Julia Copus and Deryn Rees-Jones event

On 21^st May, NCLA were delighted to welcome the poets Deryn Rees-Jones and Julia Copus, whose most recent collections graced last year’s T.S. Eliot Prize shortlist. Their highly anticipated reading affirmed to the audience – if we needed reminding – just what poetry can do. Previous collections by Deryn Rees-Jones have been shortlisted for the Forward Prize, won a Cholmondeley Award and received a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. A respected critic and editor, she is also Professor of Poetry at the University of Liverpool.

Rees-Jones read from Burying the Wren, a collection that explores renewal and loss. Many of the poems can be read as elegies to her late husband, the poet and critic Michael Murphy, who died in 2009. They also examine how loss forces us re-evaluate the self to find its new place in a fractured world. The poems are also full of sensual delights: of food and the body in Truffles, which are,

                                    ‘More pungent then, than mountain goats

                                    whose cheese we daub on rounds of bread,

                                    the amoretti which we dip in wine

                                    and where lovers ‘root out treasures’ for themselves.'

 

As we discovered, Rees-Jones is unafraid to challenge her audience. The remarkable – and at times unnerving – Dogwoman re-imagines the self in canine disguise. The sequence is based on the Dogwoman paintings of Paula Rego, where bestial, snarling women bay after an absent man. But the Dogwoman in these poems is not reduced to canine submission, but rather affirms her animal response to loss. She insists on the raw physicality of grief through driving insistence and repetition:

 

                                    ‘Dog tricks and the memory of dogs, dogs dreaming

                                    and not in colour. Dog fetching, dog on a leash,

 

                                    dog watching, dog weeps. Dog fond, dog mother

                                    Dog sniff. Dog holler. God of dogs, dog love.

 

                                    Dog sent to bed in deep disgrace. Dog shock, piss, squalor.

                                    And joy, dearest, tail wag. Dog rhythm, dog riff,

 

                                    dog's domain and death's dominion.

                                    The body's frame's not enough for itself,

                                    these pale fires of horror.’

            There were also poems that delighted in love’s mystery, as in A Chinese Lacquered Egg where:

 

                                    ‘Something is beginning. We feel it in the raw edges

                                    of our dreams, our bodies hostage to light, to weather…’

 

                                    ‘…Between breath and silence it is showing itself.

                                    In these shortened nights it is not unlike rapture,

                                    an unworded prayer its indelible hum.’

 

            She finished her reading with a coda from the title poem, Burying the Wren. It is a call to life beyond grief,

 

                                    ‘… sending you in the longboat of your body

                                    where worlds and words collide, was not

 

                                    the end of love. Yet love

                                    you’ve been with me enough,

 

                                    so I must let you be, remove myself from the

                                    cool earth…’

 

There could be few in the audience who did not respond to Rees-Jones’ bravura reading – a testament the power of both the lyric poem and the spoken word.

 

 Julia Copus is a previous winner of both an Eric Gregory award and the Forward Prize.  The audience warmed to her arresting reading from The World’s Two Smallest Humans. These are poems that reflect the personal: the end of love, loss, childhood and memory, universal themes she develops with great skill and an individual vision. Many of the poems explore different possible outcomes at pivotal moments of our lives. She began with This is the Poem in which I Have Not Left You, which reconfigures the decision to end a love affair through a series of negative assertions, e.g. I do not turn…I dare not speak…we do not part. It takes the reader back to a point where choices must be made, yet the poem’s conclusion undercuts any suggestion of uncertainty or regret:

 

                                    ‘...Then further off, after the rain is done

                                    the voice of the redstart calling do it, do it!,

                                    calling from the smallest tree in the garden.’

 

Copus is sometimes credited with popularising the specula (mirror) form, where two halves of the poem function as a mirror image of each other. The differently punctuated lines in the second stanza of a poem become an exact reflection of the first. This extraordinary formal control allows her to imagine events simultaneously taking place in the both the past and present.  She uses the form masterfully in Raymond at 60, which concertinas both grief and childhood memory – linking both with the central character's obsession with London bus routes! Copus finished with a poem from Ghost, a sequence examining the distress of infertility and the difficulties of IVF treatment. Again, she explored possible outcomes in the final poem Pledge, a sea-sibilant lullaby addressed to a child ‘in the deeps of the future’:

 

                                    ‘…I give myself over, shell and shelter,

                                    child, my own. By and by with the push of the wash

                                    I’ll usher you in.’

 

Like Rees-Jones, Copus finished a fine reading on an optimistic note. It was a remarkable evening that will long be remembered by their appreciative NCLA audience.

‘A Poem Is Never Finished, Only Abandoned’. True North: Literature and The Region

Last night at NCLA there was undoubtedly the sense of a special event occurring. The Curtis Auditorium was packed. With painter Emma Halliday busily capturing the vibrant atmosphere onto fresh canvas there was a true sense of occasion.

Linda Anderson introduced the 15 minute film ‘Proof’. Proof, by Anna Woodford, chronicles how Tara Bergin and Kate Sweeney unearthed the treasures of Bloodaxe Poetry’s archive. Neil Astley’s Bloodaxe Poetry imprint is indisputably a jewel in the North’s literary crown, having released work by poets such as Simon Armitage and Benjamin Zephaniah. The film captured not just the illuminating process of communication between poet and editor, but also the texture of a poetry archive. The film is full of crisp, turned pages. It captures the heaving, physical presence of a rich archive. Sprinkled with insights from poets about what their work means to them, the film also offered a true sense of the landscape that shapes Northern literature- the wild moors and hills. As Val McDermid later commented, these open spaces offer fertile ground for the artistic imagination.

