Spotlight on Ledbury - Places We Love

Going for Gold: World Poetry and music to celebrate the Olympics is a first for Ledbury Poetry Festival! Never before have we had a world poetry event on this scale, bringing together 9 poets from countries as diverse and varied as North and South Korea, Cameroon, Romania, Afghanistan, Columbia, Eritrea, India and New Zealand.

And if you are coming to travel with us through two hours of poetic discovery and adventuring, I believe you need fortifying with equally wonderful food. One of Ledbury's best watering holes, Cafe Salvation is based alongside Posterity reclamation yard (which deserves a feature all of its own!) and it is one of my favourite places to hang out. Do make a visit while you are here for the Festival. It is a gorgeous cafe, carefully and lovingly decorated, with a great kids play area and a friendly, welcoming atmosphere. So we are delighted that Helen has offered to supply us with gold-standard picnic supper boxes to help make this unique event especially memorable. In her own words, Helen's cooking "takes a modern approach to healthy food". The meals I have eaten there included a wonderful samphire dish (a new discovery for me) and scrumptious spicy patties, as well as turkey meatballs that inspired me to spend a day cooking up tons of meatballs of my own, which of course tasted totally different and not nearly as nice! 

For our event diners can choose from a meat or vegetarian option which will also include a selection of Salvation's famous salads - 4 Seed New Potato Salad (with fennel, cumin, mustard and black onion seed), Turlu Turlu ( a middle-eastern ratatouille), Herb and Red Pepper Cous Cous, Mixed Green Leaves and a Seasonal 'Slaw'.  Order your box by Friday the 29th June to avoid food envy!  £6 per box.  Please inform us of any specific dietary requirements.

Visit Helen's great blog to hear about the new menus and to find out more about her approach to all things foodie, culinary and generally yummy!http://cafesalvation.blogspot.co.uk/

Interview with Ros Barber

Hello! My name is Jenna and I am an intern for the festival this year. Part of my role is to help promote some of the events on this year's programme, so I recently interviewed Ros Barber. You can also read my blog post about Jane Hirshfield and Esther Morgan's appearances at Ledbury on my personal blog: http://jennaclake.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/ledbury-poetry-festival-jane-hirshfield-and-esther-morgan/

Ros Barber’s The Marlowe Papers has recently been published and has received positive reviews from the likes of Hilary Mantel and The Telegraph. On Saturday 7th July, Ros Barber will be bringing The Marlowe Papers to Ledbury, and on the following day will conduct her famous workshop, Be the Writer You Dream of Being.

The Marlowe Papers follows what would have happened to Christopher Marlowe had he not died his violent death, and works with the theory that Marlowe was, in fact, Shakespeare himself. And it’s all written in iambic pentameter.

All this seemed like a lot of work, so I knew that Ros Barber must have been, and still would be, passionate about Marlowe, so I asked her a few questions aboutThe Marlowe Papers, her methods of writing and what to expect from her at Ledbury.

The Marlowe Papers has been characterised as poetry, a novel or a mixture of both. How would you define it?

Like Vikram Seth’s Golden Gate or Bernardine Evaristo’s The Emperor’s Babe, it’s a novel in verse. The novel is made up of a hundred and thirty one poems, written as if they are the private letters or journal entries of Christopher Marlowe. But to people who baulk at the idea of a novel in verse, I tell them to forget it’s poetry and just think of it as a novel with shorter-than-average lines.

What research did you undertake when writing The Marlowe Papers?

I read and/or listened to every single play and poem in both the Marlowe and Shakespeare canons, including the apocrypha. I also read all the biographies of Marlowe that are available (including Charles Nicholl’s The Reckoning), and all the recent ones of Shakespeare. I read writing by Marlowe’s contemporaries (Thomas Nashe, Thomas Watson, Gabriel Harvey and many others). I read several contemporary verse novels and other Marlowe and Shakespeare fictions and factions: A Dead Man In Deptford, Tamburlaine Must Die, Nothing Like the Sun, Will In The World, History Play, 1599. I also read biographies of other key figures I would be writing about such as Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Walsingham, the Earl of Essex, etc. and an awful lot of academic articles pertaining to relevant subjects such as practices of execution and torture, legal procedures, civil and ecumenical law, fencing.

I read up on religion at that time, since I quickly understood that was at the heart of Marlowe’s downfall – not just Catholics and Protestants, but the Jesuits, the Puritans, the anti-Trinitarians, the Huguenots etc. Then there was the geographical research regarding Cambridge, Canterbury, Deptford, France, the Low Countries, Italy and London in the late sixteenth century. I’m sure the list could go on, but that gives you some idea of the scope of it.

