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Sharon Blackie on the path out of our modern wasteland

9 May
Sharon Blackie

Sharon Blackie ©Calyx Picture Agency

“The world is in crisis”, says Sharon Blackie, author of If Women Rose Rooted, and possessor of one of the calmest voices I’ve ever heard.

I’m here as an unofficial representative of the Patriarchy, which quickly becomes an uncomfortable place to be as Sharon opens with a lighthearted tale of the rape and subjugation of the well maidens of ancient Celtic myth.

They used the water from the wells they guarded to nourish the land, so the legend goes, and so the land nourished us in turn. But then menfolk were invented, and we ruined everything. Continue reading →

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Jo Marchant on “the beer goggles of medicine”

9 May
Jo Marchant

Dr. Jo Marchant. Photo ©Calyx Picture Agency

I can remember the exact moment I first became fascinated by the idea of the mind being able to cause physical changes in the body. I was eleven, and I’d just watched Michael Ironside use his brain to force a man’s head to explode in the movie Scanners. The following day I went in to school and squinted really hard at the teacher. He asked me if I needed new glasses.

Real life often finds a way to be both less exciting and more interesting than Hollywood fantasy and it turns out that our brains contain a hidden and little understood power after all.

Jo Marchant has a BSc in genetics, a PhD in microbiology, and a black belt in jiu jitsu. I have a Scottish ‘O’ Level in Biology. Fortunately the science ninja also possesses a storyteller’s knack for unfolding a narrative in way that makes it easy to follow. She’s written a book called Cure: A Journey Into the Science of Mind Over Body which is essentially an examination of the placebo effect and the scientific study of this phenomena. Continue reading →

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There can be only one – Swindon Slam!

8 May
Al Brunker finds urghh tissue on his hands (C) Calyx Picture Agency
Joy-Amy Wigman trying not to think about THAT boyfriend ©Calyx Picture Agency
Slam winners with Matt Holland ©Calyx Picture Agency

First off, a massive congratulations to all who took part in the Swindon Slam! this year (and every year). Everyone who took part wrote a credible piece of poetry and for some it was pouring their souls out on stage. In competitions if you win, or come in the top three, it’s the best feeling in the world, but if you lose it can be very demotivating. So I’m going to say, keep going! You are fantastic, want to hear more!

There were 15 amazing competitors this year, which equalled 29 diverse poems under three minutes or less – including those by comperes – mostly performed with aplomb.

Yes there were poems about beverages and love and references to dead famous poets, and poems about poems or not writing poems or taking part in competitions with poems (like this one).

There were also poems about war, bombings, addiction, the environment and Professor Brian Cox (of course). Continue reading →

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A Simply Splendid Swindon Affair

8 May

A Swindon Affair

8th April 2016

A  Swindon Affair: a Family Affair and a Love Affair

When posting about this event on social media I accidentally referred to it as a ‘Family Affair’. But that was probably a Freudian slip – or something. Because a family affair is really rather what it felt like. The entire affair: afternoon and evening – was filled with people I know and have great affection for. And it was wonderful.

Loving Swindon: in words, pictures and music – a few words first about the afternoon event. The Platform on Faringdon Rd was overflowing with the astonishing literary output and outpouring there has been, and still is, about Swindon from Swindon people and others who love Swindon.

The whole thing was a collaboration between Swindon Civic Voice, Poetry Swindon and the Swindon Literature Festival. Three most marvellous groups right here in Swindon. Continue reading →

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Idling and talking about Kevin

7 May
Tom Hodgkinson (right) with Matt Holland (Lit Fest director) (C) Calyx Picture Agency
Kevin Dutton. ©Calyx Picture Agency

‘I deliberately chose a wind-up word,’ said professional idler Tom Hodgkinson and I suspect the other author this evening, psychopath specialist Kevin Dutton, had done the same.

Tom is the first to admit that his ideas are nothing new, just culturally unpopular since the protestant/puritan work ethic. Though he’s used the words idling, loafing and laziness what he really means is daydreaming, contemplation and creative boredom, or just doing stuff you want to do rather than being ‘condemned to toil by outside forces’ – ‘no shit jobs’. Which is something else both speakers had in common – very quotable.

