BLF 5 - Final Review - Ahlberg, Coles & Maconie

Saturday saw the end of the Birmingham Literature Festival2015, with the final event being Stuart Maconie in the Studio Theatre talking about The Pie at Night.

Maconie, author and BBC Six Music presenter, gave a short stand up performance based on his book before moving into the q&a section. What I really liked about the evening and about Maconie’s style is the way he essentially takes ethnography and the anthropological approach and turns it into something fun rather than academic. He is an intelligent interpreter of the wold around him with a wonderful sense of what is funny and what is not. In The Pie at Night he has been using this to look at leisure.

The observation in his work is brilliant and he understands it because he is essentially an insider. Like many great artists he is truly declass having crossed the barrier between classes and deciding on one hand it is nonsense but on another it should not be forgotten because he knows what life is like for those who suffer as a result of it. This is why he is so clear on the danger of a London centric approach to culture dominating.

The sponsor to this event was Walter Smith a Birmingham based butchers. They gave away pork pies at the end of the event which tasted wonderful.

The audience was large for this event as it was for the Richard Coles event earlier in the evening. Now I have to admit the queue for the Coles event caught me by surprise. I did not realise the guy was so popular, having not listened to his Radio Four show and having only really come across him as one of the “celebrity gay Christians”. That I realise says much about the world I inhabit.

The Coles event was introduced by the Very Reverend Catherine Ogle, dean of Birmingham Cathedral. This made the dynamic quite interesting because as we heard early in the evening Catherine had been a priest Richard had been on placement with when training for the priesthood. I think it was good because it firstly made the event more relaxed because it really was two friends chatting and secondly I think that it meant that Coles may have camped it up less because of who he had interviewing him.

As somebody currently living as in a theological college, as spouse of a trainee, I found what he was saying about his time at theological college particularly interesting.  The idea that part of the process is intended to get you to find your own limits so you can get out of the way and let Jesus work in your context was really interesting.

The book which was being discussed and promoted in this event was Fathomless Riches: or how I went from Pop to Pulpit. When I’ve heard it referred to by others the sexual elements have been focused upon somewhat. They weren’t in this presentation. What was discussed in a moving yet not emotionalist way were his experiences of mental health difficulties and of living through the 80’s when AIDS appeared. He made an important point that many gay men who lived through that time have repressed a lot of grief which needs to be dealt with. His own experience of writing the book was such that it was not cathartic but rather opened up issues which he needed to deal with.

There were also discussions within the Coles set about the role of Christians in broadcasting and the way in which he refuses to separate his religious self from his broadcaster self whilst not inappropriately using a secular space to push Christianity and so on. He views his role in that context as missional and about taking Christ into the world.

Overall I think this was the event I was most surprised at and pleased by. It was a wonderful example of how faith and life more generally can be discussed in a normal way and how secular and sacred can mix in a way which does not have to be a parody of itself.

The other event I went to at the BLF which I have not covered on this blog yet was author Alan Ahlberg, author of over 150 books, mainly children. His event was also incredibly popular and fun. It was also slightly poignant because it showed how age can catch up with us in ways we don’t expect. The readings from his work he did were excellent and it was a privilege to hear him talk although I do wonder if a more intimate venue may have been more comfortable for him.

So overall what did I make of the BLF? Well, I thought it was an amazing event which I was overjoyed at having been able to attend so much of through my purchase of a festival pass.

My main criticisms or suggestions for improvements may have been (i) to perhaps have small events going on in the foyer between evening events when people were just hanging about for ¾ hour, (ii) have a paper information pack for pass holders with events, etc for them detailed which they would be given with their festival pass, (iii) brief ushers to signpost pass holders to get pass if they were just using normal tickets, (iv) try to get venue doors open a little earlier and (v) to perhaps have more evening events for want to be writers rather than just daytime workshops.

However, as I say it was a really great programme of events. I loved it and am thankful for everybody who worked and/or volunteered on this event in whatever capacity. 

BLF 4 - Stella Duffy Reviewed

On Wednesday night twenty three people, very predominantly women gathered in a suite of The Rep Theatre to hear a great writer, director and activist speak. She was Stella Duffy, not to be confused with Carol-Anne Duffy the poet.

