second was the confident way in which she can speak from her own dark depths, like a cave-based oracle or a priestess well in touch with the lupine side, which has been noted by plenty of commentators, lifting off from the terrific title poem of her 2011 pamphlet If We Could Speak Like Wolves. Lupine could indicate sensual or fleshly, but it’s a lot more than that: Today at Wetherspoons demonstrates how tellingly she observes the people she encounters on the shore, in the street, on trains, in pubs:

…The women tilt

in their chairs, laughter faked,

like mugs about to fall, cheekbones

sharp as sadness…

The poem goes on to address matters lupine, or perhaps just seedy:

…My feet slide towards a man

with one hand between his thighs…

The key poem for me on this particular evening was Hartley Street Spiritualist Church. The interest in the dark depths is in there, of course, how could it not be when the church in question has a psychic artist, shudder-inducing mediums (who were trainees, we were told afterwards) and a voice whispering to her that a drawing of an elderly woman with a perm is a depiction of her grandma? But the poem is not really in any gothic domain: there is a hymn by Abba (I believe in angels) and a spirit dog wandering around. The dry humour is delicious.

Her personal narratives – for example one of her more recent poems which is centred on when her husband had a nasty fall in the bathroom – often celebrate the unexpected, or the odd, and then there is always the landscape of  her part of Cumbria looming somewhere behind the characters, a cloudy cyclorama.


Photos by Richard Wilcocks

Blake Morrison - Fiction or Life Writing

 Rebecca Cronin writes:

Softly spoken Yorkshireman Blake Morrison, in conversation with Richard Wilcocks, began with an introduction to Life Writing – what it is, and most importantly, how he makes it interesting. He shared anecdotes concerning his two books about his parents – Things My Mother Never Told Me and When Did You Last See Your Father? – and read passages from both. He centred his discussion around the use of embroidery, which he asserted to be important when fictionalising your characters, yet also spoke strongly about how the personal truths he experienced, and detailed in both books, often resonate well for other people.

Blake Morrison signed dozens of his books

Life writing, when the subject and main characters are not only no longer with you, but are also your parents, would perhaps strike most of us as odd, and perhaps even a task that could be beyond difficult.  But Morrison carried the notion of how for him, writing about his father, and then mother, proved to be a therapeutic and helpful experience, and in many ways, a coping mechanism for their deaths. Writing, he said, is a way to let someone tell a story they need to tell, as well as shaping it, and keeping control of it. Oddly enough, in the beginning, writing existed for him as a mechanism to escape his family, but they ended up being the main characters and roles within his work; they were inescapable. 

When discussing Things My Mother Never Told Me, he explained how his main plot line had revolved around a box of letters his father had left him. The letters provided the majority of the details which make up the book, but naturally left gaps that needed filling. As a forty year-old, reading about the lives of his twenty year-old parents, he expressed almost parental feelings towards them, and often felt that their marriage and his birth were exceptionally unrealistic results of their growing lives. 

The novel of his mother’s life was never something he had expected to write, and he described her as an elusive woman who didn’t enjoy being the topic of conversation. Yet his motivation for writing the book was concentrated around the growing question of why she had buried her Irish Catholic past; a question he strove to answer after learning more and more from the letters. He followed the discussion about the book with a harrowing reading about the immensely high infant mortality rate his grandparents experienced with their own children.

When the discussion turned to the film adaptation of When Did You Last See Your Father?, starring Jim Broadbent as his father and Colin Firth as himself, Morrison spoke earnestly of how impressed he had been with Broadbent’s portrayal of his Father. Before filming, the two had met and discussed his father at length– his clothes, accent, mannerisms  - and as a result, Morrison thought that Broadbent brought a new understanding to the role that he himself had not fully realised in the book. His parting remark about the film was that now, when he thinks of his father, he sees Broadbent’s face, and finds it difficult to see past that. His only regret is that when he looks in the mirror, he does not similarly see Colin Firth staring back at him.

