Meet the Author: Chika Unigwe talks to Anita Sethi: “The process of writing has changed me completely”

Posted on July 4, 2012 by Anita Sethi


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By Anita Sethi

LONDON LITERATURE FESTIVAL PREVIEW:

EVENT: NIGERIA NOW: Noo Saro-Wiwa and Chika Unigwe

DATE/PLACE:  4 July, 7.45pm, Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth’s Hall

I first interviewed Chika Unigwe in Trinidad & Tobago during the NGC Bocas Lit Festival.  During our interview, the acclaimed author discussed a host of engrossing topics, ranging from the themes in her compelling new novel, Night Dancer which explores the complexities and contradictions of Nigeria, to ‘nego-feminism’, and how literature has the capacity to effect change.  Her event at the London Literature Festival 2012 is sure to be fascinating so do grab a ticket if you can.

Chika Unigwe’s critically acclaimed second novel,  ‘On Black Sisters’ Street’ (first released in Dutch under the title ‘Fata Morgana’), is a tale of choices and displacement set against the backdrop of the Antwerp prostitution scene and was longlisted for the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.  She explained her motivation in writing the book:

“‘On Black Sister’s Street’ was a book I had to write because I was very intrigued by the subject matter of the prostitutes in Antwerp. I had to write it to get the curiosity out of my head.  The process of writing the book changed me completely. It taught me to be a lot more empathic. I saw a face of Nigeria I didn’t know existed. I didn’t know it was such a huge export of women”.

That shows that literature has a capacity to change both the writer and the reader?

“Definitely. It definitely changed me.  My first thought about these women was ‘have they no shame?’, but then I realised through writing the book that some people don’t have the luxury of feeling shame.”

Both ‘On Black Sister’s Street’ and your new novel, “Night Dancer” deal powerfully with the theme of women’s lives, their trials and tribulations.

“Women’s lives is a subject in which I’m very interested, and how women have been oppressed. I went to a talk by Professor Obioma Nnaemeka in which she was arguing that, interestingly, a Western form of feminism isn’t always acceptable in Africa – so ‘nego-feminism’ is negotiated feminism in which you stay within the limits of your culture but manipulate the space you have.  One of the first short stories I wrote after listening to this talk about ‘nego-feminism’ was about a young woman in an abusive relationship.”

The title of your compelling new novel, ‘Night Dancer’, has interesting layers of meaning. Could you explain more about that?

“In ‘Night Dancer’, you don’t really see the protagonist as she’s already dead by the time the book opens. Night dancer is a transliteration of a word used to refer to witches – someone who operates outside the accepted norms. That also refers to my protagonist who breaks all the norms.”

This theme of witches is very topical at the moment with some recent horrific news stories of people being accused of witchcraft and brutally punished.

“A video went viral on Youtube of some self-styled bishop in Nigeria who had an altar call and he accused a woman of witchcraft and when she denied it he slapped her.   The past five years has been really awful as there are women being accused of witchcraft and sent out of their homes.  It’s a society where everything is broken and things don’t work.  If you’re working so hard and your business is failing – who do you blame? your daughter for being a witch?”

The image of the ‘broken society’ has been used powerfully in Nigerian literature, including Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” – is this a theme of Nigerian literature you aim to continue unravelling?

“I worked in politics as a counsellor in Nigeria. The reason I went into politics is the same reason I write – I want to change something. ‘ Change’ is such a big word, but I want to have an impact. That’s what motivates my writing”.

“Be the change you want to see in the world”, as Mahatma Gandhi said?

“At least try to. That’s the greatest thing about being a writer – you can articulate your frustrations with the world and society around you and hopefully someone will read it and it will make a change”.

You also powerfully explore stories and lives and people who have not previously been given a voice.

“The important thing to remember is that all these stories have equal validity”.

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Live and On Loan with Rachel Rose Reid

Posted on July 3, 2012 by Daniel Webb

Each week the London listings pour out another jug-full of mind-boggling hand-clapping crowd-roaring heart-blazing culturally-edifying possibilities that flow out across the Thames into every back street and crooked corner, loud and glorious delights.

And then, right in the middle of it all, right under your nose, some delights barely break above a whisper.