Why it was such a small number, I don’t know. I suspect that with a variety of other Birmingham Literature Festival events on offer people opted for one of the other events on offer. That was a shame they missed a really useful session.

The evening sponsored by the RLF, a worthy organisation I think from the event introduction, was billed as a lecture but was more akin to a seminar.

To gain a response from the audience and to introduce us to one of the things she wanted to talk about she introduced us to the five principles of open space. One of the effects of this was that any embarrassment amongst us about the small number of people present was removed.

This technique which also aligns with her Buddhist believes also serves to inspire and empower the audience by making believe them that their being there is not an accident.

As with the other times I had heard Duffy speak at Greenbelt she taught as she spoke and shared something of her own background. It was explicitly made clear last night that part of her role is to show that people from working class people can engage with the arts and to show there are people like them in there working.

Some reoccurring themes came out throughout the talk such as the need to be generous. This is a woman who is tremendously generous giving her time for things she believes in whilst working very, very hard.

It became clear through the talk though that one can only succeed with such generosity if you allocate time to tasks and are willing to collaborate. This came through most clearly when she was talking about the Fun Palaces, which seek to provide temporary places where arts and sciences come together the local community.

She is a woman who has large following on social media and during her talk recommended a range of Apps which can help you with time management.

Time was clearly something important to her that she believed should not be wasted and also was something which should not be used as an excuse.

Listening to talk she discussed spirituality and religious heritage in a way which made me smile. She was brutally honest whilst being affectionate about so much that she spoke of. This reality laced optimism was something which shone through when she spoke of her own experience which has included serious cancer and reconstructive surgery as a result. She described the relationship between the darker sides of life and what she has done to help others, sometimes as a result, as the relationship between destiny and mission.

As one of the founders of the Women’s Equality Party she talked about the hard work behind the scenes which has underpinned this movement.

She also, as a thread through the hour long event, kept returning to giving tips to writers. She detailed the classic western story structure and talked of the need not to plan slavishly according to this but to bear it in mind when drafting and redrafting your work.

I found this whole session really inspiring. From hearing her speak and reading her work previously I had admired her, last night I learnt so much from her that I was even more grateful.

I need to make clear that I think hero worship is unhelpful, but role models are not. I am under no illusion this woman is as human as the rest of us and will have her faults yet she also has an incredible gift of inspiring you to move forward with your dreams. That is what she generously does and continued to do last night.

BLF 3 - Reflection on Romany Story & Song and Somewhere in Between

So Tuesday saw me pop back down to the Studio Theatre in the Library of Birmingham for another night of lit, making use of the Literature Festival Pass I had purchased. On this occasion it was music and words - firstly from Sam Lee and Richard O’Neill with Romany Song and Story and then from Lauren Kinsella with Somewhere in Between. I came home with a head buzzing with thoughts, trying to make sense of the evening where I had very much felt both the insider and the outsider. As a result this piece is longer than a review would be and is much more of a reflection. Some of it will be descriptive of the event too because I want to distil the key things I heard.

To put my reactions to the Lee and O’Neill event in context I am not Romany but I am the child of a story teller. Over the years I have spent time at various festivals both as a child and adult listening to others chat and tell stories around campfires and tables; over morning coffee and late night whiskey and wine. Therefore this event which was chaired by Pete Lawrence who is co-founder of The Big Chill festival was one I was naturally attracted to.

Looking round it was noticeable the audience was smaller than on previous evenings and that there was a slightly different mix to it. It was more exclusively white and less clearly middle class whilst not being visibly working class. I suspect this may be in part because the evening’s events at the Library clashed with Cooked Up at the Ikon Gallery where a new short story collection was being discussed.

There was a palpably different tone to the evening. This event was not sponsored in the same way. When introducing and outlining the way the evening would work the chair didn’t seek to give their own mini-lecture rather he simply explained and then settled into the background. There was also not the shadow of the academy hanging over this event as there had been previous ones I’d been to. That is not to criticise the academic and intellectual nature of the other events, which I have really enjoyed, but it is to say this one was different. There was not that feeling of the academy and arts establishment seeking to maintain dominance either through coming in as “the experts” or using the event to seek to incorporate the activists.

