Literature & Spoken Word Community | Southbank Centre

Rachel Rose Reid is a poet and storyteller who has been in virtual and actual residence at the Poetry Library during London LitFest 2012.  She’s sharing stories she has discovered there to celebrate the Collection, which now spans a century’s worth of poetry  from 1912 to the present day.

“A lady came to the library looking for a recording of Ivor Cutler. He used to come here nearly every day. Sure enough he came in.  And he read the poem to her right here at the front desk. That could only really happen here”.

What John, Poetry Librarian says is true: the people found reading and writing at the window-side study desks are also the people found on the shelves.

‘I didn’t grow up hearing poetry. When I was about 20 I moved to the Hebrides, and there was space for it’, says one such regular, poet Stephen Watts.

His life experiences and poetry are strong matches for London’s rich patchwork, from his Alpine-born ancestors and his own flight from suburbia to Scottish wilderness, to his return, diving deep into the heart of Whitechapel, the streets a heady brew of cultures, characters and encounters ripe for picking.

‘I first came to the Library about 35 years ago. It was in Piccadilly run by Jonathan Barker; he had a real passion for books. Back then it was a crammed building, but the rooms were quiet. I remember going there many times.’

The affection with which Poetry Library fans talk to me about the place is akin to the passionate expressiveness of first love. I asked librarian Chrissy whether working here has diminished this sense of romance, ‘No’, she said, ‘the intrigue has not gone. This is still my favourite place in London. I guess anyone who works in a library has the pleasure of borrowing books on the bus home to read over night and bring back. Well, I still try to borrow more than I can physically manage.’

And the romantic similarities continue. In the library and online, there’s even a lonely hearts column for poetry. Single lines await attention from those who can find their matching poems for their curious / desperate / eager seekers.

Do not weep for me the day I die, they say, I have not fully lived my life; I had a little motor car, I called it Nibby Neb.

The Lost Quotations are a long-loved quirky presence here, proved by the yellow plastic folder full of thank you letters:

…I cannot express how much I appreciate your help in finding this poem.  I can hear my mum’s voice as I read it: her inflection, her smile, how easily she recited it from memory…

…Thank you so much…I’d wanted to source the poem as the means of lifting the spirits of my father…he was absolutely delighted…

‘It’s great to have such a wide range in one place’ says Stephen. ‘When I first came I remember reading Hugh McDermott and Yannis Ritzos for the first time, and finding poets like Bill Griffiths – poets from the ‘60s and ‘70s – whose work was in great contrast to Eliot and Larkin. But one style is not to the exclusion of the other. If you like a certain trend you can foolishly discount everything else – but when I come here, it’s just out of a real passion for work that moves me.’

BRICK LANE

(after the death of Altab Ali, and for Bill Fishman)

Whoever has walked slowly down Brick Lane in the darkening air and a stiff little rain,

past the curry house with lascivious frescoes,

past the casual Sylheti sweet-shops and cafés

and the Huguenot silk attics of Fournier Street,

and the mosque that before was a synagogue and before that a chapel,

whoever has walked down that darkening tunnel of rich history

from Bethnal Green to Osborne Street at Aldgate,

past the sweat-shops at night and imams with hennaed hair,

and recalls the beigel-sellers on the pavements,  windows candled to Friday night,

would know this street is a seamless cloth, this city, these people,

and would not suffocate ever from formlessness or abrupted memory,

would know rich history is the present before us,

laid out like a cloth – a cloth for the wearing –  with bits of mirror and coloured stuff,

and can walk slowly down Brick Lane from end to seamless end,

looped in the air and the light of it, in the human lattice of it,

the blood and exhausted flesh of it, and the words grown bright with the body’s belief,

and life to be fought for and never to be taken away.

From The Blue Bag; Watts, Stephen,

[which will be back on the shelves as soon as I have returned it, RRR]

Filed under: London Literature Festival 2012, Misc | Tagged: Anita Sethi, Gatz, Geoff Dyer, Kathleen Tessaro, Sarah Churchwell, The Great Gatsby | 4 Comments »

 By Anita Sethi

I watch the London Eye revolve and through its slow oscillations Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament gleam beneath a fleeting patch of sunlight.  The Level 5 Function room of the Southbank Centre offers a splendid view over London, and watching the Eye revolve I am reminded of another wheel turning, though in literature rather than in life: a poignant scene in F Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night in which Nicole has a breakdown on a Ferris Wheel.

To keep the wheels turning on cutting-edge discussion of F Scott Fitzgerald, gathered here are writers Geoff Dyer and Sarah Churchwell, author Kathleen Tessaro, and artistic director of Elevator Repair Service, John Collins, whose company has staged the  West End performance Gatz.  Together they discuss the enduring appeal of The Great Gatsby, still resonant today, in the context of the wider work of F Scott Fitzgerald, its contexts, and its legacy.

“It’s a book defined by its miniatureness”, pointed out Geoff Dyer, going on to explore the paradox of how although it is short (only 48, 588 words), the felt experience of reading it is much larger since it embodies all of the big themes: morality and the lack it; money and consumption; madness; glamour and grit.

Asked whether her experience of teaching The Great Gatsby differs in the UK from in the USA, the American academic Sarah Churchwell picked out some interesting, culturally specific details from the text, such as the symbolism of the colour green which flashes throughout the narrative. Whereas students in the States might pick up on the fact that green is the “colour of money”, our own banknotes adorned with the Queen’s head might not lend themselves to such associations.

One theme resonant universally is that of failure, purposeful failure, and how The Great Gatsby is a book that “failed to fail”.  Fitzgerald was so obsessed with the idea of failure that he was almost longing for it.  Does failure replace the idea of tragedy and epic grandeur in the book?   It is essentially a book about the fact that “reality is disappointing compared the image that we have in our heads”, about the great gulf between dream and reality, about what it feels like to have our illusions stripped away.

There was also an interesting discussion about the varying virtues and vices of the forms of books, plays, and films – each medium has sought to tell the story of The Great Gatsby.  Language can do something that films can’t, allowing the reader to be both there and not there, using the imaginative faculty.

Another question raised (which I remember being asked in a university interview myself many moons ago) is: what is it that puts the “great” in Gatsby?  It is, of course, his “capacity for hope”; as Sarah Churchwell succinctly pointed out; whereas Gatsby has capacity, the characters around him are “incapacious”.

As I watch the water lap on the River Thames, I’m reminded of one of my favourite lines from The Great Gatsby:

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”.  

All in all, this discussion about the theme of failure managed to be highly successful.

Filed under: London Literature Festival 2012, Misc | Tagged: Anita Sethi, Gatz, Geoff Dyer, Kathleen Tessaro, Sarah Churchwell, The Great Gatsby | 1 Comment »