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First Collection Prize Shortlist

We’re delighted to announce the shortlist for the 2011 Aldeburgh First Collection Prize – one of the most influential and established poetry prizes in the UK. Judges Michael Laskey (Chair), Robert Seatter and Penelope Shuttle found plenty of common ground in their selection of five distinctive new voices from the 74 entries. The winner of the £1,000 prize (plus a week of ‘protected writing time’ and a paid invitation to read at the next Aldeburgh Poetry Festival) will be revealed at the start of the 23rd Aldeburgh Poetry Festival on Friday 4 November 2011. And you can read more about the Prize and its previous winners here. In the meantime, here’s the shortlist and plus a short note on each of the lively five:

Sidereal by Rachel Boast (Picador)
Born in Suffolk in 1975, Rachel studied at Wolverhampton and St Andrews universities. Sidereal is now shortlisted for three prestigious prizes – the Forward and the Guardian First Book Award as well as Aldeburgh. She’s reading at the Exeter Poetry Festival (6-9 October) and there’s an interview on their website.

The Hiding Place by Tom Duddy (Arlen House)
Tom was born in the west of Ireland and has lived in Galway City since the early 70s. He teaches philosophy at the National University of Ireland and his pamphlet The Small Hours (Happenstance) was published in 2006. He’s had poems in, among others, Poetry Ireland Review, The Irish Times, The SHOp and Other Poetry.  His website is here.

Tokaido Road by Nancy Gaffield (CB Editions)
Nancy works at the University of Kent and her first collection is also shortlisted for the Forward and was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Poetry publisher extraordinaire CB Editions are certainly getting lots right these days (e.g. Christopher Reid’s Song of Lunch, JO Morgan’s Natural Mechanical, Aldeburgh winner in 2009.)

Your Sort by Ed Reiss (Smith Doorstop)
Although the back-of-the-book blurb is minimal – “Ed Reiss lives in Bradford” – we happen to know that Ed was one of our eight Advanced Seminar poets in 2010 and he’s got a ‘highly commended’ poem on this year’s Forward list. Also he’ll be reading at Aldeburgh in November as part of the Smith/Doorstop reading, to celebrate 25 years of The Poetry Business.

The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions by Jacqueline Saphra (Flipped Eye Publishing Limited)
Jacqueline moved on to ‘songwriting, playwriting, screenwriting and stand-up comedy before I re-discovered poetry, my first love.’ Her pamphlet Rock ’n’ Roll Mamma was published by Flarestack in 2008.  Her website is here.

 

40 Days Until Aldeburgh

With no time at all to acclimatise to summer (what summer?) being gone, we’re over half-way through September. The Poetry Paper’s with the designer and goes to print soon, and in just over 40 days we’ll be turning Aldeburgh into poetry town. Every year, time speeds up from this point on.

There’s good news on the box office front and tickets are selling fast. Some workshops and events have already sold out – like Chris Wallace-Crabbe’s Craft Talk and Fleur Adcock’s talk on George Macbeth – and you won’t be able to get seats for lots more for by the end of the month. So we do urge you – and this isn’t hype – to book now to avoid disappointment. Aldeburgh stuggles with limited venue capacity (we’re not complaining!) and although we’d love simply to put more chairs out – fire and health & safety regs would have something dire to say…

We’re continuing to preview Aldeburgh poets in this edition of STUFF, at the same time as learning some unusual things about this year’s line-up. We’ve watched Robert Hass playing ‘The Poet’ (and nearly getting a screen kiss with Daryl Hannah) in the movie Wildflowers; we’ve discovered more of Luljeta Lleshanaku’s amazing life in Albania plus a taste of her reading style online; Fergus Allen celebrated his 90th birthday on 2 September (many happy returns Fergus – the first nonagenarian poet we’ll be hosting at the Festival!); Sam Riviere thinks that poets seem ‘like compulsive types who enjoy worrying things into a lean sort of order’; and Kay Ryan estimates that ‘the lofty condition enjoyed by the poet takes up only perhaps two hours, or 1/84, of a week’. Kay is one of the newly-announced 2011 MacArthur Foundation Fellows and will receive a £500,000 no-strings award in recognition of her exceptional poetry. And it’s down to The Poetry Trust that she’ll be making UK reading debut at Aldeburgh 2011!