Your other poetry has a clearly modern ‘voice’. Was writing in Marlowe’s voice and era a challenge?

Finding an authentic-sounding voice for Marlowe was probably the hardest part of starting out but it came easily once all the research was in place. Listening to the Shakespeare canon and reading the works of Marlowe aloud was particularly helpful, allowing me to pick up Elizabethan cadences and rhythms. But it was also important to me that I didn’t write in mock-Tudor language; it had to be contemporary English that would be easy on my readers, not the kind of alien, jolting experience that modern audiences have when first exposed to Shakespeare. I wanted to create a seamless, almost invisible bridge between the reader and an Elizabethan experience, allowing them to enter that world through familiar language. My aim was to balance a modern voice with authentically Elizabethan cadences and phrasing. The iambic pentameter helped with this a great deal; it would have been much harder to achieve in prose.

Not the Usual Grasses Singing was written entirely in rhyming couplets. Do you enjoy setting yourself challenges with form?

For me, it is one of the great pleasures of writing poetry. On the other hand, when you are writing something over the long haul – like Not the Usual Grasses or The Marlowe Papers – the form very quickly ceases to be a challenge; it comes easily and naturally and becomes a containment device, a structural pleasure, something to play with and enjoy as you’re going along. Iambic pentameter feels as natural as breathing; it is difficult for me, these days, not to write in iambic pentameter. In other words, writing a whole novel in blank verse wasn’t the challenge. The challenge was finding an authentic voice for Marlowe, and telling a complex tale as richly yet compactly as possible, in a way that was gripping, emotionally moving, and true to the historical record.

Did you set yourself certain tasks or have certain self-imposed constraints within The Marlowe Papers?

The chief self-imposed constraint was historical accuracy. Rodney Bolt’s History Play was a fictional biography of Marlowe based on the same theory but, reading it, I was irritated that he had felt the need to insert so many pretend facts among the real ones; I felt strongly that a plausible narrative could be woven using only the historical evidence we actually have. Obviously this historical evidence is then interpreted; that’s what novelists (and historians and biographers) do. But it was important to me that I had a sound historical basis for everything I wrote. Other than that, it was the usual imperatives incumbent upon any writer: don’t be boring – grip, move, involve – make sure all your characters have pulses, never use ten words when two will do.

What can one expect from The Marlowe Papers event at Ledbury?

I’ll be demonstrating the advantages of being married to a voice/drama/spoken word coach! Kidding aside, a lot of poets read their work very badly. I love poetry, yet more than half of the poetry readings I attend, I can’t wait for them to be over because the readings are so desperately dull. Something read well, on the other hand, will transport you. I think it’s important to properly engage and entertain the audience. I’ll be bringing a bit of an ‘audio book’ experience to Ledbury, reading extracts from The Marlowe Papers and bringing the words alive. If you want a flavour of the experience, go to rosbarber.com/themarlowepapers and watch the short video there.

You are also bringing ‘Be the Writer You Dream of Being’ to Ledbury this year. Despite being a very accomplished writer, do you still suffer with a lack of confidence?

Not at all! And largely thanks to the techniques I’ll be introducing in the ‘Be the Writer You Dream of Being’ workshop. I taught creative writing at Sussex for twelve years and it bothered me that I would bump into some of my most talented students, years after the course, and find that they were no longer writing. Confidence issues, limiting beliefs and fear (of failure, or success) were always at the heart of their self-sabotage. While I was writing The Marlowe Papers I had to face some major fears of my own: was I up to the task? Would it be rubbish? What if no one wanted to read it? What if no one published it? What if it was published but was torn apart in reviews? What if it didn’t even get reviews? And many more besides. These are the kinds of fears that can cripple any writer and prevent them achieving the successes they hope for. During the first year of writing The Marlowe Papers I was fortunate enough to find really effective techniques that not only neutralises fears, doubts and self-limiting beliefs, but allow you to tap into a powerful stream of inspiration at will. The success of The Marlowe Papers is the direct result of those techniques, which I now share with, and teach to, other writers.

What will people take from ‘Be the Writer you Dream of Being’?

People generally say they feel lighter and more relaxed about writing, more confident of their ability to write well and with ease, and to move forward with their writing. We’ll dismantle blocks and demonstrate how to tap directly into a stream of inspiration. People who attend this workshop will come out with first-hand experience of a great technique they can use to overcome any obstacle to writing (even, believe it or not, unsupportive family members!). It’s unlike any other workshop for writers, in that we won’t be doing creative exercises. But we will be unravelling the things that keep you from the kind of writing success you dream about. So bring a pen, paper, and an open mind.

