Five Voices Leicester

A city that boasts some 35 languages spoken in our streets deserves an on-line Gallery of  Writers to give voice to that clamour of stories and cultures. Grassroutes is a project hosted by the University of Leicester which 'is designed to foster local, national and international appreciation – as well as critical recognition - for the best of Leicestershire's writing.' They have sought out examples of 'transcultural writing from the 1980s to the present ...' and their website is well worth a look, featuring many faces familiar to me but so many discoveries too. It makes you realise how the city is positively buzzing with literary inspiration. We are fortunate to have a number publicly funded organisations that promote literature and writers and one of these, WritingEast Midlands, collaborated with Grassroutes on a commission which went to the talented AnitaSivakumaran.

The resulting poetry sequence of 'FiveVoices Leicester' are not so much dramatic monologues as poetic dialogues. I really enjoyed the strong sense of diverse Leicester voices - these poems have the wonderful immediacy of conversations overheard on a bus or in a queue. And Sivakumaran reveals that as a new arrival to the city, she would 'chat to the locals' and this gave her the idea for their form. My favourite poem is probably Auntie from the Nuffield Sauna.

 

On first reading I found the use of indirect as well as quoted speech a little confusing as to who was saying what. But it repays a second reading or better still reading aloud. One voice, that of the self-declared 'Auntie', rattles along, gathering up the poet's brief answers into her own torrent of conversation.

'Call me Auntie,' she says. 'Come sit down.'

She comes here every day. Keeps her fit.

Should she pour more water? I will?'

Sivakumaran has a great ear for the idioms of this kindly, bossy voice with its tag questions: 'I must be Gujerati no? No?' English phrasing with an Indian twist from a British Asian who's 'never been' to the subcontinent she speaks so much of. The listing conveys the older woman's curiosity and the barrage of questions with which she gently bullies her newly adopted 'niece':

My family, fortune, friends?

My height, weight, sun, moon and stars and their respective houses?

My expectations of matrimony?

There is a very winning humour here: 'she needs good girls in her family'. But more than that, the recurring lines about adding water to fire up the sauna deftly reveal an underlying theme:

'Closest she gets to tropical heat ...

Ooo baba, the heat is now roasting.

It must be like this all the time, no, over there?'

I found this quite haunting - a Leicester woman who apparently longs to connect to that lost 'homeland' by re-creating its tropical heat in an English sauna. It's a typical throwaway comment from a second or third-generation child of immigrants whose identity is still referenced by a faraway, never-visited place. Instead, place names and foodstuffs locate her cultural belonging: 'Eat ghar ka khana ... good for baby'.

As the 'Auntie' bustles about, ready to return 'to some cool English weather', I was left wondering about the implied relationship of the younger woman who sits quietly, towel-wrapped, in the background of the conversation. This poet's persona is somewhat reluctant ('Before I can back out') when she's snared in the intimate space of the sauna but something passes between them that goes beyond family credentials. And now I liked that Sivakumaran has held herself back in the dialogue and left that space for the reader to sense out the subtlety of this exchange.

Equally engaging are The Butcher on Queen's Road ('A good strong cleaver like this ... chops clean'), The Neighbour reclaiming her cat ( 'a bit of a stray myself') and two others poems that feature local writers reminiscing and aspiring to be part of a 'centre of the arts for the New England'. While you're at it, take a look on the Gallery page at Sivakumaran's powerful poem Citizens which particularly resonates after recent events in India. I cannot get over the image of a man in the street cupping his penis 'as if holding a chick'.

Sea Lines

Some places just seep into the silt of your imagination ...


Friday 16th November 3pm Low Tide

Sea mists rolling in from a grey horizon - grey skies swallowing the town long before dusk. Dark colours on the beach - strands of wrack livid as purple-black bruises on the green boulders. Gulls squabbling in a cleft above. The shore eerie as a Susan Hill story, desolate even with other beachcombers strolling in the gloom. Far off at the sea's edge, a line of groynes seem a spooky gathering of figures, watchers stilled with their own grave purpose.