Afterwards Sean O’Brien chaired a wide-reaching discussion along with ‘Wire In The Blood’ writer Val McDermid and Lee Hall of Billy Elliot fame. The topic of Northern sensibility was discussed; how the North has defined itself in contrast to The South, and how Northern writers support one another in the face of adversity. The subject of recent arts cuts was raised, with Hall and McDermid exchanging impassioned views. McDermid raised the point that without libraries, the next generation cannot learn about the world, or even gain access to much needed services. Thereby showing that these issues do not just concern literature, but also the wellbeing of the community.  

But most of all the event was about celebrating the North in literature. This is a subject which- judging from the audiences questions- is keenly felt. It was an event which touched upon many subjects. But the message which remained clear was how literature, in its many forms, is part of a tradition intrinsic to the region. 

'Never write about your grandmother'- Tishani Doshi and Priscila Uppal

On 22^nd April NCLA played host to Tishani Doshi and Priscila Uppal. Two poets whose work takes in a wealth of inspirations- from Doshi’s dancing to Uppal’s work as Canada’s official Olympic poet in residence.

The evening opened with a reading of Uppal’s work. She ignited the audiences interest with poems in which she variously wrestled with Plato, ate yams with Usain Bolt and fenced with Don Quixote. What soon became noticeable was that however eclectic her influences were for each poem they all ended with a final line of great impact. They were variously moving, unsettling and inspiring. As Bill Herbert, introducing the poets for the evening quoted, Uppal is ‘bound to get in trouble in every political system in the world’.

 Tishani Doshi read next, interspersing her poems with anecdotes about the mysterious processes underpinning their development. I was struck by the penetrating and intoxicating rhythm in which she read. 

Poems about ‘blue-skinned gods and magical flutes’, ‘cypress trees and hunts for treasure’ and ‘Madras temple priests’ whirled past in an exhilarating maelstrom of sensations and images. Afterwards questions to the two poets were invited. One audience member perhaps summed up the shared response of the audience, simply saying- ‘I’m stunned.’

 The links between dance, athleticism and poetry were discussed, with Uppal commenting that ‘both athletes and poets process pain for a living.’ The ways in which a poet can remain productive but inspired were also considered. Both poets agreed that the one piece of solid advice a young Uppal had been given- ‘never write about your grandmother’ had to various degrees been broken by both. An innovative approach and a disregard for convention being perhaps two reasons this event was so mesmerising. 

‘If God existed, he’d be a solid midfielder’- Aleksandar Hemon at NCLA

On Wednesday 14^th March we were honoured that Sarajevo-born writer Aleksandar Hemon joined us to discuss his latest novel ‘The Book Of Our Lives’. The Newcastle audience was given a rare insight into the author who has been described as ‘the greatest writer of our generation’ (Colum McCann).

 

‘The Book Of Our Lives’ has been described by Hemon as ‘a love letter to two cities’- his Native Sarajevo and adopted Chicago. Hemon read from a chapter of the book entitled ‘If God existed, he’d be a solid midfielder’. Divorced from his homeland, the moment Hemon realized he could settle in Chicago was the moment he felt ingratiated into the football team he played with there.

 

Albert Camus said that everything he knew about the obligations of men he owed to football. During a reading Hemon unpacked all the promise of this statement, with his amusing anecdote of a portly, demonstrative player he once knew called Lido. Lido talked a great game, and was able after each match to offer great analysis on the limitations of other players whilst contributing little during play himself. Through Hemon’s work such characters were celebrated- people who offered bursts of colour during their life but who were often unmourned in their death.

Hemon then entered into a discussion of his life and work with William Fiennes, a novelist who also incorporates similar character studies in his work. Their conversation took in Nabokov, the culture of memoirs (‘the awful word contains me and moi’) and Hemon’s time at the UN. Hemon recounted how at their conferences every nation represented had the opportunity to offer input on reports- a crushingly slow process of democracy but one to which he could see no alternative. Throughout the evening Hemon offered the audience piercing, witty and generous insights into his life and work.
 

Jim Crace at NCLA

On 21/02/13 we were honoured to have Jim Crace, the internationally acclaimed and twice Booker shortlisted author, appear at NCLA. Described by John Updike as 'a writer of almost hallucinatory skill,' Jim Crace offered the crowd a compelling but at times harrowing insight into the writing process.

The evening began with a picture being shown from Crace's childhood. In it he was stood by his father in the sea during a trip to the coast. The rediscovery of this photo was described as the moment he first conceived a novel. He was struck, he told us, to find his wife in possession of a very similar photo of her as a child by the sea with her mother. This coincidence inspired him to create a novel to try and take his wife back to that moment.

But following the attainment of a large advance, he was unable to get a grasp on this novel despite huge commitment and effort to its cause. The sense of nagging doubt and elusiveness this evoked was skilfully imparted, leading up the moment his agent urged him to abandon the work. Having accepted this decision the homeward train journey, and an illuminating string of thoughts inspired by the landscape out of the window, led to the inception of ‘Harvest’- possibly Crace’s final novel.

This led us to a reading from Harvest. The novel charts the unravel of a pastoral idyll. The use of landscape in novel form, both as a means of understanding the world and of capturing loss, was proposed before an insightful and entertaining question and answer session with NCLA's Linda Anderson. Talks at NCLA also offer the audience the opportunity to ask questions of appearing writers, and Crace offered amusing and generous insights into his life and work.

'There Is Always A Story'- Alan Bowden's review of the Aleksandar Hemon event

Please click on the hyperlink to read Alan Bowden's excellent review of the Aleksandar Hemon event in The Culture Lab, Newcastle University on 13/03/13.

http://wordsofmercury.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/there-is-always-a-story-the-book-of-my-lives%c2%ad-aleksandar-hemon/