During the event we were told something of the lives of Sam and Richard. Richard who is 53 talked about the changes he had witnessed within Romany life as a result of wider changes in society. As he spoke it made me think about things I had not thought about before including the impact of the 60’s building programmes on traditional ways of life.

Richard talked about the way in which stories were passed down whilst his family were making things. He also talked about the power of storytelling to bring people together. Within this section he referred to “Squegs” his word for all of those who feel like square pegs and who don’t quite fit in and how stories can help them. He then went on to tell a family story about how his great uncle had faced prejudice but not responded with the same kind of response and the impact of that. Within this he was showing how stories help pass down basic principles which do not change from age to age.

Sam then spoke about his own growing up life as a song collector and folk singer. He had grown up to a Jewish family in London and had his own story of separation as a result. He came from an green perspective talking about the relationship between story and song and the natural world.

Within his discussion of the folk collecting he said he was attracted not by the folk revival but rather by hearing the recordings of the original songs and he wanted to talk to those who had recorded them to find their stories. As part of this he has set up the Song Collectors Collective. His aim, he said, was to help a silenced community have the opportunity to be heard.

Richard then went on to paraphrase Bruce Springsteen when he said we live in a world where there are 200 channels but nothing on and stories are still relevant because they have something to speak into a society where this is real struggle for survival going on.

Pete moved the discussion on by talking about the Kerrville Festival in Texas and the power of the campfire. This led on to a really interesting discussion of the campfire and self-made entertainment. As they reflected on this I thought of the scene before me and the role of discussion as performance. It can sometimes be a competition and at other times it can be a clearly be a discussion of mutual respect. This was very much the latter and respect was extended to the audience as well. We were not considered the other in this setting.

The discussion then moved on to the passing down of tradition, which it was argued everybody has a duty to do. Richard then spoke about the way older people declutter and how in the travelling community generally people only travel with what they need. The most valuable thing in the world is your memories and they are what travel with you everywhere. They help you connect with people.

Respect for elders and for their stories was central to this event and what was being said. This related to the handing down too. The evening ended with Sam, who regards himself as an interpreter, singing The Moon Shone on My Bed Last Night which had been passed on to him. His performance of this song which he just leaned forward and sung was beautiful, haunting and wonderful.

This event hit me somewhere deep inside emotionally which art occasionally can. It also made me reflect anew on what it means to be a Methodist Local Preacher and part of a church community made up primarily of our elders. Is part of our role to gather their stories and pass them on as well as continuing to pass down the stories of the bible? It also made me reflect on my role within a faith community when Richard said, quoting somebody I didn’t catch, “tradition is tending the flame not worshipping the ashes”.

Then it was over and I was left with my enjoyment of the event. Seeing one of the people running the BLF I went over to enquire about something which had been bothering me since the night before when my ticket had been queried by somebody on the door – should I have some kind of lanyard type pass rather than my dog-eared ticket which was getting more worn by the day? The answer was yes and I discovered it was waiting for me at the box office. I realised that what I had taken to be an email advertising the festival, and so deleted without reading before the start was actually something which had been vital information. Due to deleting an email and emptying the trash so it was not retrievable I was not getting the full experience of the festival, which as a pass holder I was able to. For example I have no knowledge of extra events for pass holders which I guess related to that email.

Again this made me reflect. How much these days depends upon expecting and trusting emails? Do we dismiss too much by looking at the subject line of emails we don’t expect and making assumptions as to their use or otherwise?

Then we got to the second event Somewhere in Between with singer and composer Lauren Kinsella. First off I want to say that the quality of this was absolutely top class and the musicianship and acting was wonderful. However, art is a matter of taste and subjectivity. There is also a certain level of being able to fit in with the norms of the audience.

The evening began with a poem read by Peter Campion who had a wonderful Irish lilt and a suitably nonchalant manner in the telling of An Accommodation by Simon Armitage.

Then began the music. Now I have to say I like the more commercial end of jazz rather than the avant-garde. The first set of music was at the intersection between jazz, hippy and prog rock. This is probably as far away from my personal taste as you can get without veering into classical which I really struggle with. There were also unintelligible noises being made whilst clouds went across the back of the screen making it incredibly hippy trippy.

