Templar Poetry Comes to Belfast!

Where would you find the following?

intimacy  surprise  recognition  a new way of looking  urgency  slantways  presence the shock of the new language  privileged glimpses sensuality texture  storytelling ingenuity depth authenticity graininess grit...

In a poetry workshop, of course. And in the coffee breaks and discussion groups...and afterwards, going home in the car...and quite possibly, for days afterwards, on the phone and in emails...

Swindon's 19th Festival of Literature Poetry Sunday was a resounding success. Now I come to think of it, one word is missing from the list - passion. There was plenty of that. We talked about how scared some teachers are, how hungry our children are, how schools are being squeezed, how all the joy and creativity is being sucked out of education and how poetry entered our bloodstreams like a virus. We talked about burning flames and carrying torches. I think we all came away from the day determined to be better ambassadors for poetry. 

And now what?

Four Templar poets are going to be giving a reading in Belfast at the end of this week:

    

Maggie O'Dwyer, Jane Weir, Michael Woods and Pat Winslow 

Templar's excellent managing editor, Alex McMillen will be there too. 

If intimacy, surpise, recognition, a new way of looking are words you like and if you happen to live nearby, go. You'll be richly rewarded.

 Naughton Studio

Lyric Theatre

55 Ridgeway Street

Belfast BT9 5FB

Friday 18 May 2012 8pm

£5 entry

If you live in England, don't worry. Later this year Northern Irish published poets will travel to Templar Poetry events as part of an ongoing exchange programme.

And now, bloggers, here are your links:

www.publishingni.com 

www.templarpoetry.co.uk

The Literature Festival Season is Upon Us!

Great to see literature festivals springing up all over the place. Chipping Norton had its first one last week. There was a terrific poetry open mic session and an equally terrific performance poetry session later on that evening. Both events were packed out and there was a real diversity of work. Open mics can sometimes be quite predictable and so can performance poetry events. These two were distinguished by their breadth of talent and range of form. Watch this space for something occurring on a more regular basis. Chippy is ripe for a monthly gig.

Swindon is having its 19th literature festival 7th - 19th May. It kicks off with the Dawn Chorus at 5:30 am. Really, this is too good to miss. Templar Poets are well represented, too.

The inestimable Jane Weir reads and talks on Thursday 10th May at 7:30

On 13th May it's Swindon Poetry Sunday! 

10:45 - 12:30  Workshop 'the texture of knowing'
exploring the physical world of poetry with Pat Winslow


10:45 - 12:30  Workshop 'changing places'
with Mike Woods


1:30 - 2:30  Lunchbox Reading 
with BlueGate Poets and Pat Winslow


3:00 - 3:45  Panel Discussion on reading poetry
with Paul Maddern and  Mike Woods
chaired by Alex McMillen, managing editor of Templar Poetry


4:00 - 5:00  Poetry reading
with Bath Poets, Reading Poets and Angela Cleland


5:30 - 6:30   Closing workshop session with everyone!


7:15 - 8:15   Poetry reading
with Swindon Poets, Paul Maddern and Matt Bryden


8:45 - 9:30   Poetry reading
with Mike Woods and Jane Weir.


And now, bloggers, here are your links:

Swindon Literature Festival
Templar Poetry

Poetry! Poetry! Poetry!

Following a thoroughly heartwarming reading with the superb Suzanne Ehrhardt at Worcester's Lamb and Flag in the New Year, I shall be reading in Oxfordshire next month. If poetry is your thing, there's plenty around. Both the Lamb and Flag and Art Jericho are regular hosts. If there's nothing in your area, try setting something up yourself. All it takes is a friendly chat with the pub or shop owner. Try Oxfam Books. Try small exhibition spaces. Open mics are good fun. They're an excellent way of building an audience and raising interest. 

In the meantime, don't miss this!

Back Room Poets with Art Jericho

present a poetry reading

launching recent publications by

Mark Leech, Jennifer A. McGowan and David Olsen

featured poets are

Pat Winslow and Paul Surman

plus your chance to view 

William Cotterill’s

A Tangle of Ghost and Matter

Friday 10^th February 2012

Art Jericho, 6 King Street, Oxford OX2 6DF

Free admission    7 pm for 7:30

To view current and forthcoming exhibitions click here

For the one life we have...

