The Spreading Fire

In the car: Chantel McGregor  Like No Other

On the page: Rivers of London. Ben Aaronovitch

Where I'm at: Poetry Alight, Lichfield Spark Cafe

Onscreen: Heavy Water- a film for Chernobyl

In the ether: YouTube Chantelle McGregor plays Red House at Rock and Blues 2012

Poetry Alight,  14 May.

Poetry Alight has established itself as one of the Region's unmissable poetry events, regularly pulling in the best talent from both East and West Midlands as the supporting cast for a stellar selection of guest performers.

The guests often set the tone for the night, and on this occasion it seemed that Gary Longden had opted to run with a less 'performance' oriented event, with even Derbyshire laureate Matt Black opting to go "on book". That's not to say that there was a lack of variety, or even entertainment. Dwane Reads gave a high energy, high volume performance from his forthcoming book "The Annoying Megaphone Pigeon", Tony Keeton was off the wall with "Abducted by Aliens"; Bohdan Piesecki, of Apples and Snakes, and Harriet Warner also both gave tour-de-force performances of a single long piece from memory.

The invited performers, Elisabeth Charis, Liz Lefroy, Matt Black and River Wolton were, as ever, a real treat. Standout on the night for me was Liz, who stood in brilliantly for the injured Helen Mort at very short notice. 

The evening was rounded off by Staffordshire Laureate Mal Dewhurst, who read a piece prepared for this weekend's community performance, in Tamworth, based around Quadrophenia, which is almost sold out.

The world is Poetry Alight

In the car: The Beatles 'Blue' Album 1966-70

On the page: Bad Machine, George Szirtzes

Where I'm at: Spoken Worlds and Poetry Alight

Onscreen: Harry Potter 8 DVD set

In the ether: Death by Caffeine.

Review: Poetry Alight at the Spark Cafe, Lichfield, 19/2/13

Spoken word events come in many shapes, sizes and formats. The shape and format chosen by Lichfield poets for Poetry Alight has, over their first five events, been so successful that size - in terms of the capacity of the Spark Cafe - might become a problem in the future. This is a great tribute to Lichfield Poets, though, and especially to Gary Longden who hosts the event so well.

As Staffordshire Laureate Mal Dewhirst noted wryly in closing the event "...you wait years for a Staffordshire Laureate to come along, and then four Birmingham Laureates  turn up at the same time." The night was full of stars, so much so that many of the open mic readers would normally headline events. 

This brought out some great performances from the actual guests. The first of these, Charlie Jordan, performed her fifteen minute epic Buddhism and Ben & Jerry's with immaculate comic timing. The poem follows the breakup of a relationship from the "listening to Leonard Cohen to cheer myself" stage, through rehabilitation through spin classes - a great extended metaphor for early morning sex, here - considering becoming a nun after a year of "accidental celibacy" to finding a new love. 

Spoz, as second guest poet, was tasked with following this tour-de-force. He managed this with Latin panache and Brummie bravado. Highlight of his set, for me, was Without You, a poem written and performed at first in rolling Italian, then translated into English, with hilarious results.

Dreadlock Alien, a man I have somehow failed to see before, came on after the break and despite a dodgy mic gave a brilliant and eloquent performance with, amongst others, I am whatever you see, a list poem about colour, Six Years Old, (performed with Spoz) about the first teacher to praise him with a "well done", and the multifarious ways he had of getting into trouble, Poetry Slammin', full of clever wordplay and, of course, three minutes long.

The final guest, Lorna Meehan, also gave a performance to remember. All four of her poems shimmered with beautiful and  original lines like the "horizon gazing daydreams" of Holiday to Newquay, and turning into "...that old lady at the end of the street with about a thousand cats" in Thirty Year Old Spinster. Highlight was Smooth, a poem in praise of Michael Bublé, where she definitely "wants him dirty", and enumerates clearly the 'how'. 

The open mic performers, with a few highlights, were:

Val Thompson and Heather Fowler - several short pieces from Lichfield Poets' anthology on the theme of Stars

Liz Lefroy - visiting from Shrewsbury, three poems including Later Love on loving later in life. A well constructed 3 minute set.

Deb Alma - The Emergency Poet. Three superb, often very rude, relationship poems. Many music and song related lines and images.

Dwane Reads - on the secret pigeon police and blogs. Everything you know is there, but seen through a kaleidoscope.

Christine Coleman - wonderful three part poem about birth from a baby's perspective. I would have liked to see a longer set.

