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The 23rd Aldeburgh Poetry Festival 4–6 November

With just two weeks to go, preparations are in more than full swing for the 23rd International Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. Aldeburgh’s shop windows are already festooned with poster poems (newly sponsored by Legal Technology Insider) by the 25 poets from all over the UK and far beyond who’ll be gathering on Suffolk’s easterly edge to turn a small coastal seaside resort into ‘Poetry Town’ for one weekend only. We hope you’ll be there because we’ve been planning all year to make this the finest celebration of the artform we love. If you’ve never made it to Aldeburgh before, we strongly recommend you get yourself to it this time. It’s going to be one of the best (and also, given our total loss of secure Arts Council funding, the Festival’s future – though brightly envisioned – is some way off being secure…).
Box Office Telephone 01728 687110 or Book Online

 

Festival Poets Preview

Here’s a reminder of some poets and events we don’t think you’ll want to miss.

We certainly weren’t alone in being delighted at the appearance of a new Fleur Adcock collection – Dragon’s Tale – in 2010. After a lengthy period of not writing this was a sparkling comeback. At Aldeburgh, in addition to her Friday night reading and her sold-out talk reconsidering the work of George MacBeth, Fleur will also be taking part in this year’s Festival Discussion, searching with Christian Campbell, Robert Hass and Luljeta Lleshanaku for the identity of The 21st Century Poem.

Named a Next Generation Poet in 2004, Jane Draycott has published three acclaimed collections and her new translation of the 14th century poem Pearl (2011) is also attracting the accolades (PBS Recommended Translation, Stephen Spender Prize winner). She’s known as a highly skilled tutor – unsurprisingly her workshop quickly sold out – so don’t miss her expertise in action at the Masterclass (generously sponsored for a 14th successive year by The Rialto) where she’ll be leading the annual collective scrutiny of three unpublished poems by three graduates of this year’s Aldeburgh Advanced Seminar – Fiona Moore, Jocelyn Page and Luke Yates.

Maurice Riordan has published three collections – each one striving to break new ground. As a former Editor of Poetry London (and also a teacher, anthologist and translator) he should be well-suited to the Blind Criticism event on Saturday morning when he’ll be joining forces – and gut instincts – with Sam Riviere to evaluate a pair of anonymous poems specially chosen to stimulate debate.

Chris Wallace-Crabbe’s first collection was published fifty years ago and the seventeen collections that have followed have all been characterised by an unflagging inventiveness and enthusiasm for the artform. He’s also a prolific essay writer, critic and editor, so his Short Take on the 21st Century Poem on Sunday morning is sure to be good value. With his international university teaching credentials and status in Australia, Chris has to be one of the great poet/teachers and amazingly, there are still places on his Friday afternoon Workshop (just wish we’d got the time to attend and benefit from his approach to reviving ‘stranded poems’) – so snap up a last ticket quick!

 

SAUCER

who first spotted the lack
not that is the slip
in between the cup and lip
but down under a hot mug or cup?
yet if it comes to that
a plate would merely be over the top

something then to stop the drips
or keep the pea soup off your lap
complicate the washing up
stop a simple splash or slop
and sit here for the waiter’s tip

sad without a cup

Chris Wallace-Crabbe
from Telling a Hawk from a Handsaw (Carcanet 2008)

 

Smith Doorstop Reading

A trio of poets to celebrate the 25th birthday of The Poetry Business. This month sees the publication of Early Train, Jonathan Davidson’s long-long-awaited second poetry collection. Jonathan also writes radio plays and adapts work for radio and the stage. Jackie Kay says of his work: “Distant and yet close, intimate and yet somehow objective, the quiet power of these tender and true poems pulls you in.”  Allison McVety is marketing manager at TPB but most likely won’t read from that side of her work at the Festival! Instead she will draw from The Night Trotsky Came to Stay – shortlisted for the 2008 Forward Best First Collection Prize – and last year’s Miming Happiness. As mentioned in last month’s STUFF, Ed Reiss is on the shortlist for the 2011 Aldeburgh First Collection Prize for Your Sort – the winner of which will be announced at the opening main reading on Friday 4 November – so he’s got to be doing something right!

 

THE GREAT

At the public meeting on ‘European Union
and National Identity’
the speaker asked rhetorically:

You who cling to Englishness –
which of you could say when Englishness
supposedly began?

He paused to underline the point.
People considered the possibilities, stared
at their toes, waited for him to move on.

Then my mother, sitting next to me,
spoke up loudly: ‘ALFRED PROBABLY’.

Ed Reiss
from Your Sort (Smith/Doorstop 2011)

 

Aldeburgh’s Alternative Slots

Away from the serious business of ‘page’ poetry, there’ll be at least two events at Aldeburgh providing the best words in the funniest order. Project Adorno hits town on Friday night – or Praveen Manghani and Russell Thompson as they are also known – described as a ‘lo-fi, sci-fi performance poetry double-act spectacular’. Combining poems and pop songs with off-the-wall humour, they’ve been performing together for over a decade and are Edinburgh Festival Fringe regulars, with Project Adorno’s Top Ten of Popular Culture as their 2010 show. And we can even point you to a video of Project Adorno in action at Oxfringe earlier this year – performing a song ‘written in Basic, on my Commodore 64’. It’s a romp through an early computer geek’s 1980s childhood and worth watching for the duo’s Xylophone and Rubic’s Cube solo alone.

