A blur of words, laughter and good company

Poetry (plus one short story) and Chips

Words on Tap at the Chemic, Friday 14 March (partnership event)

Síle Moriarty writes:

Noel Whittle      Photo: Richard Wilcocks

A night at Words on Tap always starts with a visit to Arkwright’s the chippie - Friday night was no exception. I got my bag of chips - straight out of the fryer, stingingly hot and fresh - and headed next door to that gem of a pub, The Chemic, to eat them and settle in for a night of poetry, heckling - mostly of our host, Matthew Hedley-Stoppard - and  excellent beer. Terrific. Last night Words on Tap had teamed up with Headingley LitFest to present an open mic night and the evening passed in a blur of words, laughter and good company.  

Our readers encompassed: Cyborgs (Jane about her daughter), Cotton Grass (David who will have his own WoT spot in April), New Look (Michael shopping with his daughters), Wordsworth backwards (John saving the first verse of a Wordsworth poem until last to maintain poetic tension– what was it going to be about?), Long Distance Love (Hannah who knew it all by heart – I am insanely jealous of that), an old cornet bent on sweet revenge (Ruth) and Caroline sliding down the banisters.

We also had poems about: the First World War from John Darley and Howard Benn, cash points from Jonathan Eyre, and Decisions from an uncertain Terry Bridges. We heard a short story from Stuart Perreira about Christmas Day, and the evening was completed by two sonnets and other poems on love, ageing and lust from our master of iambic pentameter, Bill Fitzsimons. So an evening of poetry (oh and one short story) came to a close. We had another bag of chips, some more beer and went on our way.

Richard Wilcocks adds:

Hannah Robinson    Photo: Richard Wilcocks

I admired all the performers, which could indicate that the beer and the warm friendliness in the back room brought out the master diplomat in me, or it could just prove that I was once a teacher. I do feel able, however, to pick out a few who I think are worthy of special mentions.  Noel Whittle's brief spin-off from Coleridge's Kubla Khan, delivered with gentle wit, was impressive, Jane Kite's dream-poem about a three-ring circus, which ends with macabre scenes and clowns who have become maniacal, was refreshingly startling, and Hannah Robinson stole the show with her meticulously-learned, beautifully performed poem about love and yearning. The only thing missing was something more poetic from our excellent host. Just a little squib from him would have been welcome.

Audience thoughts:

Keep it up. Well organised and run. Good atmosphere.

An easy going evening with great variety of poems and poets. I would come again to the regular open mike sessions. Glad I came.

Always enjoy Words on Tap at The Chemic. Great room, great atmosphere and the poetry’s not bad too! Enjoy hearing new voices in open mic.

An excellent and very diverse blend of humorous and serious poetry. Very enjoyable

‘It was good to hear open-mic all evening, their work is often very entertaining, and there were one or two stars.

An excellent open-mic night – poetry and poets to add to the excellent beer and atmosphere

The poets:  
Howard Benn, Terry Bridges, Michael Brown, David Coldwell, John Darley, Max Dunbar, Jonathan Eyre, Bill Fitzsimons, John Hepworth, Jane Kite, Joe Nodus, Eloise Pearson, Stuart Perreira, Hannah Robinson, Noel Whittall, Caroline Wilkinson, Ruth Wynn.

Patrick Bourke - ‘just one story, in the story of thousands'

Partnership event with Irish Arts Foundation 14 March, 8pm in HEART

Photo: Sally Bavage

Síle Moriarty writes:

The Claremont Room at HEART was packed last night as Brendan McGowan told us the story of Patrick Bourke – ‘just one story, in the story of thousands, which shows the precarious existence of the Irish in England at the time’ - mid-nineteenth century.

Brendan is a historian who has written previously about the Irish in Leeds (Taking The boat: The Irish in Leeds 1931-81), and it was as a historian that he investigated the story of Patrick Bourke but he also had a more personal interest – he was born in Leeds, of Irish parents, just a stone’s throw away from the Leeds Workhouse - now the Thackray Museum - where Patrick spent his last days before being ‘deported’ to Ireland.

The back-drop to Patrick’s story was the overcrowding and poverty of the Irish in Leeds in the early part of the nineteenth century which was exacerbated by the arrival in Leeds, after 1840, of an increasing number of Irish migrants fleeing An Gorta Mór (The Great Famine) in Ireland.

Patrick himself came to England in 1820 at the age of thirty and he spent the next more than forty years in and around Leeds supporting himself by his own efforts. During this time he never applied for poor relief or for any other sort of assistance but he was also semi-itinerant; he travelled around West Yorkshire plying his trade, as a street hawker and maker of spectacles, staying in lodging houses which were overcrowded and less than sanitary.  He never married and as he became older he could not maintain his lifestyle and in 1862, being ill and destitute, he applied for relief to the Leeds Union Workhouse.