A while ago I announced I had decided to train to be a funeral celebrant for the British Humanist Association. Well, here I am several months later, accredited and having conducted my first funeral. And what a humbling and deeply moving experience that was, too. There is something profoundly stirring about human dignity in the face of grief. Celebrants are in a very privileged position. An enormous amount of trust is placed in us.

A celebrant will very often be given the life story of the person who has just died. It's a raw time for families and friends. What is the sum total of a person's life? It's not the sort of thing we think about in our day-to-day existence. How often do we stop to consider in such depth the people we love and care about the most? Perhaps the act of recollection is in itself a kind of shock. Why didn't I take time to acknowledge the achievements you made when you were alive? Why didn't I take the measure of your life when you were there to share it with me? So many times I've heard people say 'We should have had the funeral when s/he was alive.' I've said it myself.

The truth is, we don't live in the moment often enough. We don't make space in our lives to value what matters most. The only time we do this is when something big happens, like a birth or a death, or the break-up of a relationship, or a car accident, or falling in love, or changing a job or moving to a new place. When something big happens, I think we're actually living on the edge of ourselves. We gift ourselves with a peculiar objectivity.  We're able to feel what it means to inhabit our bodies. We can more easily explore the width and the depth of our feelings. That's why grief feels so distant and unreal and so visceral and present at the same time. You can feel numb and you can also have a pain like a heavy stone growing in the pit of your stomach.

I'm glad I've had grief. I'm glad I've had pain and desperate sadness. I know who I am. I know the yardstick to measure my joy against. I know how delight can throb in the veins, how a laugh can bubble up and explode unexpectedly. A teacher once wrote in my end of year report that I was 'vivid'. The word comes from the Latin vivere, to live.

Which brings me back to humanism. I am a celebrant for the very reason that I celebrate life. However long or short it is, however we fail and succeed and fail again, there is nearly always something to commend us, something we can be proud of. The simple act of telling someone's life story and asking that their life should be remembered is a way of leaving a lasting legacy.

One of the most surprising outcomes has been how a little bit of each legacy leaves some indelible trace of itself in me. I have only just qualified, but already my foot is on the mountain. I have seen so much and I have barely left ground level. I've heard and spoken words of farewell in Fijian, I've listened to a wealth of Namibian music, I've found out things about the town near where I live and I've gone back to a time when my mother was not even born.

And there is so much more...

Click here to see their website

And click here to see my celebrant's web page

Not just a smorgasbord of ABBA, IKEA and divorced detectives

I’ve always wanted to be in the Saturday Guardian telling the world about the cultural highlights of my week. I expect I’m one of thousands. We all end up blogging, don’t we?

Well, for those of you who are interested, here’s my two penn’orth.

On Saturday I went into Oxford to see Ingmar Bergman’s film of The Magic Flute (Trollflöjten). Purists may not like his adaptation. I found it engaging. Håkan Hagegård’s Papageno was delightful. We had the pleasure of Hagegård’s company in the cinema too, so it was interesting to hear him talk beforehand about the filming and about how Swedish works as a sung language. I hadn’t realised just how close Swedish is to German.

Bergman’s trademark close scrutiny of faces was probing. With Sven Nykvist as directory of photography, you wouldn’t expect anything else. Throughout the overture, the camera concentrates on the opera’s imagined audience. We can’t help becoming aware of being watchers, too. We seed ourselves into the crowd. Is that how my face looks? How various human beings are when we’re listening to music. How emotionally alert we seem.

The score, of course, is superb. Mozart has so many layers. The cast had marvellous voices, though Hagegård did say that Bergman used a few ‘tricks’ to achieve such a stunning vocal range. The purists will probably dismiss this as cheating. Well, it’s a film, for goodness sakes, not a live opera. A film is a very different beast.

Still think Sweden’s cultural identity is just a smorgasbord of ABBA, IKEA and divorced detectives? Read Tomas Tranströmer’s The Deleted World. This dual language book plopped through my letterbox this morning and I read it in one sitting. Apparently, Tranströmer is known as the ‘buzzard poet’ because of his aerial views of landscape and human endeavour. But it’s his extraordinary and unexpected intimacy that astounds. In A Winter Night he talks about a storm that:

                        ...puts its mouth to the house

                        and blows to get a tone.

Later, he describes a house that:

                        ...feels its own constellation of nails

                        holding the walls together.

His final stanza opens things out and yet still manages to keep that intimacy:

                        A darker storm stands over the world.

