18^th of October 2012

Reviewed by Rachel Heaton.

I approach Manchester Cathedral with a certain amount of trepidation; I have never been inside and only know it as ‘that great big ‘churchy’ thing behind M&S’. Inside it is suitably cathedral-like (I nervously pull my too-short skirt down) and, despite my early arrival, is already full of people talking about highbrow literature while sipping wine. It feels like the sort of event where you need a glass of wine in your hand. Ali Smith and broadcaster Edward Stourton are already happily chatting to members of the audience.

The murmuring dies down as the choir enter: Andrew Shanks, the Cathedral’s Canon Theologian, introduces the choir and explains that the evening will be a retelling of the 18^th and 19^th century art form of the literary sermon.  Oh dear – I know nothing about the literary sermon and am really worried about the whole event being lost on me!

The choir’s beautiful voices echoing around the church go some way towards relieving my apprehension (well, it’s either that or my amusement at the look of absolute concentration that one tiny child-chorister is giving), but I am still nervous as Ali Smith steps up to the mic.

My worry, however, immediately disappears when she launches straight into a quote from of one of my favourite poems: A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day by John Donne – as an English student, I now feel at home! The sermon is a literary geek’s dream; she repeatedly quotes from an endless source of geniuses (including Yeats, Donne and Shakespeare) and I end up playing the ‘name the book’ game, trying to recall the author of the quote before she reveals it!

Ali’s speech revolves around two dictionary definitions; the word ‘sermon’, coming from the Latin to join, and the Donne-coined word ‘rebegot’, which she defines as a joining of ‘begot’ and ‘rebirth’. She comments on the cyclic nature of humanity, the idiosyncrasies of language and society issues (including racism and sexism), all stippled with giggle-inducing anecdotes about her childhood in the Catholic church and re-readings of biblical texts (like: “when I was a child, I spake as a child […] but when I became a woman”!)

She manages to hurtle through two hours worth of material in twenty minutes, leaving the woman next to me to mouth “WOW” when the sermon finishes!

At this point Edward Stourton joins Ali to conduct a ‘chat show-like’ discussion, accompanied by questions from the audience: we are treated to her opinions on contemporary experimental fiction, Angela Carter and the writing process. She wittily sidesteps giving a direct answer to the ‘what do you think of god’ questions, only saying (poetically) “I don’t think religion ever ends […] it changes, [… but ultimately] it is about trusting the dark” and that we should take away with us the idea of human multiplicity and communality. I nod and hope that I understand!

The end applause lasts longer I have ever heard an applause to last (at least for a literary event – the Take That concert I went to might just have beaten it, but only just): the whole audience is in awe.

In the queue to get my (battered) copy of The Accidental signed, I attempt to think of an intelligent/witty observation to impress… I fail, but am still very happy that she comments on my necklace. Claim to fame: Ali Smith likes my jewellery!

]]> http://archive.themanchesterreview.co.uk/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1375 http://archive.themanchesterreview.co.uk/blog/?p=1372 http://archive.themanchesterreview.co.uk/blog/?p=1372#comments Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:45:11 +0000 John McA http://www.themanchesterreview.co.uk/blog/?p=1372 The Manchester Sermon – Ali Smith
18^th October 2012

Having never been to Manchester Cathedral before, the first thing that struck me on arrival was the incredible beauty of the venue. The acoustics, the holy, hushed atmosphere and the high arches which are all typical of Christian places of worship, seemed an odd and foreboding place to hold a discussion on literature. I was instantly glad that it was Ali Smith, and not I, who had been given the difficult task of filling such a place of magnificence with her voice.

The Manchester Sermon event has been running for three years now, in an attempt to bring a tradition from the 18^th and 19^th centuries back to life. Literary sermons used to be a prevalent form of sermon, but faded in popularity during the 20^th century. Canon Andrew Shanks introduced the event and, intriguingly, told his audience that the Manchester Sermon is the literary sermon, reborn. And, seeing as I didn’t know what a literary sermon itself entailed, I was eager to find out what was in store.

After the introduction, we were treated to a performance by the Manchester Cathedral choir. I am an absolute sucker for any kind of classical singing and despite having a completely untrained and uneducated ear; it always moves me to my core. As Ali Smith said later, it’s the feeling that ‘fills your chest’, and especially in such a stunning setting.