Step out of Waterloo, beneath the bridge, round the back, between Southbank Centre and the NFT, the rooftop garden green and tempting, high ahead of you.  Turn left into the Southbank Centre and immediately to your right for the Singing Lift. Step in and press 5.  Let the choir serenade you up there.  Turn out, turn left. Shh.

This is the Library in London’s jacket pocket. It has been nestled here since 1988, though it began in the post-War boom of the 1950s.

As of 2012, the collection itself spans 100 years, from the estimated birth of Modern Poetry, the sharp hewn lines of poets like Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle slicing through the remains of Romanticism in the face of the 20th Century and the oncoming Great War.

You don’t have to know the names of poetic movements to come here. You don’t even need to know any poems.  You just peel a book off the shelf, part a page (or unclip a CD from its jewel-case) and go.

“You mean, there’s a whole library for poetry?!” Chrissy says.  She works here. Obviously she knows there is a library for poetry. She’s just telling me what people say when she tells them where she works. She sits gently nestled by piles of poetry journals that she digitises for the online collection.

“ ‘You mean, there’s a whole library for poetry?!’,

‘Yes’,

‘How big is it?!’,

‘Over 200,000 items’,

‘What?  But what’s it for?’ ”.

“And what do you tell them?” I ask

“I ask them if they’ve ever been to a wedding or funeral that hasn’t had a poem. And why is it we turn to that?  Why do we turn to poetry of all things at such big life moments? Better than anything else, poetry expresses the inexpressible”.

Jon, who’s been a librarian here since before the SBC redevelopment in 2005, says that for him, poetry is a great mood-changer. “say, if I want to feel upbeat, I’ll pick Ivor Cutler, or John Hegley, or even Ted Hughes”.

Kasmyn says she loves how poetry enables you to “Look in a book and remember yourself”.  I think that’s a wonderfully poetic way for her to make her point.  In fact, pretty much everyone who works here is both avid reader and writer.

“I don’t think people end up here casually, saying  ‘oh I may as well’”, says Chrissy (also a poet), “It seems more like somewhere that people actively want to work”.

“That’s true” says Librarian (and novelist) Mia.

Whilst some of the librarians come from backgrounds with literature running in their families, just as many had nothing but a spark of curiosity that led them to it.  Same as the visitors then.

Some people say “’I don’t know poetry’, ‘I’m not into poetry’, Why is there a library for poetry?’, and then scurry away” Mia notes, “but generally, when I tell people that I work here, they say “Lucky you”.

 

I could never have dreamt that there were such goings-on / in the world between the covers of books / such sandstorms and ice blasts of word / such

staggering peace, such enormous laughter / such and so many blinding bright lights…

Thomas, Dylan (second bookcase on the right, third shelf down)

You can buy tickets for this event by visiting the event page on the website

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Meet the Author: Owen Sheers talks to Anita Sethi

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Anita Sethi

By Anita Sethi

www.twitter.com/anitasethi

Poetical Reflections: An Audience with Owen Sheers

The wonderful thing about the London Literature Festival is that fragments of poetry, or ideas that have been triggered, linger long after the festival is over.  Here’s my first reflection on a variety of such moments:

Poetry was a strong presence at the festival, with powerful readings including the “Poetry and Place” event with Owen Sheers, Nick Laird, Kate Clanchy and Toby Martinez de Las Rivas.  I caught up for a chat with Owen Sheers after his event where he discussed his versatility in working in multiple forms – poetry, prose, plays, journalism, television, and the film adaptation of his critically acclaimed book “Resistance” is forthcoming this autumn.

“a citizen of the world”

His own work aptly reflects the journey of his life, ranging far and wide throughout the world, filled with imagery of maps and bordercrossings.   Born in Fiji in 1974, he left when he was 2 years old, grew up in Wales, and has travelled widely.  Although he aspires to be “a citizen of the world”, he describes his “deep connection” with Wales, expressed in his recent play The Passion.

 ”the moment”

We discussed how  “the moment” is relevant across these different genres. “I was drawn by poets like RS Thomas who has an incredible gift for striking metaphors but is also very drawn to narrative poetry that tells a story”.  Sheers’ own poems likewise compellingly capture the moments of life  yet also the broader narrative of life, with a forward and backward movement and even characterization.