                        It puts its mouth to our soul

                        and blows to get a tone. We are afraid

                        the storm will blow us empty.

These poems are spare and profound. The sea is never far away. Neither are snow and death. In Solitude he describes a near fatal accident in his car. But it’s the second stanza of Black Postcards that makes you aware of living inside your skin:

                        In the middle of life, death comes

                        to take your measurements. The visit

                        is forgotten and life goes on. But the suit

                                    is being sewn on the sly.

Apparently, there are 164 definitions of culture (Kroeber, A.L. and C. Kluckhohn, 1952. Culture: A Critical review of Concepts and Definitions) so I shall include Sunday’s Manchester United debacle and several pints of Becks in my local pub. The less said about that, the better, though the beer was very palatable.

And finally, what’s on my iPod?

The unique and stirring Tamer Animals by Other Lives. This band from Oklahoma claims influences as far apart as the Beatles, Sigur Ros and Philip Glass. Grown-up music from a proper grown-up band which, in the USA, is a rarity these days.

I’ve also been listening to the inestimable Janis Ian. Remember At Seventeen? She was on BBC4’s Songwriter’s Circle last week with Ryan Adams and Neil Finn. It’s very rare I watch TV these days, but occasionally something as good as this will keep me up till 3 am. I’m listening to Ryan Adams, too. He seems to have really come into his own with his new album Ashes and Fire. But the old favourites like the masochistic Come Pick Me Up can still choke me.

And returning to Scandinavia, one of my top favourites at the moment is Annbjørg Lien who plays the hardanger fiddle with Bjørn Ole Rasch on Come Home.  An excellent CD. I wouldn’t be without it.

So, that’s my cultural round-up. I’m looking forward to the Derwent Poetry Festival 11 – 13^th November, as well as the Bridport Open Book Festival 19^th – 26^th November.

As for Manchester United, they’ll get over it, as the man downing his fifth pint said to me. What a magnanimous chap.

Here are your links:

Ingmar Bergman 

Mozart’s Magic Flute

The Deleted World, Tomas Tranströmer, versions by Robin Robertson, 

Enitharmon,£8.95, ISBN 1-904634-48-6, 48 pp.

Other Lives 

Janis Ian          

Ryan Adams

Annbjørg Lien

Derwent Poetry Festival

Bridport Open Book Festival

Seize the Day!

Lots of changes in my life. My prison work looks like it will finish in March and funding seems to be tight for almost everything else these days. Carpe diem is my motto, so I’m not likely to stand still. I had a tattoo done the other week just to highlight the fact. Then I spent the whole of last weekend on my bicycle. What glorious weather and lucky me being able to get out and enjoy it.

But, you know, I really do think we make our own fate. I’m reminded of Stations by the late, great Audre Lorde –

Stations

Some women love to wait for life
for a ring in the June light
for a touch of the sun to heal them
for another woman's voice
to make them whole
to untie their hands
put words in their mouths
form to the passages
sound to their screams
for some other sleeper to remember
their future
their past.

Some women wait for their right train
in the wrong station
in the alleys of morning
for the noon to holler
the night come down.

Some women wait for love
to rise up
the child of their promise
to gather from earth
what they do not plant
to claim pain for labor
to become
the tip of an arrow
to aim at the heart of now
but it never stays.

Some women wait for visions
that do not return
where they were not welcomed
naked
for invitations to places
they always wanted to visit
to be repeated.

Some women wait for themselves
around the next corner
and call the empty spot peace
but the opposite of living
is only not living
and the stars do not care.

Some women wait for something to change
and nothing does change
so they change
themselves.

I’ve started my training with the British Humanist Association and am through to the second stage. If all goes well, I shall be up and running as a celebrant next year. So, if anyone out there wants a funeral ceremony, I’ll be happy to help you plan it.

Happy? Well, yes. Aren’t we happy remembering people we love? Didn’t they give us fun and joy? They probably gave us love, too. A person’s life is bigger than their death. Death is just the exit. Like birth’s just the entrance. Oh, I know entrances and exits are important and they can pack a huge emotional weight. But they only do that because of the bit that goes in between.

