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Sandi Toksvig at the Swindon Festival of Literature

6 May
Sandi Toksvig with Matt Holland

Sandi Toksvig with Matt Holland

I do love a good book event. The interviewer and interviewee on stage in comfortable chairs, normally with a table between them. Sometimes there are flowers and glasses of water. There’s always a pull-up thing behind them advertising something else. And last night I got the chance to see Sandi Toksvig in action, doing what she does best, talking at a hundred miles an hour on a myriad of subjects from being short to the King of Sweden. Her latest book, Peas and Queues, is about manners and how to behave properly. Apparently, Sandi got the idea from chastising her daughter who was eating with her elbows on the table. Sandi told her to get her elbows off, her daughter asked her why. She had no idea why. The book topic suits Sandi with her clipped, upper-class accent; I expect her to be a font of all knowledge onthings like this. Her accent tells me so. Continue reading →

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Waltzing with Frances and Martine at the Swindon Festival of Literature

5 May
Paul and Hilda and Frances and Martine

Paul and Hilda and Frances and Martine

A piano dominates the stage, a very cosy looking sheepskin or polyesterpelt rug is thrown casually, but accurately, beside it. The Teasmade is on and the knitting has been put to one side …. Just for now.

Frances and Martine, dark, humorous and adventurous creations of Hilda Sheehan, are waltzing tonight and who knows where that glide and swish will take them?

Spotted late but somehow menacing is a metal chair with a seat of words and a back made from the steel of Salvador Dali’s shaven moustache, what will these two opinionated women make of that?
Timing was the key to the performance, with Paul Turner’s piano fracturing the language and creating darker, deeper impressions. Continue reading →

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Sweaty and smells of fish – Nell McAndrew at Swindon Festival of Literature

5 May

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It’s not an admission you’d expect from the 16th Sexiest Woman In the World (FHM Magazine, 2003) but if you meet Nell McAndrew in the school playground, chances are she’ll be sweaty and smell slightly of mackerel.

The original Lara Croft, Tomb Raider – she was the face of the arcade game franchise three years before Angelina Jolie claimed the ponytail in the movie spin-off – and the fourth most popular contestant in the first series of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, Nell was at Lydiard Park to talk about her new book, Nell McAndrew’s Guide to Running. Continue reading →

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Adventures with Bevis – Richard Jefferies Museum, Swindon Festival of Literature

4 May

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Chronicler Milo (age eight) enjoyed Adventures with Bevis today at Magic Monday at the Richard Jefferies Museum, a family friendly day as part of the Swindon Festival of Literature. He shares why it’s good for you go to the Museum too…

Are you going mad? Are your kids really sad?
Then come to Richard Jefferies in May, come out for a wonderful day!
Climb a tree up high, reach your hand up to the sky. Continue reading →

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Dawn Chorus – Swindon Festival of Literature 2015

4 May

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Twenty-two, full of vigor, a sunny disposition, so hot flames pounce at the sky and totally up for it at 5:30am, the Swindon Festival of Literature 2015 juggled, joked and sunshined its start at Lawn Woods this morning.

The Sun Arise Choir filled the air with all of the gentle beauty Swindon has to offer, gorgeous harmonies, Park South and the County Ground being the only other Swindon landmarks which come close from that ridge in Lawn Woods where the town slumbered in early morning loveliness.

A packed and cheerful crowd were treated to storyteller Chris Park and tale about a cloak being a story, which for me ended up cloaked in as much mystery as when he started, his huge Irish Wolfhound is amazing though. Continue reading →

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Town with a city heart – Swindon Festival of Literature launch

22 Mar

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The Swindon Festival of Literature has a thing for bracing days, ya know – freezing brass monkeys. It kicks off at a cold dawn in May and Thursday, a biting March day you may have noticed, was the launch, outside in a windy Swindon Central Library atrium.

The Festival likes to stimulate ‘thinking parts’ so maybe all this chilly fresh air enables our brain to fully engage and not lie indolent in the sloth-like embrace of central heating.

So, back inside the warm library, I munched on the lovely homemade launch food and thought how good it is when politicians speak from the heart rather than generic politic speak. Matt Holland, Festival director, seemed to appreciate this too because he expressed his love for guest speaker, Teresa Page, the mayor of Swindon: for her, Swindon is the town with the heart of a city; she only had one book a year at Christmas (a present from her sister); and (a girl after my own heart) she also enjoyed comics Bunty and Judy. No tired ‘cultural desert’ metaphors for the Lady Mayor. Continue reading →

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I was Man for a Day at the Swindon Festival of Poetry

8 Oct

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That sounds fun, I thought, about being a man for a day. But I didn’t expect it to be such a challenge.

I don’t mean keeping the boobs flat (damn bandages kept rolling up), or keeping my ‘penis’ in place, or even perfecting the man’s walk when, essentially, a woman’s hips are different to a man’s.

Yes, these were annoying but all the women poets taking part in Diane Torr’s Man for a Day (Swindon Festival of Poetry) had these problems and it created a certain comradeship between us.

No, what was hard was knowing what kind of man I wanted to be. And this journey – for a while at least – was a lonely one. Did I want to be myself, but male? Did I want to be a man I admired? Or a man I didn’t?

Continue reading →

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Battered Moons at the Swindon Festival of Poetry

7 Oct

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This year’s poetry competition didn’t quite go to the moon and back but they certainly made it to the other side of the world.

Judges David Morley and Cristina Navazo-Eguia Newton both took the entries on their travels. On the plane to Australia, David shared the poems around the passengers and asked them to read the poems aloud. Cristina took hers to her native Spain.

A good proportion of the winning pieces were about birds. “I’ve got a feeling some of the entrants researched my interests,” remarked David who’s into ornithology. Continue reading →

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The Roof of the World at Swindon Festival of Poetry

7 Oct

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As an English white woman, I wouldn’t describe Saturday’s event – The Evening News and The Roof of the World – as a culture shock (far too gentle for that) but it was a beautifully different experience.

The spoken poetry on Saturday was in Hindi by Mohan Rana. There were no English subtitles, but this didn’t matter. I opened my mind to it like I would music or dance; a different way of understanding, enjoying the musicality of the language.

To emphasis this and compliment the poetry, Mohan had invited his friend, ‘cellist Jo Quail, to perform alongside him. Jo had previously interpreted his poem The Colour of Water (From the Sea).

Continue reading →

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Imagined Sons with Carrie Etter at the Swindon Festival of Poetry

4 Oct
Carrie Etter

Carrie Etter

Quite an emotional day yesterday, beginning with Robert Peake and then Carrie Etter. Not to mention the film There is Nothing in the Garden with its toy babies in toilets on day one of the Swindon Festival of Poetry.

Carrie read from her third collection, Imagined Sons. It’s a surreal package of work about ongoing life trauma / serious stuff to work through about giving her son up for adoption at the age of seventeen.

Poetry might be wonderfully cathartic to write but it’s also an invitation to talk openly about traumatic subjects. I had no compunction in talking afterwards to both Carrie and Robert about both their losses knowing that it was almost certainly okay. There isn’t the embarrassment of the unknown, of how they would like me to act, the worry of causing emotional upset – I already had a heads up on where their heads are at. Continue reading →

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