Not that he’ll be pinned down into a definition, this would be anti-idling. One woman asks if playing app game Candy Crush is the best use of her retirement. Tom says, ‘I’m wary of having an approved list of idling activities’ and then describes how his magazine, The Idler, praised MP Nigel Mills for playing the game in a parliamentary committee.  Continue reading →

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Meeting Isy’s mad mother and Dom’s one-eyed cat

6 May
Isy Suttie – no seriously http://www.claregreenphotography.com
Isy Suttie http://www.claregreenphotography.com
Dom Joly – whatcanIsay? http://www.claregreenphotography.com
Dom Joly – clown http://www.claregreenphotography.com

Comedy night at Swindon Festival of Literature – the evening that gives your brain cells a chance to recover after events featuring deep thinkers and political heavyweights.

Continue reading →

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Cold War Nairobi and the Thing that calls itself I

5 May
Poetry Swindon 78s (c) Festival Chronicle
Roger Scruton (c) Calyx Pictures

So this Swindon Festival of Literature evening involved a spot of dancing to a cheesy tune, being stuck in a car park, and a wild-ish haired professor. Sounds like a good plot for a book.

Which leads into the first event’s theme, Poetry Swindon 78s, where the Richard Jefferies Museum’s writing class used scratchy old 78 RPM vinyl records as a creative prompt. At Swindon Central Library, we heard the tunes and the writers read their work.

Nairobi, a bubbly 1958 Tommy Steele number, became a Cold War spy tale by Ben Holloway. Ben’s nervous rapid delivery and breath-catching apologetic gaps suited the memories of a paranoid molehunt.

I had enough time to catch Anna-May Laugher’s Ready for the River from a 1928 track by The Rollickers – ‘Want to drown my troubles / and leave just the bubbles’. I was glad I bought the accompanying 78s book and could get to know this poem: a five-part account of a river, a living thing, accepting and eating anything thrown in it – dead things, oar cuts, memories – before it is consumed by drought.

Regretfully, I crept out and then spent 10 minutes stuck listening to the bleep of a Swindon car park help button (‘hanging on the help button’ flash fiction coming up) before I could head up to the Arts Centre, which meant I missed the first half of Roger Scruton. So apologies if crucial information is notable by its absence. Continue reading →

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The Greatest Story Ever Told

4 May
©Calyx Picture Agency Swindon Festival of Literature

©Calyx Swindon Festival of Literature A.N.Wilson

The Book of The People

A N Wilson, the author of the above named .. well … book is of the belief that The Bible remains a relevant work even in our modern and largely secular society. He posits that, no matter what one might or might not believe, The Bible stands up as a work of philosophy, of literature and as a cornerstone of our culture and general knowledge.

Continue reading →

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Serious and deliberate, Sir Vince surveys the aftermath of The Storm

3 May
DSC_5436 Vince Cable Swindon festival of Literature

©Calyx Vince Cable at the Swindon Festival of Literature

There are two kinds of politicians: the quiet, steady-hand-on-the-rudder type, and the charismatic ones, who can seem appealing, but whose run-away mouths can often get them into trouble.

Serious and deliberate in his delivery, Vince Cable – who certainly falls into the former camp – nonetheless allows himself a joke at the expense of the latter.

“I see I am one of two speakers with a political background,” he tells the Swindon Festival of Literature tonight (Tuesday). “At least I don’t need to be looking around the audience to see where the Mossad people are.”

Ken Livingstone will be appearing next Tuesday.

Continue reading →

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Preaching to the converted

3 May

 

Kaye Franklin

Kaye Franklin would approve

 

3rd May 2016, Swindon Festival of Literature

The Kaye Franklin Memorial Lecture

In taking the phrase ‘preaching to the converted’ as the title of this post I’m leaping to the end of today’s lecture delivered by Matt Holland, at Swindon Arts Centre.

Having made his last point, Matt sat down in readiness for the Q&A session, looked out at the audience and observed a feeling of ‘foolishness’ at having spent 30/40 minutes talking about the role of literature in life to a crowd of people who almost certainly believe that there is a role and a purpose to literature – because why else would they have been in that lecture? QED?

So did Matt need to feel foolish? Is there a role for literature in life? And if so – what is it? Continue reading →

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