Now as I say the musicianship was wonderful and of the highest standard but Kinsella’s singing reminded me of the stranger bits of Bagpuss, a programme which had freaked me a bit as a child. I could imagine her as Emily.

The seriousness of the audience during a really funny poem was something I struggled with too. I wanted to laugh at this poem because it was clearly intended to be enjoyed and giggled at, but I couldn’t because I was in a very serious audience where it was clear this was not the done thing. On the basis of the above I decided to leave in the interval not because I felt as alien in this performance as I had felt at home in the first of the evening.

BLF 2 - Brecht and Steffin / The Writing of Protest Review

Monday’s first Birmingham Literature Festival adventure was Brecht and Steffin: Love in a Tim of Exile and War introduced by David Constantine and Tom Kuhn. This was followed by The Writing of Protest an event where Everyday Sexism, 38 Degrees and Professor Mary Evans came together to discuss narrative and protest. Both were at the Library of Birmingham.

The Brecht event was an incredible performance. There were readings of the poems, letters and prose by Steffin played by Anna Procter and Brecht who was portrayed by Mathew Wernham. Some of these were accompanied by pianist Dominic Muldowney. Constantine and Kuhn discussed the relationship between the two. This was played out on a stage which had photos of the two projected behind them.

What was so striking about this performance was the eye contact of the two players which often communicated what words could not. Additionally, the complexity of this piece required an ability to take more complex cues than many performances. This all occurred seamlessly and the whole performance was mesmerising as well as incredibly informative.

I was not familiar with the work of Brecht or Steffin who collaborated with him on much of his work, prior to her premature death, during the ten year period since she first became his mistress. The performance has made me want to explore his writing more.

The audience for this event was small, conspicuously middle class and middle aged and above. This was in contrast to the Writing of Protest event, sponsored by Wolverhampton University, which was much fuller and had a far more mixed audience, including many young people.

We were told in the introduction to the event, chaired by playwright David Edgar, it built upon something Owen Jones said at last year’s event. I was concerned at the beginning when Edgar, the only male on the stage gave an introduction full of quotes by men. However, I should not have worried. He was not there to challenge and he made an excellent chair for the evening.

The first speaker on the panel was Professor Mary Evans from the LSE. She started writing in protest against the idea that experiences are just to be understood in terms of men and masculinity. She said that political narratives were now one of her interests.

She challenged the audience to think about the current narratives in three ways. Firstly, the Prime Minister recently said, “British people are decent, sensible and reasonable”. She asked what it means not to be some of those things and argued that it sets up a binary against those who protest and who may be portrayed as not sensible and unreasonable. She made the point words are used to set boundaries about political spaces and can give rise to powerlessness. She made the important point that British history is full of examples of people who have made progress in society by not being reasonable or sensible.

She then went on to talk about the two aspects of power: the setting of an agenda and the control of knowledge before finally moving on to discuss sensationalism. She continued by arguing that to challenge neo-liberalism and the neo-liberal consensus and offer an alternative we need to think about power and sensationalism.

What struck me about Evans and the Brecht and Steffin event was they could have been incredibly academic but they weren’t. What she said, like the first event of the evening, was incredibly accessible.

Laura Townshead of 38 Degrees explained the power ordinary people have and the way we need to see these people as heroes more often. You don’t have to be militant to take action was a key point made. Throughout her talk she made the point power lies with us not those we might think has it. She talked through different types of stories and the way each type could be used.

Whilst knowing a fair amount of the organisation I was surprised and impressed to find how it has grown beyond its online work. I had not realised how some of the money raised went towards supporting court cases such as one who took Sports Direct to court regarding its use of zero hours contracts.

She underlined how important it is not to give an abstract view and argued this is one of the problems the intellectual left has had.

The final speaker was Laura Bates who started and spearheads the Everyday Sexism Project. I was amazed at her ability to give a range of complex information including both statistics and stories without notes. She talked about the way in which sharing stories gave people power and how narratives change as a result.

The nuanced nature of qualitative data enabling one to make links to others and to highlight the importance of intersectionality was made clear by what was said.

During their discussions there was interesting discussion of the relationship between on line and off line activism and of the double edged nature of social media. Laura Bates has been subject to an ongoing stream of abuse and serious threats, as I know many online feminist activists have been.