Leeds Union Workhouse - now Thackray Medical Museum)

At this stage he was judged as having no settlement rights – under the Poor Law at the time relief could only be given by the parish where the applicant had settlement rights i.e. where they were born or where they had established rights through other means e.g. marriage or property. This meant that Patrick had to receive relief in West Port in Mayo, his place of birth. Thus, on 31 December 1862, seventy-two year-old Patrick set off for Ireland. His journey in the depths of winter included an eleven hour journey to Holyhead, a 3am sea crossing - where he was a deck passenger subject to the elements - a stopover in Dublin and a journey across Ireland, during the last part of which, in open-topped transport , he was soaked to the skin in a rainstorm. As can be imagined he arrived in West Port in poor condition and died two weeks later.

Patrick’s story, although desperate, would have remained obscure - we don’t know where he was buried - but for the action taken by his MP, Lord Browne, who raised questions about his treatment in the House of Commons. During the subsequent enquiry many of the people involved in his case, both in England and Ireland, were interviewed and records were kept which enabled Brendan’s research.  The outcome of the enquiry was that the Leeds Union had acted within the law but, as Brendan said, ‘it might have been legal but it was not humane’. There were subsequent changes to the Poor Law and limitations put on the transportation of elderly and sick people during the winter but there was no apology from the Leeds Union because they had, of course, acted within the law.

This story engaged our sympathy and Brendan was a knowledgeable and interesting speaker. Brendan, and many people in the audience, drew parallels with modern times when market forces reign supreme - the Great Famine in Ireland was exacerbated by the application of a market forces philosophy - and there was a lively Q&A session after the talk.

Audience reactions:

Really, Really interesting story. I’m so glad I came...

Very  good talk. Most enlightening with very engaging speaker

An interesting presentation giving a clear picture of the state of Irish immigrants and their way of life when fleeing the famine in Ireland. Also the bad way some people were treated on being sent back to Ireland

Taking the Boat: The Irish in Leeds, 1931-81 is available: at the Leeds Civic Trust, at Amazon and on ebay.

The Return of the Soldier

Photo: Sally Bavage

Sally Bavage writes:

The return of Dr Richard Brown, Reader in Modern Literature at the University of Leeds, to LitFest 2014, ably supported by his PhD student Daniel (both pictured), helped us examine Rebecca West’s debut novel – published in 1918 and the only one written in WW1 by a woman – in the context of the movement towards literary modernism. Human complexities and personal circumstances were explored individually rather than in the more Edwardian approach to a narrative of mass sacrifice.  As we know, the war produced a great upheaval in class and gender roles; this novel mirrors some of those societal changes through focusing on the impacts for the key characters.

Why choose that novel, when perhaps a more predictable choice for a seminal WW1 work might have been Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, or even something more in the Blackadder mould?  Exactly because it looks at the Home Front, or at least a part of it that strove to remain Forever England.  Without giving too much away – for you really should read this fairly brief, tightly-written and well-plotted novel – the central character returns from the trenches suffering from amnesia.  There is a wife, a lover and a cousin who move us through the dilemma – return the wrecked man to his military career and thus return him to the war?  Or leave him to remain in the aspic of his youthful happily-deluded self?

This echoes the research work and the book Stories from the War Hospital produced by the LitFest - to be launched on Friday 21 March in the New Headingley Club. The 2^nd Northern Military Hospital based at Beckett Park in Headingley gave treatments for ‘shell shock’, which was both shocking to military doctors and not caused by shells.  At least not physically; it was recognised in 1915 in The Lancet as an emotional or psychological response to extreme stress; there were 80,000 cases by 1918.  But even shell shock had a class bias – it was suggested officers suffered ‘anxiety neuroses’ because of their higher education and sensitivity whilst the lower ranks exhibited ‘mental illness’ causing tremors and speech difficulties. 

Rebecca West picks up on these class-based approaches in a plot detailing the fractured family lives of a wife and a lover each nursing an empty cot, the one responding to the amnesiac by trying to keep life and him just as it always was whilst the other adapts to the changes in the times and her man. West tries to express the processes of change that WW1 set off in British society through the device of the soldier who leaves one idyllic world, goes to as hellish alternative and comes back to find his world view fits neither. Though there is a plot twist to complicate this simple view.

Some  anecdotes about which literary and society figures West may have used for her character models, and why, completed an enjoyable look at how class hierarchies and gender roles were affected by WW1, then it was out into the night clutching the last of Headingley Library’s borrowed copies of the novel thoughtfully prepared by our librarian Rimpu Bains, for which many thanks.

As a member of the audience said “Shall Return to the Novel Immediately.  Excellent.”

