The return of Beeston Poets

More on this soon, but in the meantime, tickets are on sale, there is a dedicated website, an emailing list, a facbook page and a great opening season. Sign up at http://beestonpoets.wordpress.com/, or order your tickets now from Beeston Library (the Notts one, not the Leeds one). Beeston Poets has lift off.

Poets in Beeston returns

The illustration here is of the cover of one of our earliest books, from 1996 (and, yes, it is still available) - an anthology celebrating the 15th year of Poets in Beeston, a series of readings in Nottingham organised by Robert Gent, who edited the book. The anthology includes poets including Danny Abse, Fleur Adcock, James Berry... through to Ken Smith and Charles Tomlinson. The book was launched with Jackie Kay as the guest poet. Over the years everybody who was anybody in the British poetry world (and a few overseas guests) read at Beeston, the series being very generously supported by Nottinghamshire County Council. The series should have closed when Robert moved on, but was passed to my tender mercies and was wound down after a couple of years for all sorts of reasons, including the development of other readings elsewhere in the County.
Well, life moves on, and sometimes back in circles so, after some discussion between Five Leaves, Nottingham Poetry Society and Nottinghamshire Libraries, Beeston Poets returns in the autumn. For months we'd been talking about a series "something like Beeston Poets" before realising that what we really wanted was to re-establish Poets in Beeston. That is exactly what we will do, in the same venue as of old, which has been recently renovated. Robert thinks it is a good idea too! Pippa Hennessy will be leading on the project from Five Leaves, together with our sometime author Cathy Grindrod, their fellow NPS member Jeremy Duffield and Sheelagh Gallagher and Gill Rockett from Notts Libraries. Because of course it takes five or six people to do the work that Robert did on his own.
Times have changed - Notts County Council can't put in the money of old, but we'll have a dedicated website and email list as our main publicity (which features had not been on the go last time round). We might not have the money this time to put on some of the biggest names and some of the old Beeston favourites - UA Fanthorpe, Jon Silkin, Adrian Mitchell and others are no longer with us, but there will be some new kids on the block. And we'll have a cafe atmosphere.
The opening programme will launch this October with, appropriately, Jackie Kay, followed by Neil Astley from Bloodaxe in November and Five Leaves' Andy Croft in December. Dates and details will follow.

North East literary history

Not for the first time do I find myself consumed by North East envy. Living in the East Midlands it is always hard to grasp our regional identity. Our patch covers Louth, in Lincolnshire  (try getting there by public transport) and King's Sutton, which is I think to the south of Oxfordshire but technically in Northamptonshire. I'll give a fiver to anyone who has every travelled between those two outposts.
The North East is easier to understand. In Fix This Moment: writers respond to North East literary history, joint editor Stevie Rennie remarks that the four areas making up the North East have in common their "industrial heritage, geographical isolation and the lilt to our voices". What the area also has is a strong independent publishing sector, reflected in this book from New Writing North (£6.99, 978 0 9558829 7 5) which is well worth reading by anyone interested in either the literature of the region or the small press scene. I would have liked to have seen a much bigger book, with more earlier  history and something about people's reading rather than the concentration on writing, but the book is still of great value. Michael Chaplin provides an personal record of his family's writing (he is the son of Sid Chaplin), Andy Croft (a Five Leaves regular) gives the history of writing in Middlesbrough, David Almond tells of the Panurge years, Ellen Phethean describes the women's writing scene, Neil Astley provides some material on Bloodaxe's history, Jackie Litherland goes through the exciting 35 years of the Colpitts poetry readings, another Five Leaves' regular Peter Mortimer describes his 40 years or so running Iron Press, Nolan Dalrymple provides an academic essay on David Almond and the book concludes with an essay on the Morden Tower venue by Stevie Rennie.
The other joint editor is Claire Malcolm, head of New Writing North, which is itself worthy of attention though I would not envy her going to work every day to their office in Holy Jesus Hospital in Newcastle.
The book could easily have had other chapters on, say, Jon Silkin and Stand and... so much more, but then I'd be really really jealous.