Then the sermon itself began. Ali Smith is, as I was told prior to attending the event, an engaging, witty and very humorous speaker, who took a whole array of sombre and far-reaching themes and subjects – and yet still made her audience, or congregation, titter guiltily into the arched ceilings. Her sermon was structurally wonderful, arranged in a cyclical manner, so that she ended up back at the beginning of beginnings, introducing herself and thanking us for inviting her, in excess of five times. As well as making us laugh, this structure tied in very well to the word which kept echoing throughout Ali’s sermon – re-begot. The word was coined by John Donne in his poem ‘A Nocturnal Upon St Lucy’s Day’; a poem which is so dark and lacking in hope or comfort and yet Ali grasped on to this one word, and took us out of the dark and back to the source of things, time and time again.

Obviously, a sermon must include some sort of religious discussion and on this front Ali certainly delivered. Not only were we treated to brilliant anecdotes about Ali’s own experience of the Catholic church in 1960s Scotland, in which the congregation was once told that ‘kindness to a father will not be forgiven’, but we were also taught about saints and the book of Job, and other interesting information. I feel that my brain is well stocked with obscure Biblical facts after listening to Ali talk – for example, did you know that the phrase ‘give up the ghost’ originated in the book of Job? Or that ‘sermon’, as well as meaning harangue and moralise, comes from words that mean to join and be communal? Ali finished her sermon by making a list of brilliant writers and turning their names into verbs; she was going to ‘Keats’ us, and ‘Plath’ us, and ‘Angela Carter’ us and so on. The passion with which she reeled off the names of such genius writers caught in my chest, and I felt that if I didn’t fill my mind up with the words of these talented people, I would never be satisfied.

After Ali’s sermon finished, BBC Presenter Ed Stourton joined her on stage in conversation, asking jovial questions such as whether she could clarify if she thought God was a ‘bad egg’ or not. They discussed religion, and its faithful trusting of the dark, before moving on to an open question and answer session. The last question asked Ali Smith what she wished her congregation to take away from her sermon, what her over-riding message was. She told us that we should remember our multiplicity, the huge range of things we do, together and alone. She said we must keep our eyes open to the communal, for that is the meaning of a sermon. Personally, I took away that message with me, along with others and, as I stepped back out into the chilly Manchester air, I felt renewed with a fresh sense of purpose. Perhaps I even felt back to the source of life and thought, perhaps I even felt re-begot.

This year Anthony Burgess’s self-dismissed novel “A Clockwork Orange” celebrated its fiftieth birthday with a special edition and a host of events in Manchester, his birth town. On the 18^th of October   “Fifty Years of A Clockwork Orange” was held part of the Manchester Literature Festival. Yet, unlike the Anthony Burgess inspired beer A Chocolate Orange by Brentwood Brewing Company available at the event, it failed to do what it said on the tin. Hosted in “The International Anthony Burgess Foundation,” at the Chorlton Mill, Manchester and surrounded by Burgess’s belongings, it felt that the title of the talk implied a celebration of the novel’s legacy. What was presented felt more like “The Context of A Clockwork Orange”, a history lecture rather than a celebration of the novel. None the less it was insightful and captivating.

After the formalities of the introductions by Andrew Biswell, the foundation’s director, Dominic Sandbrook, acclaimed historian and hailed “masterly magpie,” took to the stage and performed like the perfect historian. With “A Clockwork Orange” as his core thesis, he came armed with an impressive array of evidence to paint a detailed picture of the novel and the film’s context in the 1960s and 1970s, conveying with academic precision “Burgess Britain.” Yet, at times it felt the novel was merely a medium for his historic agenda. I believe it was Sandbrook’s figures, dates and quotes, from a wide historical scope, that got more audience responses than the novel itself. There was more of a buzz about the room upon the revealing that Golden Wonder’s first flavour of Crisp, in the 1960s, was cheese and onion, than there was in response to his discussion of the moral media backlash to Burgess stylized hooligans or Nadsettes’ linguistic brilliance.

Sandbrook spoke with confidence and inspired a few laughs here and there, a testament to his charisma. However, after starting strong with Burgess and his book at the foreground, the social-political historian pushed it to the background opting for a historical insight rather than a literary one. Though saying this, it was done well. Sandbrook gave the key elements of the book: the velvet, the alluring, the violent, the sickening a vivid and visceral context– enigmatically capturing the post-war atmosphere, the rise of youth and the ultra-violence, which inspired both novel and film. Not only did he highlight this with Burgess’s own words and anecdotes but with a variety of different cultural responses to “A Clockwork Orange” from politicians to his teenage self. Perhaps, above all the true mastery of his talk was his ability to strike a balance between film and novel. He even bravely conceded, cautiously aware of his setting that without the film Burgess and the novel would have been lost in time. It quickly was ruled as blasphemous and rebuked by Biswell who reminded the audience of Burgress’s other work.

