Tag: charleston festival

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Launches, project updates and two disputed works

Royal Shakespeare Theatre Stratford

The poor weather has meant I’ve not been spending time in the garden as I normally would at this time of year. Still too cold to plant out courgettes and tomatoes! So instead I’ve been keeping myself out of mischief with ‘deskwork’…

A poet friend whose website I created a few years ago has asked for a revamp, so I’m enjoying working on that. I’ve also got two Planet Poetry interview recordings coming up soon, so I’ve been reading and preparing for those.

Meanwhile despite days off and other distractions, I have kept to my ‘average 1,000 words a day’ on my novel and am past the 60k mark already, so the end-of-May (self-imposed) deadline for finishing the first draft is well in sight. Alongside this I’m researching agents and planning my strategy! I have no idea of a title for this book yet, but I’m looking forward to giving it some thought.

There seem to be plenty of launches and other events coming up. I just read today about Josephine Corcoran’s new pamphlet from Live Canon, to be launched on May 21st. Tomorrow Jill Abram’s launch for her debut pamphlet from Broken Sleep is happening in London – I had booked to go along, but then was offered the chance to talk about Planet Poetry to 3rd year students at Brighton University at their end of year publishing course. Peter and I couldn’t resist the idea of being on a panel and talking about the podcast! Thanks to Lou Tondeur for the invitation. On June 2nd I’m delighted to be reading at Frogmore at 40, Frogmore Press’s 40th Anniversary event in Brighton. I’m a tad daunted to be honest, looking at the names of the other readers. So I just hope I’m not reading first. Please come if you’re anywhere near Brighton, it should be a grand night!

The Charleston Festival is coming up (no, I haven’t been invited to read there!) and as usual I’ll be going to a few talks with my good non-poet-but-writer friend Caroline. On May 26th the amazingly talented and lurrvly Inua Ellams is reading. I loved interviewing him on the Planet Poetry podcast and can’t wait to see how he goes down with the Bloomsbury set.

A couple of weeks ago we were in Stratford upon Avon to see a performance of Cymbelline. I’d never seen it before and nobody I’d spoken to about it had seen it either. Turns out it is a disputed play (ie some say it’s not actually by Shakespeare) – it is certainly a bit of a mashup of other Shakespeare plays both in plot and plot devices. Postmodern, eh? A bit like that song that just won the Eurovision Song Contest sounding suspiciously like ‘Winner takes it all’ by ABBA – is it a conspiracy to get the contest back in Sweden next year for the 50th anniversary of ABBA’s win? Anyway, whoever wrote it (Cymbelline that is) we enjoyed it! (But personally I preferred the Austrian entry about Edgar Allen Poe…)

 

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Charleston Festival

Arabiantent

It’s an annual ritual shared with an old schoolfriend. Charleston (Literary) Festival, at the end of May, takes place in the farmhouse once lived in by the ‘Bloomsberries’ – Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes et al. Several hundred people are accommodated in a marquee in the garden, with between-sessions visits to the house, the shop, the lovely walled gardens and the tea tent.

This year there was an addition – the ‘Arabian Tent’ – where Faber held a few taster sessions for its writing courses (clearly more money in this than publishing these days). When it wasn’t being used, however, it looked like this – a space where anyone could loll, meditate or have a quiet gossip while draped over a thinly-disguised campbed or (slightly better upholstered) chaise. Lovely to look at though not so wonderfully comfy in reality, especially on the second weekend when it was COLD.

Can’t complain though – on the first weekend we had glorious weather and Caroline and I enjoyed a long boozy picnic on the lawn.

Tent2

Oh – and the actual author readings…well, Charleston never bothers much with poets, although I feel the opportunity is there for them to run a poetry competition on the Bloomsbury theme. I have a lovely little number about Virginia Woolf ready made for it. Except it’s been published already – heh.

The session that stood out for me was Jeanette Winterson, who talked about her memoir ‘Why be happy when you could be normal.’ From the moment she bounced in she had everyone’s attention. Plus, she eschewed the usual format of reading from behind a lectern, or being interviewed in an armchair by another writer. No, Jeanette wore a lapel mic and simply stood and talked, holding everyone’s attention for over an hour. Very difficult to describe in words the atmosphere and the effect she had. This was pure charisma. I got the feeling whatever she might have asked us to do we would have done it. Winterson for PM!

PS the two friends I was with both got their books signed – cleverly leaving those few seconds early in order to get to the front of the queue – just to report that the author in question is MUCH more petite than she seemed on stage. A big presence.