On Sunday lunchtime don’t miss the chance to catch up with Rachel Pantechnicon at Aldeburgh. She really is one of the UK’s most charmingly peculiar poets – part Pam Ayres, part Eddie Izzard, purposefully prim and absurd in abundance. To give you a flavour of her wonderful world, we recently asked Rachel some questions about the business of writing, particularly how she shapes her poems. “I like a poem to be shaped like one of those heraldic pennants with long tassels” she replied thoughtfully, “a gonfalon I think is the word. Preferably pre-battle.” (You’ll be able to read more of her musings on this subject in the forthcoming Poetry Paper.) Pantechnicon’s poetry, usually co-written with Harold the cat, holds the masterful rhythm of the treadle and delves into philosophical issues such as the Protestant Reformers, hurting your coccyx and which is better, the steam-pixie or the real pixie. Expect captivatingly kooky poems from the best-dressed woman on the poetry scene.

 

Aldeburgh In Other Places

To spread the benefits of bringing international poets to Aldeburgh, we’re feeling chuffed to have organised partnerships with Poet in the City, the Southbank Centre and the Scottish Poetry Library who’ll be hosting the following additional readings for four of this year’s Festival poets:

Robert Hass and Kay Ryan will give a ‘Poet in the City’ reading at Kings Place in London at 7pm on Monday 7 November. There are only 100 seats available and they’re selling out fast – which is hardly surprising given that Hass hasn’t read in the UK since the 70s and Kay Ryan never before.
Book here

Luljeta Lleshanaku and Amjad Nasser will be part of a ‘State of Emergency’ reading at the Southbank Centre at 7.45pm on Tuesday 8 November. Luljeta will be making her UK debut and everything about her poems and her interview in The Poetry Paper suggests she’ll be very exciting in person.
Book here

Kay Ryan will give a solo reading for the Scottish Poetry Library – taking place at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh – at 7.30pm on Wednesday 9 November. As a Pulitzer Prize winner and recently announced MacArthur Foundation Fellow, Kay’s star is rising ever higher this year – and it’s great she’s getting to Scotland before flying back to the USA.
Book here

 

Winners Of Young Poets Competition

Ten gifted young writers have been selected from nearly 700 school children taking part in the Aldeburgh Young Poets Competition this summer. The young poets, aged from just five up to seventeen, will receive their £20 book tokens, read their winning poems at the opening Family Reading event at 6pm on Friday 4 November. They’ll then get to sit back to enjoy the rest of the event in the company of the one and only Roger McGough. The best way to start the Festival weekend. And if you want McGough for grown-ups, then there are a few seats left for his Q&A (with The Poetry Trust’s Dean Parkin, a great McGough fan) and for Roger’s Saturday night Performance (sponsored by Fairweather Stephenson & Co, the Suffolk firm of solicitors who really like live poetry) where he’ll be previewing new work.

 

Festival Bloggers

We do wish that ‘blogger’ was a more appealing word (can’t someone come up with something better?) because we’ve been really getting into some excellent poetry and cultural blogs in recent months. Better late than never, you might say…  As a result, we’ve asked Fiona Moore (Displacement), Charles Boyle (Sonofabook) and Olivia Fairweather (Magnetic Kid Liv) to provide their singular ‘takes’ on Aldeburgh this year – and we’re greatly looking forward to some highly engaged and engaging perspicuity! Maybe even some controversy (given how quiet and well-behaved the poetry world has been this year…). We’re sure there’ll be more audience-member-bloggers adding to the conversation so do please us know if you’re one of them so we can do the whole Facebook/Twitter-linky thing. Sonofabook has already shared a pre-Aldeburgh posting which is well worth reading.

 

Other Stuff You Might Like

The prestigious 2012 Christopher Tower Poetry Competition for young poets opens Friday 4 November when it’s launched at the 23rd Aldeburgh Poetry Festival (where Helen Mort, Tower-commended in 2004, will be reading). Last year’s winner, Elizabeth Johnson, and the 2010 third prize winner, Megan Owens, both came from Farlingaye High School in Woodbridge, Suffolk – which is only 20 miles away from Aldeburgh!

Places available for the forthcoming Mendham Writers Creative Writing Workshop with Brandon Robshaw on an ‘Animals’ theme here in Halesworth at The Cut Arts Centre, on Saturday 29th October from 10am-3pm. £35 including refreshments.

Entries are now invited for the 2012 Café Writers Competition and its associated new Norfolk Commission – supported by Ink Sweat and Tears – which offers £3,000 and the publication of a pamphlet in 2012.

Exciting news from the Poetry Book Society about the T S Eliot Prize Shortlist plus new three-year funding support from Aurum

Following the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival weekend is another of the town’s amazing cultural treats – the 17th Documentary Film Festival from 11–13 November and directed by Diana Quick. Of special appeal to poetry audiences will be the Fringe screening – in nearby Walberswick – of the exciting poetry slam film ‘We Are Poets’.

And finally, check out the new Aldeburgh Poets Video Show to whet your Festival appetite – just posted on The Poetry Trust’s website. Enjoy!