Kate Walton - read the prologue to I am Blackbird. Beautiful metaphors for freedom and captivity. Will be performing a full set at the Spark on the 19th of March.

Roy McFarlane - 1963, part of a series about being the son of a preacher, starts by using headlines and records from that year. Lost Words, which resounded well with a room of poets.

Phil Binding - the Singing Rail. Atmospheric story of the day that changed an engine driver's life. A real hidden treasure, brought the whole room to absolute silence.

Mike & Gemma - two short poems on an ecological theme, and a poem about a mystery chest in the bedroom.

Andy Summer - returning to performance. Mouldy Old Poem, on finding work to read,  Soft Ground, extended metaphor.

Terri Jolland - Central Focus, on how prospective buyers see the house and not the home, Patchwork Cluttered Quilt, a metaphor on clearing out. I overheard Charlie Jordan telling Terri how much she enjoyed this set at the end of the evening.

Tony Keeton - pilgrims old and new in Buxton Water. Ocean Trigonometry, a romantic triangle, the scientist and the sea

Jayne Stanton - two quality poems. A woodland fantasy, and a piece on birth.

Andy Conner - Quiet Kid, not showing feelings or fears due to low confidence and fear of the reaction of others.

Janet Smith - Tempest, a (first?) night of pleasure together. "last night the wind twisted in the fir tops".

Ian Ward - a sea shanty about the damning of a soul.

Mal Dewhirst - Lichfield section of the laureate poem plus Small Town Boy 1965, from the forthcoming Tamworth community show Quadrophenia.

There are so many poets that I haven't done justice to, here, that it hurts. For the real flavour of the event you have to attend. The next opportunity to do this is on May 14th at the Spark Cafe. If you want a seat be there well in advanced of the 7:30 start.

Alight touch and laureates

In the car: The Stranglers, Giants

On the page: Brian May:The definitive Biography, Laura Jackson

Where I'm at: Poetry Alight and Staffs Laureate Inauguration

Onscreen: Avengers Assemble

In the ether: Litter magazine

Poetry Alight at the Spark Cafe at Lichfield is one of my personal favourite events. The quality of the invited poets is as good as any I have attended, the open mic slots are filled by many of my favourite poets from East and West Midlands, but the atmosphere is open, friendly and supportive enough for new readers not to feel intimidated.

This Tuesday was no exception. There was a diversity of styles, ages and experience that retained and revitalised the listener's interest across the whole evening.

In reviewing the evening I will attempt to give a flavour of this, any mis-quotes, mis-spellings or other mistakes are entirely mine.

Our host, Gary Longden, kicked the night off in style with From Stretford to Stratford, a well balanced piece about his Olympic journey from ambivalence about the event to enthusiasm. He was followed by incoming Staffordshire Laureate Mal Dewhirst with an extract from his epic All sides of the shire, which will be performed in full at his inauguration on 4th October at Lichfield library. Mal also explained a little about his ideas on the role of the laureate.

Jayne Stanton, a regular at many events in the Midlands and recently returned from a poetry exchange visit to Cork, gave us two short pieces. The first, a slightly surreal piece about holes, gave us the wonderful view that "If holes cannot exist without a host/then that makes them parasites

The next two readers, Dwane Reads and Mark Anthrobus are from opposite ends of the experience spectrum, but both gave us social commentaries. Dwane's Druggie on the roof is a well observed slice of estate life based on a real incident, while Mark gave us poems on food additive addiction and social ostracism. 

Known for his gothic fantasy pieces, Ian Ward initially gave us a lighter piece Meeting Mr. Neville, with a very literal interpretation of the Faustian deal that TV talent show competitors enter into, before returning to his darker roots in the second piece.

The first guest poet of the night was Roy Marshall, who read mainly from his collection, Gopagilla. His set was a tour de force of short snappy slices of life, eleven poems in ten minutes. Favourites? Gopagilla, Rose, Dandytime which contains the wonderful lines "His gift to me,/ the long forgotten tempo/ of a boy's life", Relic and No signals available which begins with the phrase "The sky is unmanned". 

Closing the first section, Deborah Tyler-Bennett managed the difficult task of following Roy with aplomb. Tahiti is a poetic travelogue and more; Tell Me, from a sequence about London's ghosts, paints a misty and evocative picture of the city and Jimmy and Steph - a reunion of the couple from Quadrophenia many years after the events in the film.

Deborah also showed her lighter side with Horse and himself about the 19th century's "maddest man in Britain", Me and Mr Smith based on an 18th Century "Gentleman's Annual" about London whorehouses and Cheerful revisited which is a tribute to Ian Dury's song; a rhyming list poem with many references to Dury's other song lyrics.