When the Q&A session began it felt like an academic showdown between Sandbrook and Biswell as the two men journeyed the terrain of obscure knowledge. Though interesting, I found it meandering. I cared little about Burgess’s dislike for the Beatles or a poor comedic reference to the irony that Jimmy Savile despised the novel. It was only when it was opened to the floor that the audience flexed their literary muscles and brought the subject, and the attention, back to the book itself.

My review of the events may be seen as rather negative but I would like to reiterate that it is spawned from disappointment rather than contempt for what was a marvellous talk. I expected that I was in for an evening of celebrations of “A Clockwork Orange” and was met with a history lecture. It felt less like “fifty” years of “A Clockwork Orange” and more like “ten” years. Though at times he discussed the timelessness of Burgess’ themes, which are as old as humanity, and at the end made an attempt to draw the book into the twenty-first century questioning that though we may not be in bowler hats are we living in Burgess Britain? Yet, the majority of the talk firmly remained resident in the sixties and seventies. With the originality of vision in Burgess’s and Kubrik’s creation, I felt that a sensory element was missing. Some visuals of the Clockwork cult would have resonated more effectively along with the speech. However, I came away with a contextual picture and understanding of the world created for the droogs to roam. I feel the beer was more of a celebration of “A Clockwork Orange” fiftieth anniversary than the event.

Arriving early for the first ever ‘Blog North Awards’, I couldn’t help but feel slightly thrown by my surroundings. Like most students, the Deaf Institute for me is a place I usually visit much later on in a night, and normally when I’m not in a condition to fully appreciate the setting. At 7.30pm on a Wednesday evening however, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the understated style of the upstairs room, which, although cosy, is designed to seat a fair number of people. The atmosphere was really warm and it wasn’t long until I found myself in a conversation with a young man about events we had been to at the festival this year. It was interesting to notice the huge variety of those attending, from the hippyish, bespectacled characters which one might archetypally associate with blogging, to the refined, older gentlemen sporting cravats.  On arrival, you could immediately appreciate the real diversity present in blog writing today.

After the traditional thanks-giving by the compere, the event began with blog readings from some of the short-listers. The eclectic display of talent was kicked off by Amy Roberts, whose work focuses on the ‘horror of everyday life’, and in this instance, the horror of working in a certain fascist clothes store which shall remain unnamed. Her piece focused on the comedic stand point one must take when faced with the depravity of existence. Next up was possibly my favourite part of the evening: Kevin Boniface, a postman from Huddersfield, reading from his online “diary”. Mixing the banal with the insane, Kevin recounted tales from his daily post round using rudimentary, sometimes crude, and yet always beautiful vocabulary. I think what stuck out more however, was his performance - his nervousness and obvious introversion were appealing to the audience and only led to a higher appreciation of the humour of his work, and of everyday life. Then came Simon Moore’s reading from his blog ‘Sonnet Reviews’. His work aims to review contemporary culture, and most often television, through the medium of sonnets. I was struck with admiration that he had not only accomplished this demanding task, but that he had done so with such success. Lastly was perhaps the most unusual reading of the night from Lee Grant, accompanied on stage by a young couple and their baby. Lee told the story of Francis, a teenager from a troubled background who he had been following as she had grown up. In his blog he had documented the first year of Mia’s life, a child Francis had had at the age of 16. He managed to convey the story in a very touching and caring manner, despite the constant interruptions from a restless Mia!

After a short interval we heard from the ‘star guest’: novelist Adam Christopher. At first I was slightly perplexed by the inclusion of a novelist in what seemed to be a night celebrating blogging. After his reading however, taken from his science fiction novel Seven Wonders, it was made clear that Christopher had used blogging as the first outlet for his work. The following question and answer session allowed the previously dry compere to really come into her own. Through her questioning we were able to learn that Christopher owed his career to social media, having been part of a strong literary community on Twitter, even finding his eventual publisher there! I found it fairly dispiriting that the acceleration of his career did not seem to have much to do with his blogging; instead it seemed more due to the connections he had made on Twitter.

