words & music, words & art, words & lions

Moving around in the outside world after my prolonged demi-incarceration is wonderful, like having a house-arrest sentence lifted. I'm still cautious, replacing wild dancing at the Silk Milk with the newly-discovered joy of Strictly Come Dancing ~ don't judge me till you've slouched a mile in my slippers ~ but daytime activities are back on the menu. So on Saturday afternoon I was down at Crocker & Woods coffee shop in Catherine Hill to hear Pete Gage playing fabulous 12-bar blues, and on Sunday went along to a superb poetry workshop led by George Szirtes at the Holburne Museum in Bath. Interestingly, George's guidance resonated closely with Seamus Moran's words on Friday about the artist's entire life coming out in his work: The shape of a poem, George suggests, is "haunted" by the stuff around it - "all the stuff of our life which we bring to it." He used the analogy of a perfectly placed goal shot being described as sheer poetry and focussed on the 'playful' element of writing. "Don't be be burdened down ~ there's this impulse to be significant, to seek for admirable poetic qualities. Be playful!"
So we did - and I took this notion to my Words at the Black Swan workshop at Seamus' exhibition that evening. Nine imaginative writers shared responses to the imagery and 'played' with the notion of creating 'moulded' patterns in words, with some stunning responses which will all be posted on our facebook site and displayed in the Gallery while the exhibition lasts, so do take a look next time you're at the market or in Divas.

Luke Wright brought his latest show Essex Lion to Bristol last night: it had glow-stick reviews (I nicked that image from Anna Freeman, good one eh?) in Edinburgh but this Blahblahblah performance Luke reckoned as his best night yet.  Luke's lion is lifted from last year's news item about a spurious siting, and he takes as link theme to a diversity of character stories ~ hilariously satiric, angrily political, or unexpectedly compassionate ~ "the things we see because we want to see them." As well as rapid-fire rhyming, striking imagery, and sublime turns of phrase, Luke's observational comedy is never far from self-deprecating and it's this quality that makes his flamboyant style work so well. Whether he's pretending to strut in Cuban heels, parodying his penchant for posh plumbers or recalling teenage delusions, he reminds us that we all share the same conviction as the Essex lion spotter: how can a thing that makes you feel / be anything but fucking REAL?

Final footnote: congratulations & big virtual bouquet to my co-participant at the Holburne workshop Daisy Behagg who has won the Bridport Prize for best poem, viz: praise from judge Wendy Cope and a cheque for £5000. Wow.

To Bridgwater for a day reflecting on the how-where-what-why of stories, described as 'a feast of story-telling in its widest sense' by organiser Tim Hill who is Outdoor Celebratory Arts officer for Thrive Somerset and also provided the feast of homemade bread and soup for lunch. What are stories? Perhaps we never decided, but this was a rich day in terms of ideas and creative camaraderie as as participants from across Somerset and beyond shared stories and strawberries in the sunny garden of the Arts Centre.

Home of the Wriggler probably sounded quite good at the planning stage.
An abandoned car factory, what tales that could tell! Think of all the people whose lives, over the years, were dominated by the motor industry, imagine fragments of their stories threaded together to show the heart-beat of a community, a kind of Under-Milk-Wood but from the dark of a disused car works - and best of all, the actors will generate their own onstage lighting by peddling a giant bicycle, which will be ironic as well as ecologically radical. You can see why Stan's Cafe thought they were on a winner with their new show. The reality was that staring into Stygian gloom while four people gossip about humdrum lives of far too many names to follow, sadly, palls after about as long as it takes to think Ooh they're generating their own onstage lighting, how very ecologically radical and ironic. Which is about an hour short of the running time.

With so much theatrical stuff taking my attention recently, it's ages since I was last at a poetry reading. Poetry Can is organising the Bristol Spring Poetry Festival so Emily and I went along to the Arnolfini to listen to George Szirtes, supported by Peter Bennet and Rita Ann Higgins. Szirtes came to England from Hungary aged 8, after the 1956 uprising; he writes of displacement and madness and how 'being ordinary is the extraordinary thing', complex ideas and simple words, gorgeously crafted. The election was mentioned only once, at the end, when the compere suggested that "Poetry provides some redress." Well... consolation and inspiration, yes, but no remedy: Like Szirtes said,
We are the poppies sprinkled along the field.
We are simple crosses dotted with blood.
Beware the sentiments concealed
in this short rhyme. Be wise. Be good.

"The art of writing is to explain the complications of the human soul with the simplicity that can be universally understood" Alan Sillitoe wrote, quoted by poet Ian McMillan in his tribute to the author who died this week. Sillitoe's seminal novels Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner made stars of Albert Finney and Tom Courtney, and nearly 50 years on he inspired the Arctic Monkey's 2006 debut album: Whatever You Say I Am That's What I'm Not.

And finally: a year on, One-And-Other have moved all their webcam stuff to the British Library archive so my Plinth hour will be archived forever, theoretically. In fact although I'm credited with 139 "Like!" hits, my slot ends after a minute - there's more here as I manage a shout-out to end the war in Afghanistan before being JCBd away...
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