Paul Francis kicked off the second section in style with Screws, a wonderful and satirical piece about Sunday scandal sheets and the Leveson enquiry. First timer Lucy Beth followed with three untitled angst filled poems, the last of which had the memorable lines "We are 60% water. Mine has been salted/ and pushed from behind blackened lashes". 

Experience again came to the stage with Penny Hewlett, whose second poem Bostar beach was a beautiful sonnet set on the Isle of Lewes, which became a meditation on aloneness at the turn.

Chesterfield poet Tony Keeton, introduced as a master of the surreal, did not disappoint. His first poem, Fly tipping, was a study of drunken student spiders on a night out, tipping a fly onto its back. His second, a tribute to Neil Armstrong, contained one of the most vivid images of the night "the stained-glass Earth turning, solid as a thought, against the sun". Tony is one of the best kept secrets of the Derbyshire poetry scene and deserves a much wider audience.

David Calcutt had requested a slightly longer spot than the normal three minutes to perform Tears for Achilles. Lichfield poets duly obliged and we were treated to a five minute meditation on, in order, the extacy of killing, the metamorphosis of death, destruction as a measure of godhead and the vulnerability that drives the ultimate soldier. A beautiful and well crafted poem and performance.

David was followed by the final two guest poets. On first, Emma Purshouse, organiser of Bilston Voices open mic. Emma gave us comedy of a quality that reminds an audience the abbreviation lol has a real meaning. Introducing herself with the short, sharp observation of Welcoming the poet  and continuing with The art school and your picnic is always the same faces a list poem of artists "William Blake had baked a special kind of cake", observing that there were no women amongst the artists taught at school. No subject was too odd to be tackled, from Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway on Jeremy Kyle, using only quotes from the bard, through how picking up butts can get you into hot water, to Jumpers for frogs.

Final guest Paul McDonald, a lecturer in creative writing, also picked on Shakespeare. Shakespeare is barred, is a list of the imagined problems he might cause, "I managed to shut him up before the skinheads closed in". He followed this with Tall story, about a girlfriend who starts growing at an exponential rate until "I live in her navel, now", continued with Catch a falling tortoise and finished with Loft Insulation about giving cold callers the order of a lifetime, including "... border seals, electric eels dreaming of hell".

The final section was a short finishing blast with just three poets. Janet Jenkins gave us two poems from her Dig the Abbey  set, Off to the past and A nun's anguish. The latter a story of a buried nun disturbed by the digging and modern life's "iPods and ice cream, webcams and wellies".

Penultimate reader Tracey Owen runs an event in Stone, but was new to the Spark. Tracey read two poems, Look into your soul and a rousing Big fish, little fish, about a heavy night out in Stoke. Finally, Lichfield poet Tom Wyre gave a moving performance of his remembrance poem 11/11/11 and Timeslip, a love lost, or perhaps never found, poem of missed meetings.

The next Poetry Alight will be on 19th February 2013 at the Spark Cafe in Lichfield.

Spoken, Speaker, Blogged

Spoken in Stapleford

This week is morphing into an eventful one. Not only all of the normal family dramas, but the opportunity to renew acquaintances, old and new.

Today I was at the Spoken Word at the Old Cross in Stapleford, just off the A52, near Nottingham. The event is ably hosted by Richard Young, a raconteur and storyteller of considerable flair, who tonight tried his hand at being the Tommy Cooper of the word, just when you thought the whole tale had died in chaos you realise that this was all part of the presentation.

Richard's co-host, Dave Wood, is also a storyteller, presenting slice of life tales that twist suddenly at the end. Where there are tales and poems you will often find Dwane Reads, whose poetry is used to describe similarly radge scenarios.

I wasn't taking notes of names, but other performers included Terri and Ray Jolland and special guest Jackie Brewster, who I first met recently at the NAWG festival of writing in Nottingham. Jackie's quality shone through her ten minute spot of two flash fiction pieces and three poems - the latter inspired by her sister's art reflecting on their childhood.

All in all this was an evening with a spark of something different and special, fun with an edge, quality with a smile.

Bemused in Bakewell

Tomorrow I'm off to Bakewell to meet up with my old friends from Writers in the Peak. In the past I have read against them, in the Write Off competition and read with them, at Bakewell festival. This time I am going to read to them and present a workshop on taking the everyday and making it special, called Senses and Sensibility. at least that's what I think I'm doing. Secretary Mid seemed a little hazy on the detail, but I'm primed for anything. 