Ros Barber is clearly passionate about her work, whether Marlowe, poetry or workshops. Her work is accessible, entertaining and her appearances at Ledbury will evidently be exciting and enlightening.

The Marlowe Papers event takes place on Saturday 7th July at 2.30pm – 3.30pm

Be the Writer You Dream of Being takes places on Sunday 8th July at 10.30am-12.30pm

If you want to know more about Ros Barber, go to: http://rosbarber.com/

You can also book tickets for her Ledbury events by visiting:

http://www.poetry-festival.com/bookings.html

or calling 0845 458 1743.

A full programme of events is also available online:

http://poetry-festival.com/calendar.html

Many thanks to Ros Barber for participating in the interview.

By Jenna Clake

Hello, and a look forward to Owen Sheers

Hello Ledbury fans on Blogspot! My name's Ben Norris, and I'm one of four interns working to help deliver this year's Ledbury Poetry Festival. As part of my job at the festival, I’m responsible for blogging about some of the acts that will be performing: reviewing snippets of their work and whipping up a media storm (or, more likely, some mild interest) surrounding their Ledbury appearance.

After Tony Harrison’s reading on Jubilee weekend (coming up this Saturday), the first event of the festival proper (number 1 in our swanky new programme) is Owen Sheers, a truly 21st Century poet; by which I mean he’s not exclusively a poet at all, but has also presented television documentaries (‘A Poet’s Guide to Britain’, BBC 4), written travel journals (‘The Dust Diaries’, 2005 Welsh Book of the Year), novels (‘Resistance’, later adapted for film), plays (including ‘Fair & Tender’, a contribution to Bush Theatre’s recent ’66 Books’), radio poems (‘Pink Mist’, BBC Radio 4), as well as publishing more conventional poetry collections (his most recent being ‘Skirrid Hill’). He is also the first ever Writer in Residence to be appointed by any National Rugby Union (Wales, in this case).

To-ing and fro-ing on various trains around Birmingham and Ledbury over the last few days, I took a look at ‘Skirrid Hill’ to get to know Sheers as a writer and what we might expect from him when he kicks us off on 29th June in Ledbury’s Community Hall.

‘Skirrid’, from the Welsh Ysgyrid meaning divorce or separation, is a collection concerned with rifts and distance, gaps between expectation and actuality; in its language and images it traces a ‘vernacular of borders’ (from ‘Skirrid Fawr’, the book’s final poem). As I mentioned in a post on my own blog about ‘Voices Over Water’ (http://bennorrispoet.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/voices-over-water-d-nurkse-and-the-through-narrative/), I’ve recently discovered the joy of reading a collection straight through. Though Sheers’s has a much less prominent narrative arc, it is laced with subtle internal references that reward the receptive reader. The authorial voice is never far from the surface here, and one gets a real sense of Sheers’s journey, tracing his humble Welsh agricultural roots, and his relationships with his parents, the land, and with lovers. His writing is at once effortless and painfully cathartic, and his autobiographical honesty is often genuinely breathtaking. Indeed, all of the relationships in ‘Skirrid Hill’, whether beginning or ending, are acutely aware of their own fragility, and this gives rise to some exquisite moments. Like ‘Valentine’, which presents three memories of a woman, each a single, well-wrought instant that leaves the reader, like the speaker, unsure of ‘whether to laugh or weep.’

Owen Sheers’s reading will doubtless also be a tumultuous but rewarding emotional roller-coaster, and a superb way to begin a fine 10 days of poetry at Ledbury 2012.

You can book tickets for Tony Harrison, Owen Sheers, and all the other fantastic acts at Ledbury Poetry Festival 2012 on http://www.poetry-festival.com/bookings.html or by calling 0845 458 1743. The full programme of events is here: http://poetry-festival.com/calendar.html

Don't Wave a Flag, Wave a Poem! by Chloe Garner

As I walk past the union jack flags and bunting hanging up outside shops and homes in Ledbury, I think that as an emblem a flag is so vague - what does your flag mean? Why do you care about having had the same queen for 60 years? Do you want to participate in a ‘historical occasion’? What kind of Britain are you proud to be part of? Are you anti-Europe? Do you like the red, white and blue colour combination? By contrast – a poem, many of which can fit very neatly onto the average flag, is an emblem that can communicate something very distinctly about you and your unique take on the world, the United Kingdom, the Jubilee or whatever you choose. Ozymandias by Shelley might be my flag of choice for this weekend, but that is just me.