He reads an incredibly haunting new poem inspired by a funeral which uses the subtle changes in nature to reflect profounder insights into the human condition.  Speaking about how moments of life spark literature he says:  “As a writer you’re attuned to those quite lucky intersections, those fortunate coincidences and then it’s a question of what you do with them. It is about a moment and it’s also opening up to an awareness of literary heritage and showing how landscape can find the words we don’t”.

 ”hurt into writing”

Some of the poems he reads out have powerful imagery of both physical and psychological pain and I wonder which medium best deals with that: There’s a famous quote, “hurt into writing”, describes Sheers, “you’re not always hurt into writing but quite often it’s a space where you do work our your troubles; sometimes you say things in poetry you wouldn’t even do in prose; it’s intimate yet also performative. I do think of the page being a stage and the poem an actor so the first person is and is not the poet; it gives you a license and also a shelter…You’re controlling the pain rather than it controlling you”, explains Sheers. “I’m about to do a project with Theatre Royal Haymarket working with people from Afghanistan; all who have been wounded either mentally or physically.  I’m interested in what I’ll find in the language of that world”.

Sheers describes the interesting ways his own body of work reflects that phrase, “hurt into writing”:   “In a very general way with The Dust Diaries when I travelled in the country it felt like the script of it for the next ten years had already been written; that the international community had already decided its attitude. There was a huge feeling of impotence and frustration and I did want to join the dots”, he says.   On a personal level, he is moved into writing poems when people die: “It’s not with a view to publication and many never see the light of day. In the face of death you feel there’s nothing you can do but I feel that something I can do is in some way speak to the person. It’s a fascinating territory to explore”.

“the most extraordinary invention of civilization”

His poems are, though, ultimately filled with joy, creating a rich tapestry of both the pains and pleasures, the light and dark of life: “I don’t know any piece of writing that isn’t a celebration in some way.  On a very basic level it’s a celebration of the fact that the alphabet is one if not the most extraordinary inventions of civilization”.

At the London Literature Festival

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Rhythm and Poetry: an evening of Hip Hop in the Purcell Room

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Alex Rowse

The wonderful Yemisi Blake  introduced me to the world of spoken word a couple of years ago, and some of the first poets to draw me in were Kate Tempest, Polarbear and Inua Ellams. Last Thursday they and a handful of incredibly talented poets came together under Inua’s curation to present a night of verse inspired by Hip Hop. Heading up the event was Charlie Dark, possibly the funniest man on the scene. He repeatedly expressed his excitement and disbelief that such an event was happening at the Southbank, a ‘nice venue with flushing toilets’, but its an accolade that it deserves- the sp0ken word is an art form valued as highly as the more traditional events of the Literature festival.

The format was simple: one poem by each poet and then two of their favourite Hip Hop tracks. It made for one of the most explosive evenings I’ve spent at the Southbank as an eclectic audience were united by humour, sorrow and a deep rooted love of music. Every single poet was top notch that night, but here are some of my old favourites.

Charlie Dark’s poem explored how his relationship with Hip Hop evolved when he became a father and found himself turning raps into bedtime stories and standing in the corner of the playground  covertly nodding to beats through headphones. A moment I found poignant was when he noted how the misogyny within the songs he’d always loved did not sit well with having a little daughter.

PolarBear is a Brummie poet who anchors his work in the every day to which we can all relate. As expected, his poem was funny and endearing whilst intensely reminiscent of those awkward teenage experiences that are tucked away under more pleasant memories. He talked about playing spin the bottle with ‘Gemma McBride- she smells like CK1 and flumps’ whilst Biggie Smalls talks in his head.

Kate Tempest came on stage to perform something she ‘just wrote’ that she hoped was ‘ok’ and within minutes the entire audience was on their feet. Her voice is like a storm that I urge you to experience; it gathers you up in its accelerating rhythms and earnest intensity. The perfect ending came with Inua Ellams. Velvet-soft tones balanced the humour that had permeated the event, reminding us of the pure power of words and how they can be manipulated.