Saturday 17th 11am High Tide

The waters just turned, sea mud slathered onto shingle, the waders smacking shells on the pebbles. One gull repeatedly swooping up to drop a hapless mollusc from the air, to hear its crack.

When we return after lunch in unexpected sunshine, the same sound-scape rises of march warblers, sea cacklers, bird calls curling up to haunt the foreshore. We crunch over broken razor shells, the barnacled feeding grounds. Striped and punctured bootprints between the spiky Vs of claw tracks and tiny fingers of sand, casts poked out by the worms below.

I follow silvered rivulets looping and unfurling like yarn in the sand to run into pools of skywater, blue puddles. At the tide-line, we are mesmerised as ever by the sprawling ribs of a wrecked boat, a skeleton that might have been Viking wood or gun-boat metal but is now welded by sea-creatures into their own thing.

 

As we turn for the harbour, we curve back into the fortified lines of vivid green rocks, the shambles of the cliffs - shattered red and white stone. A thunderous blue is moving across the glittering Wash and we know how quick it changes Hunstanton's skies. Only minutes from this surf-boom lies our retreat, Cori House. Time for afternoon tea and complimentary cookies at our favourite B & B.

Any time of year, this place enchants. Lucky me - this weekend by the sea was my birthday treat.

Lost in Space




Space Walk at National Space Centre

For a poet writing about space, what could be more exciting than a day at the National Space Centre? This year, I've swapped derring-do tales of polar exploits for the even more epic story of space travel. Leicester's spectacular museum is packed with real rockets, space suits, lunar samples and a wealth of information. Delivered in well-constructed bite-sized narratives, the displays are both fun and inspirational. Today, for instance, I'm vying with kids to climb inside the replica Mercury capsule and fiddle with the buttons. Or sit on a seat shaking with the simulated tremors of a launch lift-off. But I'm still waiting to talk Yuri Gagarin down from his lone orbit on the control room monitor. Hang in there Yuri!

Exhibitions in the Rocket Tower chimed perfectly with the current poem sequence I'm writing about rocket designers Werner von Braun and SergeiKorolev. There were even parts of von Braun's V-2rocket on display. The complex and often dark context of the Space Race is vividly outlined in a time-line on the walls but you can sit in a replica 60's living-room to listen to the historic lunar landing of 1969. I was particularly delighted to see the story also featured first edition copies of Jules Verne’s' 'Round the Moon' and HG Wells' 'War of the Worlds' - sci-fi classics that inspired a generation of rocket scientists. Fiction often anticipated and suggested features of design that later appeared in real rockets like the three or four stage structure.

In the same way, the Space Centre is very canny about engaging the imaginations of today's children by using the cultural icons of our own time. My husband was quite giddy at being greeted by costumed versions of Star Wars troopers, Dr. Who, Batman, Stargate SG-7 and numerous apes in overalls. Indeed burly blokes of a certain age were queuing alongside toddlers to be photographed with the Dark Lord - 'Cheers Darth!' Hats (and helmets) off to the cast of Movie Mania - the Space Centre's themed weekend, who kept hundreds entertained all day. In the Booster Café, children jostled Planet of the Apes extras to jump up and down under the rocket boosters that blasted off every 5 minutes. Genius!

 

 

 

I particularly admire how this museum keeps tots and space geeks simultaneously enthralled. In the Planetarium, CGI effects dazzled all while serious science about the CERN Particle Collider or astronomical imaging of the Big Bang were deftly explained. In front of a Martian landscape used for testing real probes, a huge interactive 'table' allows you to access up-to-date NASA podcasts on Curiosity’s current exploration of the Red Planet. This centre is at once a multi-layered theme park and a conduit direct into cutting-edge science.