Some of the most nourishing funerals I’ve been to have been humanist ones. The glitter, the laughter, the tears, the music, the poetry, the memories, the warmth and humanity of everyone involved, including the celebrant. The absolute worst was a church one – I can’t remember the denomination and it’s irrelevant. I just remember the vicar saying my friend deserved to die of AIDS because he was a sinner. You can imagine how his mother felt. It was brutal. I felt cold for days and days after that. And so angry. It’s one of the reasons I’ve joined the BHA and started training.

There’s a big debate going on at the moment about religion versus secularism. For the record, I don’t mind people learning about religion. In fact, I want people to learn about religion. I’d rather they didn’t just learn about the one their parents or their immediate community have. And I’d rather children didn’t have it foisted on them, too. Children have their whole lives ahead of them in which to make decisions. They’re not empty vessels to be filled up.  

Human beings have had belief systems for centuries. We can trace belief systems back to prehistoric times. Some of our best literature comes from religious texts. There’s some terrific poetry in the Bible, for example. Religion has given rise to some of the most profound music, too. I’ve found absolute stillness when listening to Tibetan monks and Cree drummers. When human beings transcend the everyday, we are at our most magnificent. But we don’t need religion to do that.

Belief systems – faiths if you prefer – also generate moral codes. These, in turn, form the basis of human laws. Most societies will probably agree that it’s not very nice to murder somebody or steal from them. There’s an underlying humanitarian view informing our understanding about what’s ‘wrong’ or ‘right’. I have no problem with this. It’s the god bit I struggle with. I’m an empiricist. I’m a suck it and see sort of person. If it works, keep it, refine it. If it doesn’t, try something else. A heavenly reward doesn’t interest me. I’m not ‘good’ because a god will find me a nice place in heaven. I strive to be a better person because I can see that it helps to make the world a better place.  My concern is with people, not a hereafter that no one, incidentally, has ever managed to prove exists. There’s something wildly selfish and egocentric about extreme religiosity. What kind of person puts their reward in heaven above the common good? People like that vicar, I suppose.

Links:

Audre Lorde

British Humanist Association

Voices from the Dark

When do victims become survivors? Does simply living to tell the story mean you're a survivor? Is telling the story enough in itself? Making sense of the story goes further. Learning to celebrate who you are goes further still. Having a party on stage after performing stories from your life must surely be the ultimate statement of joyful defiance.

I've been working with Eve Women's Wellbeing Project for the past four months. Fourteen months prior to my involvement, they began writing about their lives. Most of the women had never done any writing before and they certainly had never performed their work. Even so, they booked the theatre at the Mill in Banbury. Didn't they feel they were being a little reckless or premature? 'No,' I was told when I first met them. 'Otherwise we'll never do it. It's a deadline.' They'd already set about getting funding for a professional writer to help them shape the work (me) and they'd found a director. Not so much bloody minded as bloody determined. 

The women learned fast. All their lives they've been learning how to deal with adversity - domestic abuse, rape, sexual abuse, discrimination on an alarming scale. What was a mere stumbling block like a public performance? They began the process of editing and shaping their material, they wrote a hilarious doctor's surgery sketch and finally, they wrote a fairy story with superb elements of pantomime in it.

I'm not saying there weren't wobbles and heated discussions - what professional company doesn't have these? It was an enormous struggle sometimes to believe that they had the talent and even the right to be funny on stage.

Did I use the word professional? Of course I did. OK, the women aren't writers and actors, but they were 100% professional in their energy and commitment. They rewrote and reworked, they rehearsed constantly, they resolved difficulties, they negotiated with the lighting and sound technician, they sourced their own props and music - I should mention here that Eve have a fabulous singer - they organised their own transport and publicity, they did radio interviews and they supported one another throughout the whole process. In short, they behaved much like any professional ensemble company might do.

Voices from the Dark played to a warm and enthusiastic audience. They made made us cry in the first act - the stories are unbelievably harrowing - then they made us cry again in the second act, this time with laughter. The audience even began joining in with the running gags. Finally, as I said at the beginning of this blog, everyone piled down onto the stage for a big singing and dancing party. You don't see many events like that, I can tell you.

Eve has big plans for the future - watch this blog for updates. In the meantime, they need money. Dig deep. This is an organisation that is much needed. They already have another group in Witney and are hoping to set one up in Aylesbury. We need an Eve in every town, in my view.

Here's their link - and check out their donate button!

Eve Women's Wellbeing Project

And here's Louise, Eve's fabulous singer at work:

Millison's Wood

And we shouldn't forget the funders:

Cherwell District Council