Congrats to these guys and the other poets for a memorable night of beauty, fun and Hip Hop.

Roger Robinson

Jacob Sam La-Rose

Warsan Shire

Poetic Pilgrimage

Zena Edwards

Find me on twitter @alexrowse.

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LOVE FEST: AN EVENING WITH LISA APPIGNANESI

Posted on July 18, 2011 by filmaluation

“Everything is about love, and love is about everything.” So begins Lisa Appignanesi.

On Monday 4th July in the Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall, as part of the Great Thinkers strand, two writers, Lisa Appignanesi and Hanif Kureishi, discussed the former’s new book – All About Love. We were spoiled to have Kureishi as the gentle inquisitor! Did I hear that right? The book is about the lifespan of love. Wow. Who wouldn’t be interested in that?! Appignanesi looked at psychology, philosophy and literature. Not poetry and lyrics, as were too expensive. The remit included falling in love, and sustaining/maintaining love. “Hanif is in the book too.”

Romantic/sexual love is like a form of madness, says Kureishi (from now on ‘K’). Lisa Appignanesi (from now on ‘LA’) responds that it is a delirium, quoting Shakespeare and others. Passion is unruly, irrational, fuelled by unconscious desires. K, “Why would anyone want that?” LA – we find meaning of intensity, and of the body, especially when we’re young. It is personal and cultural/societal, the latter where romance comes from. K, like a devil’s advocate, states that the less you know someone the more you like them. They can fix your problems. LA says that romance was traditionally for women, used for men to civilise them, and make them more attractive. K mentions it is an illusion. LA answers very well, with the idea that we need the illusion so that barriers can be overcome for people to come together. K asks about the attraction of adultery (a theme in his work, Intimacy). LA says there are the forbidden and obstacles and the zing, but it is often short-lived. She talks about us growing up in threes; including in a single parent family, there is the spectre of the third. The third person introduces aliveness into a relationship, re-stimulating youth. K has never been married, is looking forward to it, LA makes it sound appealing [audience laughs]. LA says you can introduce a child to be the third.

LA opines it is hard to talk about love in public. On the page or with another, it’s intimate. K – men don’t talk about love or relationships. L tries to break apart the Mars/Venus paradigm. She is not an evolutionary biologist, and doesn’t believe in stereotyping sexual relations. K asks about other kinds of love – e.g. love for children. LA looks at the manifestations of love. They talk about parenting, identity, expectations, advice columns; the last can be a problem because you don’t live up to expectations. There is also talk about the women (female independence) and gay (permissiveness – you can love the man or woman in the same person) movements being the biggest change to relations. K enquires re the generation above, who seem less tormented by someone better out there for them. LA quotes Balzac, “Domesticity is the great master that kills love”. But there may be less ecstasy, but more pleasures. Writers don’t often admit that they like a routine; and K agrees – writers are very organised.

K questions about scandals in the paper every day, people risk everything. LA answers that celebrities are like our gods, they live out heightened lives. The two then talk about the point of marriage. The history is of property and progeny. In the West, it is love, passion, settled life and progeny; a huge burden of expectation. LA thinks that second marriages tend to be more successful than the first. Why? More settled? Laughter is very important in a relationship. LA wisely suggests that we give power to the other by desiring, by loving. If you worry about how much sex you should have, and what positions, that can kill it.

LA then reads from her book. K states that the people you love are the people that you hate, e.g. child being spanked. LA adds to that; the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Love is passion. When you fall in love, you fall in love with the “who”, and when you leave it is because of attributes, the “what”. Hate is “who” too. NB/ with dating agencies, you don’t fall in love with attributes. K and LA both rather cutely call each other “the love doctor”.

There was so much to analyse and discuss further I could’ve happily listened for hours more. Lisa Appignanesi is charismatic and articulate, while Hanif Kureishi has a droll wit. I was so fascinated by this perceptive and universal discussion, I bought the book and started reading it immediately. And that hardly ever happens. What a great Festival.