The evening drew to a close with Morrison speaking briefly of his time working for The Observer, where a passage from When Did You Last See Your Father? appeared, alongside a photograph of the two of them. Seeing his work there, he remarked, proved to be shocking, as he often felt possessive over the story. By the time the film adaptation appeared fourteen years later, he had accepted how he could, and would, share the story with the public. A final round of questions concluded with “can you imagine your own children writing about you in a similar fashion to how you wrote about your parents?”, to which he answered, with an astonishing truth, “when writing about real life, and people in your real life, you have to be careful. But I’d hope they’d cast me in a good light – the truth is important, after all.”

The Hunchback of Notre Dame at Cottage Road Cinema

Partnership event with Far Headingley Village Society and Cottage Road Cinema

It was originally known as The Headingley Picture House

 Sheila Chapman writes:
We came in from the street muffled up to the eyeballs to escape the freezing cold and occasional snow of this March evening. We entered the panelled foyer of this 100 year old cinema complete with its ticket booth and ‘authentic’ tickets to be greeted by the welcoming warmth of its staff who were resplendent in evening attire. What a great start to an evening full of the atmosphere which you can only find in a cinema of this vintage!
We had come to watch The Hunchback of Notre Dame, chosen by the cinema (together with its partners, Far Headingley Village Society and Headingley LitFest), to reflect the Headingley LitFest’s 2013 theme – Lives and Loves.

But before the film we were treated to the adverts. Normally cinema adverts could hardly be described as a treat but these were vintage and so were tinged with nostalgia and, from this distance, were very amusing.

This version of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, based on the novel by Victor Hugo, is a testament to Charles Laughton’s portrayal of Quasimodo. Laughton’s performance, though often caricatured, drives the film by engaging us with the desperate and abused character who is the hunchback.  The film tells the story of Esmeralda, a gypsy girl in fifteenth century Paris, who becomes entangled in the machinations of the evil judge Frollo who both desires and hates her. She in turn loves Phoebus, a philandering soldier, while Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bell ringer of Notre Dame, loves her because of her kindness to him (she gave him water)  after he had been publicly flogged and left in the stocks.  Quasimodo demonstrates his love by saving Esmeralda from hanging. The greatest tragedy in the film is that of Quasimodo. He is mocked and brutalised because of his appearance and denied love despite the greatness of his heart and his courage.

The film’s plot differs considerably from that of the original novel – including a happy ending for Esmeralda. In addition, much of the social commentary in the novel has also been ‘Hollywoodised’ but sufficient remains to portray, in a fifteenth century setting, the social ills of poverty and exploitation and the corrupt use of power.

Quasimodo’s physical relationship with Notre Dame and its bells is a constant presence in the film. He clambers in and around the cathedral with ungainly dexterity. He plays the bells (which have deafened him) by lying on his back and pushing them with his feet and in one scene he actually jumps onto a bell and rides it. This physical portrayal of Quasimodo by Charles Laughton together with his evocation of the hunchback’s bewilderment and humanity is the lasting impression of the film.

As one member of the audience said ‘I can now appreciate why this film is a classic’.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), RKO pictures – directed by William Dieterle 

Museum of Untold Stories - in HEART Café

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Urwin Watt (U Watt?) begins the show with an energetic warm-up, as the children are still coming into the HEART Café, already bubbling. He looks like the sort of person who could fix everybody and everything, prancing up and down, eyes glittering with what we hope is good humour, leather belt loaded with interesting tools. So what might happen? Any time traveling involved? The door of the structure in the corner which brings Tardis to mind - for some parents anyway - is apparently locked, and can be opened only when the right buttons are pressed. There is a countdown, with five minutes to go. Long minutes, giving time for a steel colander to be worn by volunteers, which might bring electrical strikes and cause explosions, not to worry…

There’s someone in there! You can tell by the noises. It turns out to be Stokely Pilgrim, teleported from Brazil, whose naval uniform signifies some kind of rank but who spends his time in an engine room stoking a ship’s furnace (cue for child to make an arch with his arms and become its entrance) and inviting people, all of them “sir” and “madam” in spite of the fact that some just about come up to his knee, to think about what the world would be like without stories.