This event had vitality and energy. It was a literary event but it was more than that. It was a gathering of activists and potential activists. The evening gave advice and most importantly it gave hope. This was a key thing because as the speakers said fear is a key reason for so much which we might want to stand against and we need to be able to give an alternative narrative of hope. 

BLF Review 1 - Man Booker Short List Event

Thursday night saw the beginning of the Birmingham LiteratureFestival, an event put on by Writing West Midlands, and it was kicked off by The Man Booker Prize Short List Event at the Studio Theatre which is part of the main library in Birmingham.

The event was sponsored by the creative writing department of Birmingham City University and as part of the introduction to the event we were treated to what is best described as a micro lecture on the history of the novel from Prof David Roberts who is the Dean of faculty. There were also free anthologies of writing published by the department available at the end of the event.

This was not just an event for academics and pseudo academics the BLF is intended for the whole community and there were all ages represented in the audience for this event. 

The two of the short listed writers represented at the event, Sunjeev Sahota and Tom McCarthy. The award they are competing for, which has the winner announced next week, is for a prize which aimed to encourage leadership.

The chair for the evening was Dr Greg Leadbetter, one of the lecturers on the creative writing course. He moved between language styles which meant at times it felt as if one was constantly moving between a discussion in a seminar and another in a pub.

Tom McCarthy read from his book Satin Island. He explained that the narrator is a corporate anthropologist and it is written in the form of numbered paragraphs. The excerpt he read was about buffering which was a key theme of the book. Unfortunately it just got my brain thinking of the EE advert featuring Kevin Bacon which talked about the buffer face.

I found myself not adverse to the idea of reading this book which is essentially rooted in that space where philosophy, history, sociology and cultural studies meet. According to the author it is a novel of ideas and that has shaped its evolution. He wanted to move away from distance and romanticism and talked of the complex relationship between fiction and reality which is why he has placed an ethical problem at the centre of the novel.

As I listened I wondered on one level if he was taking the mickey out of academia. His style seemed similar to Douglas Coupland in some ways but without the wry smile being apparent. As the evening wore on things got clearer to me. This was a clever bloke who was clearly really academic and had examined a range of philosophical, historical and cultural texts and just knew stuff and spoke in the form which the academy generally demands. He did not seek to patronise the audience by suggesting they would not or could not understand what he was on about and was particularly interesting in answering in a toned down by not dumbed down way to the questions coming from school kids in the q&a.

Then we moved on to Sunjeev Sahota who is an Asian from Derbyshire and was slightly younger than both the chair and McCarthy. He was reading from and discussing his book The Year of the Runaways which is set in 2003 and contains the stories of four protagonists being interwoven.

During the discussion it was great when the chair in a very academic way said the book read “like a social expose” and asked “did the writer see it like that?”

Sahota replied “no” and went on to explain it had just sprung from his personal life. This guy who was a writer, writing about what he knew and working damn hard to refine his craft (at one point binning 60,000 words) was clearly not part of the academy. Yet, he was clearly not stupid and was well read. What I absolutely loved about this author was he is somebody who is a writer but he wasn’t up for a fake pseudo-intellectualism. As a result in some of his answers he was able to make the audience giggle and connect with us in a way in which I don’t think McCarthy could.

Both writers gained our respect and certainly from me an interest in their work. I warmed to Sahota because he was more ordinary, whilst clearly through his talent as a writer being extraordinary.

One really interesting quote about what his book was about was when he said he was telling in its story of immigrants and that is “what it is like to live in the gaps in the global system.”

The q&a at this type of even is fun because you really do have no idea what you are going to be asked. The questions varied between the mundane, the bizarre and the really clever. I did like the older Scottish lady who had read the McCarthy book and said it was thoroughly depressing. She asked if that was how he thought the world was going.

My personal favourite question which somebody asked was “What makes your book different to what’s out there already” which one could easily paraphrase to why should I read either of these? That one appeared to put the writers on the spot. McCarthy talked about his being a radical way to the roots and what he was trying to do was configure what was already there. In answer to this question which came from one of the youngsters who were there on a school trip he said “modernism is grave digging”.

Whilst I don’t think this event will probably be my favourite of the festival which continues until the 17^th (and for which season passes are available to make it a little cheaper) I did enjoy it and would like to read the books.