By Hemanth Kissoon

http://www.filmaluation.com

http://www.facebook.com/filmaluation

http://www.twitter.com/filmaluation

http://audioboo.fm/Filmaluation

 

 

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Meet the Author: Simon Armitage talks to Anita Sethi

Posted on July 15, 2011 by Anita Sethi

By Anita Sethi

www.twitter.com/anitasethi 

An uplifting day of poetry

A huge bouquet of balloons has just been released into the clear blue skies above the Southbank Centre when I meet for a chat with Simon Armitage, who is Artist in Residence at the Southbank where his various projects have included Poetry International; the Lion and Unicorn; Everyone Sang; and Poetry Parnassus. As well as being Professor of Poetry at Sheffield University, the prolific writer also has two books forthcoming over the next year.

Photo by Anita Sethi

On a special day celebrating creativity and freedom through a series of inspiring events called “Everyone Sang”, Simon Armitage gave a powerful reading alongside young members of theLion and the Unicorn project after which the balloons were released, hot-spots of colours floating upwards plastered with poems the young people wrote during a workshop day.  The balloons became tiny specks in the sky and then vanished from sight.

Simon Armitage reads at the balloon launch

During the afternoon, Simon Armitage  has been presenting the film and poetry of young people from refugee backgrounds around themes of peace and freedom, with the young poets reading alongside established poets Joelle Taylor, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Philip Wells and Yemisi Blake.

“The balloon release is a culmination of a project with young people; we’ve been using poetry as a creative process for young people to express themselves”,  explained Armitage.

“They walked into the room thinking it would be all doom and gloom and yet they had a lot of fun and joy. It shows the strength of the human spirit; and it’s about the irrepressible nature of the soul and language itself”

“I also had the idea that, depending which way of the wind was blowing, that the balloons might end up back in the country where the kids are from”. 

Armitage explains how they had to get clearance from air traffic control before the balloon release, but it was worth it, for the uplifting experience.  “It’s the idea of being free and an address to that idea of borders and boundaries”.  

Just as a balloon filling with air, poetry can help people’s confidence grow, the project proved, and help form the identity.

I wonder where the balloons might have floated to by now.  It’s the idea, says Armitage, that they may just drift, or that they may be picked up from a nobody living nowhere, that those poems might just find themselves in the hands of someone whose life might be changed in some small way from the words drifting their way.

Armitage points out that even if your poem might happen to reach all the way to the other side of planet Mars, it’s important as a poet to always retain your voice and write about the things that interest you, whether that voice is colloquial and local or global and symbolic.

Armitage also discusses the idea behind his brainchild, the visionary festival Poetry Parnassus, which will launch next Summer and see poets from all participating nations come together for a week of performances and talks. Click here to find out how to ‘nominate a poet’.

“Parnassus is the mythical home of Orpheus, and we’re trying to recreate those foothills here in the Southbank. The idea is to convene a global coming together of poetry and poets using the Olympics as a convenient device for that.  There’s all kind of reasons it seems to fit, including the whole idea of Olympic values – this will be a non-competitive version of that”.  It is a celebration of poetry as the oldest form of writing. Page image“London is renowned for being an international city”, he continues. “There are people of almost every nationality living in this city”.  Poets from  206 different countries have been invited to the festival.

As well as continuing his explorations into Le Morte D’Arthur, a project which has seen his translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Night being used in a Norton Anthology, Armitage is also working on a book about crossing the Pennine Way, a journey throughout which he would give readings in people’s homes.  “It was absolutely fantastic.  I met some really wonderful people. I was trying to use poetry as a currency.  It would get me from A to B.   I think that readings are part and parcel of the act of being a poet”.

Armitage also comments on the chunks of poetry which can now be found outside the Southbank Centre site.  “There’s something about small chunks of texts that people find uplifting”, he says, since reading them can offer “a little moment of intensity”.  He’s been working on a similar project, “Stanza Stones” through which poems have been etched into the quarries in Marsden.  It’s also “partly about giving something back”.

The most recent acclaimed collection of the prodigiously talented poet is called  Seeing Stars and in beautiful imagery comprises the inspiring idea of looking as far as you can see, and seeing the same old things in different ways.

As I walk through the sunlit day and glance up into the sky for the glimpse of any balloons, it’s certainly been a day of setting the sights far onto distant horizons.  Just as I turn my gaze downwards, a tiny flash of a red balloon floats past the vision then vanishes.