The night was finished off, of course, by the Blog Awards! The cheers of support for each nominee really expressed the solid community of writers to be found online. The winners were announced and I was surprised to see that the young guy I’d spoken with earlier in the evening won the prize for Best Young Writer. I decided not to stick around for the schmoozing after and instead made a speedy exit. Sitting on the bus taking me back home I contemplated blogging and how useful it really is for writers. Although more popular than ever, many people still see it as a waste of time - time which could be better spent on writing to be published. My mind went back to my favourite moment of the night: seeing Kevin Boniface’s ‘the Most Difficult Thing Ever’ win the prize for Best Writing. I wondered whether, had he not started a blog, but simply carried on with his private diary, anyone would know what a talented writer he was. I arrived home with a new perspective - that blogging is a platform through which people can display their work and without it, useful or not, a lot of the talent out there today would still be very much hidden.

]]> http://archive.themanchesterreview.co.uk/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1368 http://archive.themanchesterreview.co.uk/blog/?p=1363 http://archive.themanchesterreview.co.uk/blog/?p=1363#comments Thu, 18 Oct 2012 15:34:16 +0000 John McA http://www.themanchesterreview.co.uk/blog/?p=1363 Deryn Rees-Jones and Paul Farley by Flora Anderson

As part of Literature Live, I went to see Paul Farley and Deryn Rees-Jones reading from their new collections The Dark Film and Burying the Wren respectively. It was run as a University of Manchester event in the John Thaw Studio on Oxford road, and was a real education in some thoughtful, wildly different, and emotionally charged writing.

47-year-old Paul Farley took to the stage first, later admitting he found such formal readings odd saying he had a sudden ‘attack of self-consciousness.’  I found this hard to believe as he reads with what seems like an experienced, yet soft, authority: his gentle Liverpool accent rounds off each word with well-seasoned character.  On paper also he is a man of great experience. Farley has won countless awards, from a young age, winning the Forward Poetry prize in 1998 for his first collection The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You. His new collection The Dark Film is interested in the idea of ‘how we see’; explaining this as he puts on his glasses. Playing with ideas of perspective and scale, he asks us to be aware of the inevitable memories that float up in our minds.  This is addressed in his poem about Quality Streets, lifting the wrappers up to your eyes as a child ‘becoming a camera’ and changing the colour and feel of the world around you.

Under a Pre-Cambrian Sky

the scale of blood and blood-shadow has made

An ancient fortress of the maisonettes

Farley talks about the inescapable draw to his childhood, something he almost doesn’t want to write about but it, time and time again, becomes his inspiration. Poems about his childhood in Liverpool he even describes as a ‘secretion’, as if they are a product of him over which he has no control. He does not trivialise or reduce these memories however; Farley seems to write on a series of levels at all times. His language is varied and unexpected, but he does not claim any alienating register, instead conjuring up images that you return to again and again catching new meaning from them each time. This was apparent in his opening poem, The Power

Picture a seaside town

in your head. Start from its salt-rotten smells

and raise the lid of the world to change the light,

then go as far as you want

He demands us to create our own vision of his poem, which truly exemplifies his quest to discuss different perspectives. We are immediately made aware of it being our own vision, and one of many in the audience. The poem ends with the line ‘now look around your tiny room and tell me that you haven’t got the power’. Hearing Farley read this line himself brings real impact with it as he stares straight up at the audience, almost endowing us with his imagination. Of course he humbly brushes it to one side and makes a well-phrased discouraging remark before introducing his next piece.

Deryn Rees Jones presented her poetry with a far greater emotional stance, the sound of her voice had the tone of someone who was talking about something very close to her heart, and she approached all of her subject matter with real thoughtfulness and poise. An obsession with small things permeates her collection and we heard poetry about a series of Slugs, trilobytes and eggs. The imagery she used was extremley interesting, in slugs she writes:

In the gastropod inchings of their midnight séances,
the slow rehearsals of molluscular dance,
they’re themselves absolutely, beyond imitation.

Rees-Jones paints the slugs as magical beautiful creatures. Her further descriptions of trilobytes ‘small as bullet holes’, hark back to Farley’s childhood poetry, showing how small events and things can form a personality. Incidentally the two poets share a Liverpool past, despite Rees-Jones identifying more with her Welsh history. Her most startling poem is the Dogwoman sequence, inspired by artist Paula Rego, who Rees-Jones praises for ‘facing terror straight on’. We go down a path of squalor and degradation, dealing with the dichotomy of humility and humiliation which defines caring for someone who is sick. The death of Rees-Jones’ husband runs through various parts of her collection, nowhere more affecting than in The Songs of Elizabeth So, where she writes ‘Your name is one/ I will not speak’; identities converge and emptiness is allayed by a creative fulfilment, but is a moving depiction of loss and unfinished business.