Personally, I was totally space-hyped by the time I was dragged away. But thanks to a free Annual Pass, I'll be back soon. I don't remember the Space Centre being this cheap - only £13 for an adult's day ticket. And if you book in advance and tick the Gift Aid box, you get upgraded automatically to an Annual Pass. As I start work on my rocket poems, hanging out by the Soyuz spacecraft, the Thor-Able rocket and Vostok simulator will be invaluable. Meanwhile Gagarin is still orbiting patiently in the time-warp that is Level 2. 'Poyekhali Yuri!'

To Have Our Days Again

Breightmet - named for a bright meadow - is growing a green space where once my old school stood. St Osmund's RC Primary, Long Lane, Bolton. Thicketed by hedges high as a fairytale forest, it hides a broken patch of tarmac stamped by decades of hopscotch and skipping games. Through tangled foliage I glimpse myself at six years old, freckled and foreign, only two days off the boat.


Unable to enter the kingdom today, I trail around its boundary. Rusted railings are welded with lichen. The buildings have all vanished. Where the Big Children's playground should be, buttercups and thistles higher than me rustle. A meadow bright with a half century of children's voices. Running riot through timetables, school bells and orderly queues. Briared with secrets we left behind.

The railings take me along to the Top Playground; the grassy hill we used as slide, the Tree that was my Witch's Den, the Boys Football Pitch, all lost to overgrowth. You can't see where two lions strolled in once among the children, causing an early evacuation from Morning Break. (These beasts - escaped from who-knows-where - still amble occasionally through my dreams.)

 

I thought I would find rubble or redevelopment but instead it is a whispering wilderness, lush with our sudden summer. This school imprinted itself on my original vellum. It cultivated my first instincts as a writer and storyteller, as a performer and show-off. We staged plays, made music, went on nature walks, fought feuds and filled exercise books. Through long bell-punctuated days, it nurtured learning as a creative world-expanding activity.

Today on a rare visit to childhood territory, I am happy to realise I never truly left it. Let the greening of St Osmund's continue.

Steel and Ice

This morning's walk brought to mind this poem - written on a pre-Christmas visit to the City of Steel one year. Crystallising a certain moment.

Solstice City

a late dawn brings

smudge of yellow

a rim of hill light

breaking the fog

eight o’clock sleep

walkers hooting air

climb warily

a black-iced

footbridge

then the full beam

winter searchlight

scouring the city

illuminating

textures of raw frost

pavement pock

marks and brown

spatter, an early

sowing of salt

at the station

men in yellow hats

are blinded by

the stainless steel

water feature

and precinct pagans

torch the afternoon

with bonfire bonanzas

cabled tricks of light

this shortest day

soon spills its shine

in the rush of dusk

a giant wheel

spitting colour

slices the sudden

night with shrieks

invoking gods

and other desires

END

House of Horrors

It's worth taking a moment - while decrepit 'granpa' Dodge hollers sour nothings at his wife Halie - to study the extraordinary design of this Curve Studio production. Sam Shepard's darkly comic and disturbing Pullitzer-winning play Buried Child is set in an Illinois rural backwater in 1978. The stage bristles with towering stalks of corn growing out of a giant wooden rack that lifts to become the roof of a prairie homestead. It makes the ramshackle house appear like an underground bunker into which this dysfunctional family have retreated. Earthy roots might thrust through its ceiling any day now. Grimy windows are lit by sloshing rain. Mesh screens partition walls, doors and verandah so that characters seem to move between grey veils. A fine mist drifts across the living room, caught in light shafts which colour with changing hours but also pulse with the emotional undercurrent of this psycho-drama. The whole structure seems creepily alive.