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An evening of poetry with Liz Lochhead

Posted on July 15, 2011 by Anita Sethi

By Anita Sethi

www.twitter.com/anitasethi 

Liz Lochhead was this year named as the national poet of Scotland, or Scots Maker, succeeding Edwin Morgan. This week she gave a brilliant poetry reading followed by a fascinating and far-reading discussion with Jude Kelly, artistic director of the Southbank Centre, exploring topics including poetic vocation, the difference between poetry and art forms such as theatre, and how poetry can bring great pleasure to life.

“There are some people who make the world better and make you sit up and listen”, said Kelly, and one of the ways Lochhead does this is through humour, and it was indeed an evening punctuated with delighted laughter.

It was an evening celebrating the power of the human voice.  Kelly pointed out what a lovely voice Lochhead has, and it was a voice that did indeed hold the audience in the Purcell Room entranced as she read out a selection of her poems. When asked about her development as a poet, the moment she “knew in her belly” she wanted to be a poet, Lochhead described how her granny worked as a maid in an elocutioner’s house so voice has always been of interest.  She takes great pleasure in the act of being able to communicate with a voice. When in love or grief, people turn to poetry, said Lochead, and she believes that poetry should be heard out loud.

“The purpose of art is not to instruct but to delight” – David Mamet

Liz Lochhead described how being the national poet of Scotland had not changed the fact of doing what she believes in, but gave her a greater platform to speak out against issues that concern her, such as library closures, and how poetry is taught in schools.

She called upon this quote from Mamet whilst discussing how the joy of reading poetry should be brought back into schools, rather than students and teachers hating or fearing it.  Poetry should not be a penance but a pleasure, she said.

“That rare, random descent” – Sylvia Plath

Lochhead also shed interesting insight into the mysterious process of creating poetry, quoting Sylvia Plath’s phrase “for that rare, random descent”. Part of the delight in reading Lochhead is the way she plays with language. She spoke of how she enjoys flipping clichés, for example “I wouldn’t like to be in her shoes”, and find ways of refreshing outworn sayings.  Shoes were indeed a theme of the evening, as Lochhead’s silver shoes sparkled before the spotlight.   It was her poetical feet that also stole the show, as Lochead discussed the joy of reading other good poets and being inspired by them and also held the audience captivated with the beguiling poetic feet of her own verse.

“I don’t really believe in standard English”, said Lochhead, saying that to do so would be to condone a “bog-standard English”; instead she celebrates the gloriousness of “living language”, a language she delighted audiences with at the event this week, leaving us with a sense of the thrilling possibilities of that language.


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Romantic Revolution in 1930s England

Posted on July 14, 2011 by timstks

It is the middle of the 1930s and the artistic world is in crisis. Promising abstract artist John Piper has just released his latest piece, a collage made from coloured paper and paint. There is uproar amongst his contemporaries and the arts graduate is branded a traitor. The unthinkable has happened.

The picture is a landscape. And not just any old landscape. It’s a landscape of a British seaside.

John Piper is the hero of Alexandra Harris’ recent book, Romantic Heroes. She spoke at Southbank Centre as part of the 2011 London Literary Festival, to talk about her work which looks into the confused state of English culture during the interwar period.

At a time when the continent was in awe of people like Picasso, England was undergoing it’s own revolution. Artists such as Piper and John Nash were keen to break free from the ties of being labelled as either traditionalists or modernists. Both men set about mixing the artistic forms together, looking at the quaintness of the traditional English landscape through the eyes of a modernist. For many from all quarters of the art world, this was beyond a step too far.

Alexandra Harris with chair Francis Spufford

Yet we learn that this distortion of identity was not being limited to art. Harris covers an incredible range of English society – from literature and photography, to gardening and even cookery – finding evidence of people from all areas of life discovering new ways to look at old England.

She introduces figures like Ralf Handcock, a prominent gardener who liked to build traditional English gardens out of the finest English materials. Except he liked to place them in rather modern places, such as upon the top of the Rockefeller Centre in Manhattan, New York. During it’s creation, Handcock insisted only English materials were used, hence rocks were imported by ship from the Lake District and traditional English trees had to be hoisted by crane on to the roof.