'Men of Honour' assassinate Caesar

Caesar Must Die – ‘Films at Heart’ partnership event

Tuesday 11^th March

Sally Bavage writes:

For our inaugural partnership event with Films at Heart we couldn’t get a Tuesday film night much closer to the Ides of March on the 15^th of this month!  As we know, Caesar didn’t survive the literal cut and thrust of political and personal ambition; nor did democracy.  The assassination created the conditions for transition from republic to empire, from democracy to despotism, but  for Caesar’s adopted son Octavius a surviving role as the emperor Augustus.

The film focuses on wannabe amateur actors - in reality, lifers and long-termers in the high security section of Rome’s tough Rebibbia Prison - enacting the theme of surviving through the medium of Shakespeare’s message.   As they are introduced you realise that many came from Sicily or the Naples area, and were incarcerated for drug trafficking (the Mafia is Europe’s biggest drugs trader by far) or for being part of organised crime (Mafia again).  Mafiosi are described as ‘men of honour’ in those parts.

After the plotting and eventual assassination, the conspirators make their case in the ‘forum’ of the exercise yard.  They justify their deeds to the onlooking prisoners watching from the serried rows of cell windows.  Anthony was Caesar’s right-hand-man and they expect trouble and vilification.  However, he describes them as “all, all honourable men.”  Men of honour in art too - though of course Anthony doesn’t mean it and dishonours his pledges.

What the prisoners learn from exploring the motives and the emotions within the play is both profound and sad.  You are very quickly drawn into the plot to kill the ambitious consul, and forget they are amdram until drawn up short by rehearsals extemporised in other areas of the prison with an audience of fellow inmates.  They inhabit the parts they play with great skill and brio and you are left to pity many of them for the lives they led that led to the lives they lead.

The last line comes from the actor who played Caesar: “Since I got to find art, this cell has become a prison” he says, as he is once again banged up behind locked heavy double doors. Surviving his life sentence is both more challenging and less ordinary.

Comments from the 50-strong audience include:

Great movie, friendly atmosphere, good opportunity for university students interested in applied theatre, please ask the café to stay open for cake!

Tense and dramatic. Enjoyed the stagecraft.

Very good film – good idea to incorporate this form of film in LitFest.

Wonderful to get the chance to see this gem …Powerful and moving.

Brilliant film – well chosen. My first time – I will certainly come back.

… and a number of Films at Heart regulars had not seen LitFest brochures before and were tempted by some of the other many and varied events we have on offer over the coming weeks.  Once again a new partnership finds fertile ground.

Noah or Mad Max in a future dystopia?

Dr Tim Foxon        Photo: Sally Bavage

Sally Bavage writes:
A new partnership with Café Scientifique this year saw an appreciative audience of Café and LitFest regulars explore some key issues around surviving the delivery of our future energy needs at the same time as reducing carbon emissions.  Introduced by Dr Tim Foxon, Reader in Sustainability & Innovation in the Sustainability Research Institute, School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, the session provoked some lively debate.

We all know the main scientific facts concerning the relentless rise in global carbon dioxide emissions, the projected temperature rise of between 2 to 5 degrees Centigrade by the turn of the century and our ever-increasing demand for energy. Mix this with some more information on the developing economies, the role positive feedback could play in an exponential further rise and the extreme weather becoming, well, even more extreme. More often.  Very few scientists of international standing deny the figures; interpretation is a more subjective and emotive issue.

Tim gave us a factual run-through of key considerations in our energy needs, then posed the question: Who will decide?  The Markets?  Central governments?  Or communities?  The Thousand Flowers strand of thinking (Let a thousand flowers bloom is a common misquotation of Chairman Mao Zedong's Let a hundred flowers blossom) but signifies that the answer may lie in a diversity of approaches.  We need to use our scientific, technological, political and social skills to change the habits of a lifetime before the life becomes shortened and unstable. There seem few scenarios with a soft landing.

Fire and flood?  Drought and pestilence.  Mass migration and resource wars. Fleeting images of Noah or Mad Max in a dystopian future are called to mind.  Politicians will not be pouring oil on troubled waters but burning the oil and stealing the water.  The price of carbon may turn out to be one that mankind can’t afford to pay.  A more positive future is possible, but humankind will probably need to overcome its collective addiction to consumption and economic growth to achieve this.

A sobering thought as the audience filed out to the bar.  

From the audience:

Very enjoyable and some food for thought.

Great to link Café Scientifique with LitFest, to increase involvement with both.

A very clear exposition of crucial issues looking forward to 2050 and beyond.

I wonder what Headingley LitFest will be like by then?

'Wounded' shortlisted!

Emily Mayhew is appearing at 7pm in Headingley Library on Tuesday 18 March to read from and talk about Wounded. From Battlefield to Blighty.

This has now been shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize - see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookprizes/10660055/Wellcome-Book-Prize-shortlist-announced.html