And our pick of the programme for September? Naomi says you shouldn’t miss the chance to see Andrew Motion’s intense and moving debut play Incoming at Aldeburgh. Dean would like to nudge you towards one of his own Festival favourites – Blind Criticism (a very civilised way to start a Saturday morning). And Michael Laskey always loves celebrating small press achievements: the Smith/Doorstop reading has a really brilliant line-up of poets.

Aldeburgh Poetry Festival full programme
To book tickets: telephone 01728 687110 or online

 

Festival Preview: Amjad Nasser

Shepherd of Solitude: Selected Poems 1979-2004 is the first selection of works by Jordanian poet Amjad Nasser to be translated from Arabic to English and published (by Banipal) in book form. The collection comprises 56 poems from seven of Nasser’s Arabic collections translated by the world-class Libyan-born scholar and poet, Khaled Mattawa.

Poetry from around the world has always been at the heart of the Aldeburgh programme and hearing poets reading ‘in translation’ is key to the Festival every year. That’s why in recent years a packed Jubilee Hall has been left buzzing with the unfamiliar sounds of Afrikaans and Chinese, (as well as Dutch, Italian, Russian and Swedish). In many ways it can be the most compelling and surprising kind of reading – when the ‘music’ of a foreign language is unleashed. This year we’re looking forward to hearing Albanian for the first time at Aldeburgh (Luljeta Lleshanaku, featured in June’s STUFF) and also Amjad Nasser’s Arabic – with his Banipal publisher, Margaret Obank, reading the English translations.

Amjad was born in Mafraq, Jordan in 1955 and was brought up in a recently-settled Bedouin community. In the mid 1970s he changed his name and left home with the desire to become a poet, journeying first to Amman and then on to Beirut which, in 1977, was in the midst of a civil war but it was here that he encountered an exciting new wave of Arab poetry. However, he was forced to leave Beirut in 1982 (he was a supporter of the Palestinian cause when the resistance was expelled from the city) and at first settled in Cyprus before moving on to London in 1987 where he became the cultural editor of Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper. Meanwhile, he was writing this journey of displacement and exile into his poems – his first collection was published in 1979 and seven volumes later, Amjad is a major voice in contemporary Arabic literature.

 

DOG’S TAIL
My mother died in 2000 after she learned that all
the clocks and calendars had changed, and
possibly after she heard about something called
‘the millenium’. But she, who was illiterate and
who did not need to handle complex numbers,
knew, perhaps because she was preparing to
depart, that the world she left behind would not
be any different with a change of clocks and
calendars. Her guide in this regard was her
favourite Bedouin proverb. In this story, a dog’s
tail is placed in a mould to straighten it and it
emerges as crooked as it had ever been when it is
pulled out forty years later – a parable, which it so
happens, perfectly encapsulated my mother’s
opinion of me.

Amjad Nasser
translated by Khaled Mattawa
from Shepherd of Solitude: Selected Poems (Banipal Books, 2009)

 

Festival Preview: Scottish Islands Poets

In addition to the international poets in translation, we like to feature different UK dialects and languages at Aldeburgh. In 2011, the year of Sorley Maclean’s centenary, we’re bringing the lilt of three Scottish Islands’ poets to the Suffolk coast – Meg Bateman (Skye), Rody Gorman (Skye) and Robert Alan Jamieson (Shetland). Meg Bateman says, “Gaelic is a rather lovely language for poetry with its long and short vowels and its tradition of assonantal rhyme. As a language that in recent centuries has mostly been used in domestic and agricultural settings, it gives concrete expression to abstract ideas.” Aldeburgh Poetry Festival veterans with long memories might remember Sorley Maclean’s storming performance back in 1992. Nearly twenty years on, Meg and Rody will help us celebrate his work and his legacy.