The two poets took questions towards the end, highlighting the benefit of teaching and the importance of learning at every age from everyone. They both eschewed the idea of avoiding sentimentality from one questioner, instead saying that poetry inevitably does involve it, but through pertinent frameworks. Both poets here certainly did so, and with clear and moving individualism.

With previous visits in mind, I associate The Deaf Institute with fly-paper dance floors and minor tinnitus, so my initial reservations concerning the venue for The Blog North Awards may have been justified. However, the moment I walked through the Gothic front-door (sober, for once) I realised my doubts had been misplaced: it was the ideal venue. The aforementioned Gothic exterior, the boudoir-like low level lighting, the mock-rococo chandeliers, and the absurdly large disco ball hanging above the audience all seemed to mirror the insane, hotchpotch world of bloggers and blogging.

Almost the moment after I had sat down with a premium European lager (the champagne was presumably on ice), proceedings began. The first part of the evening consisted of four bloggers sharing excerpts of their material. Liverpudlian Amy Roberts – nominated in two categories – read from her blog I never knew you were such a monster, a site addressing the ridiculousness of everyday life. Punctuated by innovative insults and colourful – in all senses of the word – imagery, it was certainly a full-blooded first encounter with the world of blogging.

The second speaker’s blog is now firmly bookmarked on my web browser. Kevin Boniface – a postman from Huddersfield and winner of the Best Writing category – was its creator. Entitled The Most Difficult Thing Ever, the blog is centred on Boniface’s observations whilst on the day job. Po-faced, he offers up absurdly funny snapshots of elderly women discussing custard tarts, of the housing estate ‘where pretend owls outnumber humans two-to-one’, and of the man who feigns tripping over to avoid eye contact with him. The audience, forgiving his nervousness, were raucous in their appreciation of his unique, deadpan comedy.

As if to exemplify the diversity of the blogging community, the next two speakers were completely disparate to what had gone before. First up was Simon Moore’s Sonnet Reviews; a blog that met the incredibly small niche of reviews written in the classical fourteen line format.

The following speaker was photographer and writer Len Grant showcasing his blog Her First Year, a site that shares the experiences of amiable parents Hassan and Frances through the first year of baby Mia’s life. As he read an excerpt, Grant was accompanied on stage by the protagonists of his blog – Mia stealing both the microphone and the adoration of the audience. The blog is touching and stunningly well-written. It tracks seventeen-year-old Frances’ troubled childhood, her subsequent pregnancy and childbirth, interspersing these events with beautiful photographs along the way. Quite deservedly, Her First Year won the Best Personal Blog category.

After a brief interval, the ‘headline act’, Adam Christopher, came to give a reading from his new book Seven Wonders, a novel that removes super-heroes from the traditional comic book and places them into prose. ‘It was like a scene from a movie,’ he began. After that, I switched-off.

After his reading there was a quick Q&A session in which he came across as extremely personable and interesting – I began to think that I had judged his writing too harshly. He talked about the copyright of super-hero names: he was forced to rename one of his characters after a clash with one of the original X-Men. He also talked about the importance of social networking to him (it was on Twitter where he met his publisher and agent), and he dealt with certain questions – e.g. ‘If you were a bad robot, what would you do that would make you so bad?’ – with wit. By the end, I found myself warming to him.

The evening closed with the awards ceremony (the winners of each category are listed below.) Each winner was met with the same hysterical, whooping cheers from their fellow bloggers. It certainly seems like a warm, welcoming community. In fact, I think I might start up a blog just to nose my way into it.

Best Arts and Culture Blog:                A Negative Narrative

Best City or Neighbourhood Blog:      Sevenstreets

Best Food and Drink Blog:                 Around the World in Eighty Bakes

Best Personal Blog:                            Her First Year

Best Specialist Blog:                            The Magic Square Foundation

Best Writing Blog:                               The Most Difficult Thing Ever

Best Young Blogger: Tie between Every Second Song and Considerate Trespassing

As I walk towards the Deaf Institute I wonder what the first ever Blog North Awards will be like. I shuffle my way through the dimly lit room to the bar observing the abundance of people around me holding up their phones, taking pictures of the unusual features of the room including the giant disco ball and impressive stack of speakers behind the bar. Drink in hand I find my way to a seat as the friendly and enthusiastic host begins the evening.