Not much fun, of course. Soon, aided by an Urwin who is now called  ‘Mother’, he is addressing a gang of pirates (Ha – haaarr!) and then a sea full of sharks. Invisible bottles are picked up and hurled into the water, all of them containing stories to be found. “Do mermaids, do mermaids!” nags one of the tinier participants, dancing in and out of the action.  The ship’s bell clangs loudly. A broken crown is brought out. Who could that belong to? Could it be…

It’s obvious to nearly everybody: “Richard the Third!” they shout en masse. “Mermaids!” shouts a lone voice. A king in waiting is found – no matter about the gender – and a story about how the crown came to be broken is found. It seems that it fell off the king’s head when he (she) sneezed. That’s what the kings tells us, before ordering everybody to go to the castle on the hill immediately, or else their heads will roll.

And so the show continues, some of its elements constant, but with plenty which is unique to this particular performance, a tune with improvisation. Alive and Kicking Theatre Company Leeds has worked in primary schools, more recently in Kirkgate Market (just the sort of thing to revive the place), but to my knowledge does not do cafés very often. They’ll be doing this one again soon. It was terrific! My only criticism is that they didn’t get around to the mermaids.

To book Alive and Kicking ring John Mee at 0113 265 8631

www.aliveand kickingtheatrecompany.co.uk

And here is a photo of the performance the following day (14 March) sent by Liz Fox:

'Biking with Che' in Café Lento

Sean Hayes writes:

MESTISA - Beautiful songs from South America

Taking refuge from the surprisingly crisp winds of an early spring evening in the warm confines of the Café Lento was a perfect prelude to the sun-scorched journey of one Ernesto Guevara, (later to re-moniker himself 'Che', which he adopted because it was an Argentinian colloquialism for 'hey you' and used as a general term in other areas of South America to address Argentinians) from Argentina to Florida, taking in much of the continent along the way. 

Our introduction into the world of the young Che began with the specially decorated Café Lento, which featured pictures and illustrations of Guevara (yes, including that one) and as the centre-piece a large-scale map of South America, with the course of Ernesto and Alberto charted via illustration. Mestisa, the band made up of Barbara, Ana Luisa, Mike and Tenley, were setting out their assortment of weird and wonderful authentic instruments as the audience arrived. Amongst their inventory, as they explained during the course of the performance, was a quijada - the jawbones of a donkey played using the teeth, a charango - a small lute-like instrument which traditionally would have been made from the shell of an armadillo and a cajón - a box-shaped instrument developed by slaves whose other instruments had been taken away. To complement the music, wine and food prepared by Jose Gonzalez was served to complete the authentic atmosphere.  From there, we were introduced to an evening immersed in all things Che, as a narration of the biking trip, concisely scripted and read by Richard Wilcocks, based on and featuring extracts from Guevara's own Notas de Viaje (Motorcycle Diaries) provided a combination of irreverent insight and deep historical context to the life of one of the most iconic figures in modern history. 

Our story began with the son of a wealthy property developer. During his days as a medical student at the University of Buenos Aires, Ernesto met Alberto Granada, who was in charge of the distribution of medical supplies in a nearby leper colony. In 1952, after deciding to take a year off from his studies, Ernesto joined Alberto on a trip which had long been their shared ambition: an odyssey across Latin America on a motorcycle, namely their occasionally unreliable 1939 500cc Norton, which was christened La Poderosa - The Mighty One. What followed was a surprisingly funny series of mis-adventures, as Ernesto doggedly journeyed on, not at all resembling the noble freedom fighter that the colossally famous portrait would later depict. Instead, he and Alberto were mangueros motorizados - motorised scroungers - and amongst other exploits they accidentally shot one of their hosts' beloved German Shepherd dog, passed themselves off as expert researchers of leprosy and suffered through an unfortunate vomiting incident while stowed away on a cargo ship. 