Blogging

I'm also writing this up on a new blogger app on my iPad, so the entire piece is an experiment of sorts. Please let me know what you think.

Bye for now.

A long break and a wild Fizz

My excuse is that I'm too busy doing things to write about them. My writing time tends to be spent on  poetry. Who wants to know about me, anyway?

But maybe I'm wrong, so I'll try to keep the blog underway in future.

This weekend I spent half a day at Polesworth Abbey for a Fizz event connected to Mal Dewhirst's Poetry at Dig the Abbey.

The day was bright and hot, and I managed to get some halfway decent photos.
I only managed to get to two of the workshops Mal ran, but my tutor for the second was Maeve Clarke, whose style suited me well.

Pictures are here

New Adventures in Verse

It has been a busy week or so. I have heard about the plans for my poem on the Polesworth Poetry Trail; I'm not sure how much Mal Dewhirst, the organiser, will allow me to say, but if we can get the permission of the highways agency then the display will be awesome.

Mal is also the organiser of the poetry side of Nuneaton festival (2 July), where he will be poet in residence  and wandering bard. I don't have the contact details in full yet, but you should be able to tweet him on the day with requests and comments for his poem of the event. One of my own poems may well be featured at the event and I will be reading at one or many of the four venues. I'll post a link in my next update.

Tomorrow I'm also reading at Erdington Library, the subject is memoirs (not memories, but books of memories) and I'm on in the second half, so I have time to decide what to read based on the other poets' offerings.

I'm also doing a lot of thinking about poetry at present, inspired by the brilliant Matthew Welton who is taking a group through some fairly advanced stuff on poetry. It may be that I have it all wrong (my words, certainly not Matt's) and that I need to re-think my thinking. We'll see.

Finally, I'm preparing for the next Spoken Worlds event. People travel from across the Midlands to be at the event, but the local paper, the Burton Mail,  can't even be arsed to print the interview they did with me and Bohdan of Apples and Snakes still hasn't found his way to us. Still, we have plenty of great quality readers, and it's all open mic. So NAAAAH to em all.

Collectorz, Councils, students and speakers

Over the last few weeks I've been indexing my books. This became necessary because I lend so many out that it has become difficult to remember who I lent to. There is some excellent indexing software out there, and I eventually chose the product from collectorz.com www.collectorz.com because it handles loans, wish lists and locations pretty well, and it is also compatible with my bar-code scanner. It turns out that of the 347 books I've indexed so far 79 are poetry books and 29 are about the craft of writing (I include critiques and books on linguistics and literary theory  in this).
What surprised me even more was the fact that my non-fiction, so far, outnumbers my fiction by a big margin. History, which I hated at school,  is my biggest non-fiction category, for fiction crime/detective and science fiction are running pretty close. I'll keep you updated as I continue indexing.

Over the last six months I've been in touch with the local council on and off about the trees in property they own adjacent to mine. Some of them have grown very close to my house, the branches now touch the house and scrape the roof and I'm afraid that the roots may be doing the same to the foundations. The officer who ran the "green spaces" section came out lasy August and agreed to remove 5 trees by March. When this hadn't been done I got in touch with the council again and the same man came out. This time he couldn't recall coming previously, would certainly not have promised to remove trees and didn't think the land belonged to them anyway. I got a call next day to confirm that the land does belong to them - which I knew because he had checked before - and that contractors would be out as soon as possible to trim overhanging branches back. 4 weeks on and I'm still waiting.

My daughter has finished her degree and I hired a van yesterday to bring her property back home. The room she has let is very damp and everything is covered in mould or has a sheen of spores. Why are landlords allowed to let rooms that are clearly a hazard to the occupiers and their property? Why aren't they liable for the damage their rooms cause?

On a much nicer note I'd like to thank everyone who has come to the Spoken Worlds open mic night over the last 18 months. The quality has been excellent and the geographic diversity almost as wide as the diversity in styles and genres. We have had regulars from Tamworth, Lichfield, Buxton, Chesterfield, Leicester, Ashby, Worcester, Birmingham, Derby, Nottingham and also the local groups. One-off visitors have come from even further afield. Styles have tanged from stand-up to song, from poetry to monologues to storytellers and sketches. Over the next few months I hope to have one or two guest artists to liven events up even more.

Pictures of the events so far are spread across facebook, flickr and my website at present, I'm hoping to unify them soon.

Thank you and well done, all.