After a short introduction, a short-listed blogger, Amy Roberts,  makes her way onto the stage to read from her blog ‘I Never Knew You Were Such a Monster’, a blog that looks at the horrors of everyday life. She reads with excellent expression and it is easy to see the truth behind her claim that the events of the stories within her blog are based on personal experience. The humour in the piece gets the audience laughing and fun atmosphere is created within the audience.
As the next blogger, Kevin Boniface, make his way onto the stage to read from his blog ‘The Most Difficult Thing Ever’ I begin to understand the diversity that exists within world of blogging. My ignorance on the subject led me to believe that blogging is very much a young person’s pastime but as Kevin reaches the microphone I am faced with a middle -aged postman. His approach on reading is very different as he awkwardly picks out excerpts from his blog. His awkward demeanour only adds to the humour of his observational blog that covers topics such as little old ladies and custard tarts to name but a few. The room is filled with laughter and I too laugh as I spot a woman desperately trying to stifle her own bout of giggles.
Next to take to the stage is Simon Moore who reads a selection on his ‘Sonnet Reviews.’ Simon uses the medium of the sonnet to review topics such as ‘Downton Abby’ to works shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. The audience laugh with delight at this quirky take on the review format.
The final guest blogger, Len Grant takes to the stage to read from his blog ‘Her First Year.’ He is joined on stage by a young couple and a small baby. Len introduces his blog and explains how he was linked with a young teenage mother through the Reclaim Project. He speaks of her tough upbringing and I am found choking back my tears as the girl he is speaking about is stood in front of me on stage. The blog follows the young couple in the first year of their daughter’s life. As Len reads from his blog, accompanying pictures fill the screen behind and the child on stage coos, elements which both add to the real-life, raw emotion of the piece. After the humour from the previous bloggers, this blog really gave the audience something to think about. As they left the stage they were greeted with a huge applause.
During the short break, the talk turns to the blogs so far. The people that surround me are chatting enthusiastically about the excerpts from the blogs they have just heard. The buzz that fills the room is interrupted as the next speaker is announced.
Adam Christopher, writer of the science fiction novel ‘Empire State’ is next to read from his upcoming book ‘Seven Wonders.’ The excerpt he reads is an interesting take on the world of superheroes seen as the protagonist amusingly struggles with issues such as what his superhero name should be. I wonder why his reading is part of the ‘Blog’ awards but as the Q & A section starts I am soon enlightened. He explains the influence social media had on his career and notes how he made friends with his current publisher through Twitter. As the questions turn to the audience, the humorous nature of the evening is again evident  as a man at the bar raises his hand to ask ‘If you were a bad robot what would you do that would make you so bad?’
The excitement of the evening reaches its peak as award ceremony beings, an announcement which is greeted with an accompanying ‘oooo’.  I am excited as the seven categories are read out: best arts and culture blog, best city or neighbourhood blog, best food and drink blog, best personal blog , best specialist blog, best writing and finally best young blogger. The tension has got to me as the names of the winners are announced and I am pleased to hear that a couple of the bloggers who read earlier in the night have won awards, though I don’t know how the judges could decide between them.
As the evening comes to a close, the crowd shuffles and make their way once again to the bar to discuss the success that was the evening. I however head back home eagerly waiting to get my hands on my laptop so I can read more blog posts from these amazing bloggers.

 

I had not entirely known what to expect when I set off to spend my Saturday evening at a reading of James Kelman’s new novel Mo Said She Was Quirky. I knew the work of Irvine Welsh who has been compared with Kelman, but little about the man himself. The reading which was part of the Manchester Literature Festival was held at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in a fairly small brick-walled room. Seats were laid out for about sixty people and the majority of these seats were filled five minutes in advance of the event. I was only about a five meters from the stage and even the back row must have been less than ten meters away, which worked very well for the intimacy of the reading that followed.

Kelman was introduced by Simon Kövesi, author of James Kelman (Contemporary British Novelists), who also chaired a question and answer session after the reading. Kelman began by reading some short stories from his 1998 collection Busted Scotch. The first story he read gave its name to the collection, possibly because of its conclusion which encompassed the dark humour that was shown in much of the readings that Kelman gave. Four more stories were read, including That Thread which was a personal highlight of the evening. All the stories used working-class dialect in some form and it was clear to see the importance of Kelman to writing realistic idiomatic dialogue. There was a good audience response to all the stories but the transition between each could have been helped; it was sometimes like he was trying to get to the next story in a hurry.