Matthew Kelly & Matthew Rixon

Eventually, Matthew Kelly reels in your attention towards his shambolic patriarch stranded on a filthy sofa that hides more than whisky bottles. Good as he is, the most mesmerising performances from an impressive ensemble cast were the two brothers, Tilden (played by Kelly’s own son, Matthew Rixon) and Bradley (Michael Beckley). As broken as the furniture, these two lumber through interlocking rooms, trapped in the wooden interior. Rixon's portrait is more subtle. A scene where he spreads shelled corn husks over his sleeping father is both clumsily reverent and sinister, funereal even. This is matched by Beckley creeping up on his prone father with an electric shaver. Beckley plays this son as a horror movie grotesque but his twitching angularity and twanging voice are never less than startling. Even grovelling on the sofa, whining for his prosthetic leg, he is menacing. A looming nightmarish figure amidst the grimy realism, you look to him for the violence this play persistently threatens.

With Act Two, the pace picks up as two youngsters arrive; Vince and his girlfriend Shelly. Vince (Lloyd Thomas) is disturbed to find that his father and grandfather fail to recognize him after a six year absence. Except we don't know if they are his family. Shelly, (Catrin Stewart), a brash but winning young city woman, articulates our unease and asks the questions. She eventually concludes it is the house's inhabitants, not her, who are the 'strangers'. Shelly unpicks allusions to a family scandal but the play's title means it's never hard to guess where this is going. What it lacks in mystery though, it makes up in a sullen festering tension.

Lloyd Thomas & Catrin Stewart

Finally, matriarch Halie returns with a bumbling Father Dewis (Gary Lilburn) who might or might not be her beau with his garish bouquet of yellow roses. Jane Lowe, in vintage fifties frocks, blends the faded glamour of a Blanche Dubois with the cracked facade of a Baby Jane. 'I don't know what my role is here,' mutters the priest in a recurring Absurdist complaint about muddled identities. Through the miasma of secrets and confusion, it is the staging which delivers a climactic moment. The cornstalks pierce the rotten heart of the family in an uncanny mutation and Shepherd's armoury of symbols is once more re-arranged.

It seemed only afterwards fitting to tumble into a city under siege from swirling November fog. 'Buried Child' runs till December 3rd at the Curve and deserves full houses throughout for this impressive revival of an American Gothic classic.

Small Press Secrets

A year of immersing myself in the icy world of Antarctica and polar exploration finally bore fruit last night with the launch of my new chapbook, MAD, HOPELESS & POSSIBLE: Shackleton's Endurance Expedition. And not only that but a chance to interview my editor, the lovely Sam Smith of Original Plus books. The event was hosted by Leicester Writers' Club, a wonderful community of writers, and Sam's comments struck a real chord with them.

Sam spilled the beans on how the world of small press publishing looks from the inside. Sam explained that as an aspiring novelist, it took him 23 years to break into print. Editors would accept his books only to find that the salespeople wouldn't run with it. Finally he turned to poetry and got published within months. This fuelled his desire later to get into small press publishing himself as a way of contributing to that community of poets:

'I do it because it was so important to me to get something into print. I wanted to give that opportunity to other writers.'

We discussed the economic realities of small press publishing. This is a one man press - virtually a cottage industry with all the chapbooks printed up at home. With his poetry magazine, The Journal, his biggest cost is postage for subscribers. It's a 'hand-to-mouth' operation and very much a labour-of-love for this dedicated writer and editor. To find out what Sam had to say about how English Poetry changes, what he looks for in submissions and the future of print publishing as e-books take off, have a look at this fascinating interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4A-5jCLusw&feature=youtu.be (many thanks to Ambrose Musiyiwa for posting this)


It was timely that as I prepared for this event, I was being captivated all over again by Attenborough's ravishing images of the white continent in FROZEN PLANET on TV. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mfl7n Here were the wind-tortured icescapes, the mighty glaciers and the wild creatures of the South that early polar explorers encountered on foot. Don't miss this beautfiul series. And you can catch readings of my poems inspired by all that magnificence on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9VusaWXVW4&feature=share&noredirect=1

And if you're wanting to find out more about my book on my website, hang on! My trusty techie is working on a revamped website right now and we will unveil this in a week or so.

So watch this space ... and have a look at Original Plus for this and many other titles. See: http://www.freewebs.com/thesamsmith/originalpluschapbooks.htm