Then there are writers of the period like Virginia Woolf and Evelyn Waugh, both of whom clearly have had a huge impact on Harris. Through books such as The Lighthouse and Brideshead Revisited the authors centred on traditional England, “full of landscape and weather”, but wrote about it in a new and different way.

Even the guidebooks of the time were keen to promote an exciting bold and playful country, providing a new outlook for well-known popular destinations.

Alexandra Harris’ talk is a fascinating insight into a hidden section of English society. She clearly has an incredible passion for the period, getting visibly excited at the mention of characters such as Bill Brandt and Edith Olivier. She has an enormous breadth of knowledge about the time period too, dipping into topics as wide as fascism in farming to books on traditional pie making.

At a time when Southbank Centre is itself looking back at the 1951 Festival of Britain, it seems particularly apt for Harris to be telling us about a similar thing happening in England’s past.

Read more about Alexandra Harris’ Romantic Moderns

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Sketches from London Literature Festival

Posted on July 13, 2011 by Sam Dub

For the duration of the festival artist Beverly Fry has been sketching and painting her way through some of the highlights of the festival. Below are a selection of the beautiful images from her sketchbook.

Anna Selby Introducing Alexander McCall Smith & Alex Clark

Tiffany Tondut, Friday Tonic

Poejazzi & Inspector Sands

Nick Laird, Poetry & Place

Michael Morpurgo

Michael Morpurgo 2

Saison Poetry Library

Kate Clanchy

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Live Review / Anita Sethi reviews “The Post Show Party Show”

Posted on July 12, 2011 by Anita Sethi

The Spirit Level is alive with the sound of music

It was not the hills but the Spirit Level that was alive with the sound of music during an entertaining performance of The Post Show Party Show by turns hilarious and poignant, in which award-winning writer and performance artist Michael Pinchbeck, with his mother and father, recreates the post-show party at which his parents met after an amateur dramatic production of The Sound of Music.  This performance is complete with its own unique interpretations of that classic soundtrack which filled the childhoods of so many.

The Post Show Party Show. Photo by Anita Sethi

“We are renacting this for the first time tonight”, said the father, “We have reanacted it before but not in this way”, and indeed the performance wonderfully brought out the  sense intrinsic in theatre – in contrast to film – that each show is a unique performance. ”I have confidence in confidence itself”,  say the duo, and this is indeed a confident performance.  With only three actors, the intimacy of theatre is used to atmospheric effect as the blood-red lighting creates the sense of a reality bathed in the hues of memory.

There’s a sense that the “post” in the title also refers to the post-modern techniques used to great effect in the show, including the awareness of audience, who are brought in through direct questions to us: “Would you like to see us recreate the postshow party without words?” and “Are you thinking?”.  They stop to reflect upon the progression of the narrative, pausing halfway to consider what has been and what is still to come whilst towards the end it is commented: “we are standing in the wings of the story”.

As the show races through scenes and songs interpreted from the Sound of Music, particularly powerful ones are ‘scene 8, ‘Climb Every Mountain’.  “Follow every rainbow until you find your dream”, sees father racing around son as he clutches his guitar. A synopsis of “The Sound of Music” details the novice young nun Maria arriving at her new employer’s to find tension between the children desperate for their father’s love and attention.

"Climb Every Mountain" scene in The Post Show Party. Photo by Anita Sethi

The actors make comically effective good use of the available props: “Climb every mountain”, for example, sees chairs stacked three high which the son climbs, chairs which are then dismantled and used in a counting game to “do ray me fah”.

“This is a map of the present on the stage of the past” says the son, whose mother Vivienne (Michael’s mother and Tony’s wife) has a cameo speaking part.  There is a gentle nostalgia brought out in the lyrics they select to to sing: ‘somewhere in my youth or childhood I must have done something good”.

In the final act, “So long, farewell”, the intimacy of the show is brought out brilliantly as many of the audience members get a personalized farewell.  The lights dim to leave a single spotlight illuminating a guitar, emphasizing the profound effect music has on memory, music which lingers pleasantly long after this performance is over.

Filed under: London Literature Festival 2011, Misc | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

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