At about ten to eight Kelman finished reading his short stories and moved on to an extract from his recently published novel Mo Said She Was Quirky. Kelman was humorously honest when he said he would read the first few pages so that he “didn’t have to explain anything”. The reading was very engaging due to the quality of the writing and because Kelman seemed to become more animated as he read more. He never left his quite sombre tone but began to act out the dialogue a little more which was a welcome addition to the performance. It was obvious after twenty minutes of hearing the opening that prejudice and inequality were large themes in this text. The political overtones of his reading were expanded on later in the Q&A session. It was largely silence in the audience whilst he read but the large applause afterwards confirmed that it was a mood of concentration on the novel.

The Q&A began immediately after the reading from the novel had finished. It kicked off with a series of questions from the chair, Simon Kövesi. The first was whether Kelman had to change anything stylistically to write a female protagonist, as he did in his most recent novel?. Bluntly but humorously Kelman answered “no, there wasn’t any stylistic changes”. The audience questions moved the talk onto the political situation of Scotland and Kelman’s passion became even more evident with the much applauded statement that it “still amazes [him] that we have a monarchy”. There is a clear connection between his politics and his works, in response to a question he described himself as a “libertarian socialist” and the works he read contained numerous convincing working-class characters.

At the close of the event the applause really highlighted the good feeling towards Kelman’s works and probably to his political sentiments. The reading was consistently interesting for the hour and a half it lasted and was varied enough to interest someone with no knowledge of his works at all.

James Horrocks

By Beckie Stewart

 

 

MadLab, on the edge of Manchester’s Northern Quarter, is a modest venue resembling a rundown exhibition space, made haphazard with mismatched chairs, crates and sofas. If it weren’t for the clinical whiteness, the lack of background music and the looming PowerPoint displaying the words “STEM CELLS”, I’d feel perfectly at home and a little more in my depth. This feels like Science territory, and I am an Arts intruder.

 

The room is already busy when I arrive, the audience composed of older patrons of science and science fiction, decimated by a handful of kooky looking twenty-something’s, myself included.

 

Founder and editorial manager of Comma Press, Ra Page, opens the discussion by explaining exactly why and how this collection of short stories became Bio-Punk. Comma, he says, is interested in smuggling information across different disciplines, and here it manifests itself in the exploration of the relationship between medical progress and ethics within the medium of fiction. Thus the seeds for Bio-Punk were planted, (or rather, its stem cells were taken and cloned in a laboratory somewhere,) and the end product is one that repeatedly churns out the question: Where exactly is science taking us, and how fast? (And at what cost…)

 

Ra explains that each of the writers teamed up with a scientist to explore the ethical dilemmas that arise from medical research. Jane Feaver, an elegant and captivating writer, is the first of the two fiction writers to take the mic, admitting she gave up on science at school and was something of a “blank page” when it came to biology. Listening to her story excerpt, however, only shows that a fresh eye approach can result in a simplistic but brilliantly humanist perspective.

 

We get moved on towards the ‘actual science,’ with scientists Neil Roberts and Melissa Baxster discussing stem cell research and its uses – curing deaf gerbils and arthritis in dogs, rare brain disorders and spinal injuries in humans. It’s a basic science lesson and nothing too taxing for those in the audience who are here for the fiction reading rather than the science lecture, but it’s presented in such a way that holds the attention of even the least scientifically minded. If I’ve learned anything from the past 90 minutes, the margin between theoretical science and reality is closing, fast, and I’m a little overwhelmed.

 

The star of the evening, however, is Gregory Norminton; a man who wakes up at three in the morning worrying about the end of the biosphere.  His short story is concerned with body modification and how we could potentially warp our bodies with technology as new science encroaches. He cites the recent trend of saline forehead injections in Japanese hipster culture as an example of this extreme modification, and uses it as a platform to ask – Where exactly will technology like this take us? Where exactly do we draw the line? And, quite frighteningly – Are we, as a human race, moving towards cyborg?

 

He reads his extract in an American accent (he envisioned the characters this way and it would seem wrong not to,) talking of under-the-skin gels, the cult of body mods and how the playfulness of the human spirit is manifesting itself in the human body. His writing style is fluid and he is a charismatic reader, I am pulled along from one image to the next, roused by his unique take on the unfamiliar made familiar.  Neil Roberts markedly points out here that repugnant ideas which are currently rejected by society (things that possess what he calls the ‘yuk’ factor) will gradually become absorbed and no longer appear controversial. At this I am imagining lab-grown chicken meat, genetically modified plants in Tesco, Japanese teens with saline donut faces, and much worse.