This was far from a simple tale of gap-year shenanigans, however. Over the course of Ernesto's journey we saw the origins of his revolutionary leanings, as he encountered the harsh callousness which poverty can bring about in the form of an elderly, dying servant whose chronic asthma was met with apathy from her burdened family. Later, as Ernesto and Alberto's journey took them through a Chile on the brink of a massive presidential election, they encountered a stranded miner and his wife - outcast after being held in prison for his allegiance to the Chilean Communist Party - on their way to seek work in the terrible conditions of a sulphur mine deep in the Chilean mountains. The encounter led Ernesto to describe the couple as “tragic” and “a live representation of the proletariat of any part of the world”. 

Inserted into the narration was one of the poems (in English translation) by Pablo Neruda which Ernesto probably read on his travels, perhaps while dreaming of Chichina, the girl he left behind in Buenos Aires and who dropped him - 'Poem 20', which begins:

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, "The night is starry

and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance"

...

The music beautifully and powerfully represented Ernesto's feelings in this section of his journey, expressing not just his sadness with the mourning vocals but also using a rhythmic pounding to represent his rising anger and revolutionary spirit.  The music expressed perfectly the emotion of Ernesto's journey, as well as giving an authentic flavour, the songs being interspersed not only with the narration but with traditional Colombian dancing. Participation from the audience lent a sense of distinct camaraderie to the evening. Indeed, 'Biking With Che' was a witty and occasionally wry insight into the early days of an iconic legend, which gave us a powerful impression of the man behind the T-shirts and student posters. 

Sally Bavage adds:

The audience feedback, the delicious food and the atmosphere were fantastic.  Well done yet again to Café Lento, host Richard Lindley, and narrator Richard Wilcocks, for another splendid LitFest event which attracted a wide age range!  Interesting, too, that the importance of having time to read poetry was emphasised as Ernesto developed the foundations for Che.  

To book Mestisa contact Ana Luisa Muñoz  mestisauk@gmail.com  

Ravishing sounds of the Oud in Mint Café

Jacqui Agate writes:

As hordes of people took refuge from the snow to enjoy an authentic Arabian night in Mint Café, the first thing they were greeted with was a colourful array of Lebanese food.  The venue was absolutely full to the brim, with the attendees spread across two rooms. 

With walls adorned with pictures and an assortment of retro items available for purchase, the venue itself provided plenty to look at. The atmosphere was lively as we waited in anticipation of authentic music and beautiful Arabic poetry. Needless to say the entertainment did not disappoint.

Mint owner Marcos with oud-player Yasser Audhali

The master Yasser Audhali entered to a ripple of excitement and, after introducing himself, began to play the Oud. The room was filled with enchanting melodies accompanied by passionate vocals and two drummers, one of which was the owner of Mint, Marcos. Hand-made and decorated with intricate Egyptian designs the Oud is a treat to look at as well as to listen to. The group was clearly captured by the authentic melodies, with much foot-tapping, head-bobbing and eye-closing adding to the spirited, yet intimate, atmosphere within the room.

An added delight was Marcos explanation of the history of the Oud. The legend goes that it was invented by Lamech, the sixth grandson of Adam. Grieving for the death of his son he hung the body upon a tree. The shape of the Oud was inspired by the shape of his son’s bleached skeleton.

The oud (عود)and the lute both descend from a common ancestor 

Moreover, the beautiful music was punctuated by some of the Arabic love poems written by the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, read by Richard Wilcocks in English.  The first, When I Love You, was an incredibly romantic poem crammed with curious, thought-provoking similes and metaphors such as ‘hours breathe like puppies’ and ‘caravans ride from your breasts carrying Indian herbs.’ The second was Little Things. This sensual poem sees Qabbani take on the voice of a woman,  with the point being to stand up for the rights of women by communicating such things as a female might want to, but not be able to, express.  Finally, we heard the emotive poem Beirut Mistress of the World addressed to a city devastated by the Lebanese civil war:

We now realise that your roots are deep inside us,
We now realise what offence we've perpetrated;
Rise from under the rubble
Like an almond flower in April!

Packed full of rhetorical language and organic imagery this poem was another real treat. The evening ended with a short Q and A session which allowed everyone to gain further insight into the deeper meanings of the poems and the music. All in all, it was an inspiring night with an authentic feel, which truly left my mind stimulated and my spirit relaxed.