Tag: Vanguard Readings

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Nikesh Shukla at the Vanguard Readings

Great night yesterday at The Bear in Camberwell for Richard Skinner’s Vanguard Readings. It’s an excellent series, basically offering a showcase to writers at all stages of their writing journey. It means you get to hear both new and seasoned authors, and sometimes poets too.

The readings are free to attend and Richard runs a smooth show, making everyone welcome and introducing audience members to one another beforehand and during the break. It’s a real skill and the effect is that newcomers quickly feel welcome, you always meet interesting people and the event never feels cliquey. Last night, for example, it was a pleasure to meet Paul Golden, a writer of Asian historical fiction, who may soon also be a neighbour. Small world!

Nikesh ShuklaOf the readers, the headline act Nikesh Shukla stood out for many reasons – the big ol’ welcome as he boomed onto the stage, his reading and also his performance of the promotional rap he’d done for his latest book Meatspace, and the impassioned and original plea for us to buy his book. (I wish I had – but with not enough cash on me – no, really! – and with the five copies he brought being snapped up rather quickly, I missed out).

Meatspace by Nikesh Shukla

Meatspace appears to be a very funny tale of online shenanigans, identity theft, dysfunctional life in the internet age… The Guardian compares it to Douglas Coupland’s Generation X. It’s hard to believe Coupland’s classic was published in 1991, a full seven years before I made may own personal discovery of the internet and was living a highly dysfunctional life in Portland, Oregon, staying up all night to chat on ICQ and frequently falling asleep at the keyboard. (It was Coupland’s Microserfs that did it for me – or did for me, whichever way you look at it, heh.)

Anyhow, Meatspace sounds like a novel I’d definitely enjoy and if you get the chance to hear Nikesh read, please grab it, he’s great fun.

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Vanguard Readings – Six Poets & Anthology Launch

Richard Skinner’s excellent Vanguard Readings at The Bear in Camberwell generally hosts both poets and prose writers, but last night was a poetry special. Somehow I managed to arrived only just in time, but I’m pleased I did as the first reader was my friend Josephine Corcoran.

Josephine’s first pamphlet is ‘The Misplaced House’, out from tall-lighthouse at the end of this month and I think it’s going to be a corker (no pun intended… well, maybe). Reading first (or last!) isn’t always easy but Josephine did a fine job. She was followed by Josephine Dickinson, a poet who I’m not familiar with, but I enjoyed the sense of magic she created in the room and and felt I wanted to know more about her and her work. All the way from Alston in Cumbria, a place I know (and I know how far it is from anywhere), an impressive way to come to entertain the Vanguard audience.

Vanguard Readers 20-11-14

The final first-half reader was no less than Michael Symmons Roberts, reading mostly from his amazing book Drysalter which won last year’s Forward Poetry Prize and Costa Book Award as well as being shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. It was a shame that Michael had to leave for his train back to Manchester as I’d like to have spoken to him. I liked his reading style and was fascinated to know more about how he went about writing Drysalter, 150 poems each 15 lines long, over 5 years.

In the second half I moved down the front and consequently the photos are a bit less fuzzy, although I seem to have captured some shut-eye moments in the readers – sorr-eee! Not only did we hear from Matt Merritt, legendary blogger and the official bird watching poet – great to meet him at last – but also Cristina Navazo-Eguía Newton who I last saw performing flamenco in Swindon.  In Matt’s reading I particularly enjoyed the poems from his ‘unpronounceable’ collection hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica from Nine Arches Press. Good thing it’s available to buy online, as I’m not sure I’d be able to ask for it in our local bookshop.

3 more Vanguard Readers 201114

When Cristina took to the floor she commanded it as usual, petite as she it, her personality is ginormous and she recited two of her long poems, entirely from memory, with electricity and panache. Very hard to take one’s eyes off her! The final reader of the evening was our host Richard Skinner who read three poems from the first anthology from Vanguard Editions, by poets who couldn’t be present – the last of which was by Marion Tracy, from her excellent pamphlet The Giant in the Doorway (HappenStance). Richard gave Marion an amazing introduction and announced her to be ‘one of the least well known poets around but one of the best’. Are you listening, Marion?! Hope so!

vanguard #1anthology

It’s always nice to put faces to names at these events, and I was very pleased to meet for the first time blogger poet Clarissa Aykroyd, and to chat with her on the bus back towards Victoria about the various merits of Vancouver vs London and knowing someone from Kamloops.

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Exit, pursued by a Bear

Um, no, I’m not referring to my previous post which generated a large amount of correspondence – although none of it in the comments, funnily enough! – mostly sympathetic. No indeed, but more an excuse to use one of my favourite lines from Shakespeare. The tenuous link is to the Vanguard Readings which take place at The Bear on Camberwell New Road (geddit??), and which I finally got to last night after many months of ticking the ‘Maybe’ box on the Facebook invitations.

My friend Lucy is that rare creature – a poetry supporter but not a poet. We once turned up casually late at the Betsey Trotwood, then caused a minor scene, so this time we were determined to get a seat and behave ourselves. As it happened we were the first in the room, something I seem to be making a habit of lately.

James Wood & David Ogunmuyiwa at the Vanguard Readings June 2014
James Wood & David Ogunmuyiwa
Martin Malone & Joanna Walsh at the Vanguard Readings June 2014
Martin Malone & Joanna Walsh

We heard prose readings from David Ogunmuyiwa, Joanna Walsh and Nicci Cloke, and poetry from Paul Ebbs, Martin Malone (fresh from the recent/aforementioned Interpreter’s House launch) and James Wood, flown in from Toronto. Incidentally, Joanna is running a Twitter hashtag campaign #readwomen2014 in an effort get people reading more fiction by women. Interesting idea.

It was a great night with plenty of variety and a fair bit of refreshingly non-toe-curling sex (in the poetry). I’ve never quite cracked the poetry sex thing – I think I have a fear of it either sliding into farce a la Frankie Howerd, or else someone coming across some steamy verse when I’m in my dotage and thinking eeeuw! you mean that old lady wrote this? As Lucy put it, it’s the tattoo thing. How will it look when you’re ninety? Hmm…anyway, I digress.

The monthly Vanguard Readings are run very efficiently by the charming and unflappable Richard Skinner and generally feature a mix of poetry and prose. The formula is six readers, three before the break, three after, each reader getting ten minutes or so. It’s free to attend and last night there were about 40 people in the audience, but judging from photos on the FB page it can sometimes be standing room only. No open mic, and even with the vagaries of Southern Rail and the notorious ‘black hole’ of no trains to Lewes between 9.47 and 10.47 I was home by midnight. Result!

I’m sure I’ll be there again in November to hear an all-poet line up, including the wonderful Josephine Corcoran reading from her forthcoming tall-lighthouse pamphlet. You can keep up with what’s on via the Vanguard Readings Facebook Page.