 

Gregory goes on to describe the experience of working alongside scientist Dr Nihal Engin Vrana, who joined us through the wonder of technology that is Skype. When trying to find inspiration for his story’s topic he says it was like a theoretical sweet shop – he would ask Dr Vrana “Is it possible to do that?” to which the scientist would reply, in that casually flippant way, “Yeah, probably.”

 

Of course, with fiction writing you are without the confines of the rigours of science, a world in which everything you dream up is possible, but it seems to me that the gap between that world and this is closing faster than I had ever imagined. The discussion was perhaps too heavily weighted in the science department, but maybe that’s just the literature student in me. Either way, I have been to dozens of MLF events, but none quite like this. I left with an unsettled feeling of the rapidity of our progression and an undying curiosity to Google ‘Japanese bagel headed teens.’

 

Upon winning the Booker prize in 1994 amidst a tornado of controversy for his novel ‘How Late It Was, How Late’, the work of James Kelman has constantly undergone harsh criticism. Many have undermined the intellectual depth of his stories, claiming that by focusing on the hardships of those at the margins of society, it lacks interest and creativity. However, he still remains one of Scotland’s most prolific authors. This is the perfect opportunity for reader and author alike to clarify some of the misunderstandings and intentions surrounding his work.

After a brief introduction, Kelman, or ‘Jim’ steps onto the small stage possessing an understated but obvious grandeur. His manner appears humble whilst dignified yet the wisdom, weariness and condemnation of authority evident in his eyes convey much more. He is drinking an ale or bitter of some sort and speaks in a slightly sinister monotone that, when combined with his appearance and gruff Scottish accent has the effect of ensnaring me even more deeply within his morose world.

He starts by reading a handful of short stories from his collection entitled ‘Not Not While The Giro’, published in 1983. Like all of his work, the stories are portrayed through the lens of the working-class using a dry, ironic wit and focusing on the harsh reality of being from the Scottish proletariat. The short, blunt sentences rather devoid of description reflect directly the persona of their writer. He reads how a factory worker falls into a tub of acid only to be pushed under further by his father as he was dead already anyway. The mundane, matter-of-fact tone with which Kelman reads a distressing event starts to illuminate how perhaps this writer’s persona has come to be misunderstood and labelled as ‘prickly’ (to be polite) in the past.

However, the more he reads, the more the audience become aware that it is this monotonous, blunt tone that is the source of interest. It seems, at the least, very real. He does not look up from the book, but simply drags his audience deeper and deeper into the stories themselves with the frankness in which he describes the events.

He then proceeds to read an extract from his new novel ‘Mo Said She Was Quirky’. Kelman sounds more sympathetic towards the protagonist, Helen, who thinks she spots her estranged brother when she catches sight of two homeless men, yet the focus on the harsh realities of life is unchanged.

It is only when the ‘question and answer’ session starts that the audience truly begin to unravel and understand the complex nature of Kelman’s reserved yet strong moral aura. His rejection of Scottish nationalism but embracement of self-determination, the absurdity of having a monarchy in the modern era and his association with literary greats such as Kafka and Joyce are only a few of the topics that are the source of most of his political condemnation during the next half an hour. He explains how the concept of ‘Rule Britannia’ is ‘a fuckin’ joke’ when there is war and famine in parts of the world and how using the formula of a beginning, middle and end in short stories is equivalent to Van Gogh having a beginning, middle and end in his paintings, which in his words and to the enjoyment of the audience is also ‘absurd’.

We also learn that he has worked in factories in Salford and the Trafford Park area doing up to 23-hour shifts in his teens and early twenties as well as being a bus driver before he started writing. The nature of personal experiences as being the primary source of inspiration for his work is evident when he explains that ‘fatigue is a part of life’, sadly reflected in his weathered face.

Upon exiting, I am left with a chilling yet inspired feeling that Kelman is the embodiment of the tortured artist. He undercuts everything with a dry, sarcastic wit, which combined with his experiences of working-class Scottish life, his empathy with painters, his nihilistic views and his sombre manner create a portrait of a highly intelligent, yet misunderstood, political radicalist who has been defined entirely by his experiences on the lower rungs of society.

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