Poems that I read over and over become like emblems to me – they symbolise how I feel about certain key events in my life or parts of myself and somehow crystallise things for me. I emblazon them by hand into a special book. But I am constantly discovering new poems that I want to wave like flags. Most lately I am reading over and over Elegy by Sean O’Brien in his new collection, November. It is full of sadness and anger for a life finished and perhaps for a life not quite fulfilled, as in the partial refrain that runs through the poem, “There was a book you always meant to write.” In this poem Sean O’Brien says “But let me do it honour and repay your gift of words.” I am moved by the sacrifice of a mother and a wife and the child trying to repay this through the use of the same gift never realised in his mother. It is a poems about dreams put aside and hints in a veiled way about even worse endured in a marriage, yet at the same time it brings up vivid memories – “The dark was in the orchard now, scarf-soaking fog/Among the fallen fruit.” The sense of a proud woman revealed in snippets of her words spoken and heard still in the poet’s memory “There’s nothing worse, You used to say, than scratting after coppers.” I think that perhaps as a mum and as a woman this poem hits me with how life can slip by, that we can perhaps endure too much and for too long, until it is too late. Sean O’Brien’s The Drowned Book is the only book of poetry to have won both the Forward and T.S. Eliot Prizes. As I read November I feel at times immersed in the world of a gorgeous black and white film. I am really looking forward to hearing Sean O’Brien for the first time when he returns to read at Ledbury with Katharine Towers.

Sean O'Brien ph. Caroline Forbes

'Ringing' poetry in schools this week!

Chatting to the Headteacher of Ledbury Primary School, she mentioned that their teachers aim to make their lesson 'ringing' not 'minging'! Ringing means relevant, interesting, a bit naughty and a giggle. So I relished the chance to watch poet Terry Caffrey deliver what was roundly considered a 'ringing' performance of his poetry for 300 pupils. He made them laugh, got pupils, teachers and parents involved and without anyone even noticing wove in the message that good listening is key to good writing and good learning, that words are fun and making up new words even more fun. And yes, we could all have listened to his gorgeous Liverpudlian accent all day long!

Yesterday was such a pristine summer day and I had the good fortune to be driving past some of Herefordshire's finest orchards, pink and white with blossom, up and down hills opening onto sweeping vales. I was on my way to St Peter's Primary School in Bromyard, where Julie Boden was working with pupils to create imaginative lines of poetry about rivers. With the Olympics on our minds, children compared the river to the lines of a race track or a cycle track, as well as to the roots of trees and to steam rising from a cooking pot. All these were added to a long river poem, which pupils were to perform at the end of the day, along with other poems written by other year groups.

During this week of poetry in schools Philip Wells, also known as the Fire Poet, was working with pupils in Colwall and Eastnor Primary Schools. That evening I had the pleasure of making up a bedtime poem with my 6 year old daughter (at her insistence), as she tapped out a rhythm on her chest, just as Philip had shown her, and improvised crazy lines and words around 'dolphins diving in the shimmering sea'.


Julie Boden in action at Out Loud!



Why do I Like Tony Harrison so much? by Chloe Garner

Perhaps it is because he was one of the first poets I ever heard, at an event at Dove Cottage in Grasmere. He was reading from Laureate’s Block, the hall was packed and he was extremely charismatic. After the reading I came home and read the book again cover to cover. And read it again the next morning before going to work. I found poems that are sensual and vivid. And I still can’t visit Northumberland without recalling one of my favourite of his lines, “Farne cormorants with catches in their beaks/ Shower fishscale confetti on a shining sea.” The controversy that surrounded his uncompromising rejection, in verse, in The Guardian of any possibility that he would ever accept the position of poet laureate, coincided with a time when it seemed there was a real possibility that the monarchy would somehow implode! Not long after a friend read V. to me and that was an eye-opening occasion. It knocked my socks off. I have since seen The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus, at the National Theatre and found it incredibly moving and heartbreaking. To me he is simply a great poet, who writes with great passion and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to hear him again.

Tony Harrison appearing at Ledbury on 2 June in his 75th year!

Tony Harrison

Very excited that Tony Harrison has agreed to launch our Festival Programme this year.  He will be appearing on Satuday 2nd June at 8pm at The Feathers Hotel in Ledbury.  He has had a very successful and varied career writing poetry but also writing for the stage and screen.  One fact I didn't know about him.  He was sent to Iraq and Bosnia by The Guardian and wrote some war poetry there -this appeared alongside news articles in the paper.  Tickets are available now - ring the box office on 0845 458 1743.