 

New on The Poetry Channel

Over 700+ people relished an evening of poems by three great British women poets – Helen Dunmore, Jackie Kay & Alice Oswald at the 2011 Poetry Prom in Snape Maltings Concert Hall at the end of August. Alice wondered how on earth we get an audience of over 700 to a poetry gig in deepest Suffolk. But for the ninth year in a row that’s exactly what happened – with more than a third of the audience experiencing live poetry in the incredible setting of the Snape Maltings Concert Hall for the very first time. And if proof were needed that most poetry books sell at readings, then look no further than the Poetry Prom: it took the poets quite a while to sign many of the 250 books that were sold. You’ll be able to read exclusive interviews with each of our Poetry Prom poets in The Poetry Paper this November, but for now tune in to two podcasts on The Poetry Channel.

The Poem Show 11 – Poetry Prom Special
Listen to or download both these podcasts
Three poems from the 2011 Poetry Prom’s magnificent trio of great British women poets: Helen Dunmore, Jackie Kay and Alice Oswald, punctuated with feedback from some of the 700+ audience about the live listening experience. ‘Glad of These Times’ allows Helen Dunmore not to moan about modernity; Jackie Kay sweetly follows the course of a life-long friendship with ‘Fiere’, the title poem of her latest collection; and Alice Oswald closes with an extract from her book-length poem Dart and a striking series of similes about water.

Alice Oswald & Memorial
Listen to or download both these podcasts
After her triumphant performance at The Poetry Prom in Suffolk in August, Alice Oswald – in conversation with Naomi Jaffa – discusses her motivation and approach to writing Memorial, her new book length poem which is a version of Homer’s Iliad. This is followed by a short extract from her Prom performance where she introduces and shares the opening three pages.

 

Herbert Lomas (1924–2011)

Everyone who knew Herbert Lomas knew him as ‘Bertie’ – and we’re much saddened by the death of a particular Poetry Trust friend last weekend. He was part of Aldeburgh’s original Poetry Festival committee and a regular and supportive presence for the last 20+ years. It always felt good to have such a major poet living year-round in Aldeburgh and the town won’t feel the same without him. We’re planning a short commemorative free event at the Festival, to pay tribute to Bertie’s achievements as a poet – on Saturday 5 November at 10.15am in the James Cable Room. His friend and fellow Suffolk-based poet Wendy Mulford will say a few words and introduce three poems – read by Bertie himself and recorded at his last reading for us in 2007. Make sure you add this special gathering to your Aldeburgh weekend timetable. There are particularly fine obituaries in The Guardian and The Independent.

 

Other Stuff You Might Like

Roger McGough’s adaptation of Molière’s Tartuffe will be performed by English Touring Theatre at The New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich, Tuesday 25 – Saturday 29 October. Roger will be part of this year’s Aldeburgh Poetry Festival but here’s a chance to enjoy a less familiar but no less brilliant side to his writing. The website is here.

An enthusiastic nudge to all STUFF readers on behalf of our friends at The Poetry Archive: please do complete their online survey so they can get as much information from Archive users as possible to inform their future poetry download plans.  Go on, it doesn’t take long and there’s even a prize draw if you need an incentive!

Film-maker and travel writer Hugh Thomson (who blogged the 2010 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival) has just released his new 15 minute verse film about 9/11 – The Skull Beneath the Skin – another creative collaboration with the Irish poet Damian Gormon, following their celebrated verse film about the Troubles, ‘Devices of Detachment’.

Café Writers Norwich – the Open Poetry Competition 2011 is now open for entries. Judge: Pascale Petit. Closing Date 30th November 2011.

Calling Suffolk poets: make sure you enter the new Waveney & Blyth Poetry Competition. Closing date 30 October. £100 first prize plus a reading at The Seagull Theatre, Lowestoft on 4th December. The website is here