Pete Davis, Al Needham, Niki Monaghan, Andy Barrett and MulletProofPoet. Photo James Walker.
Today I marched through the streets of Radford at 7am with Ann Featherstone, Niki Monaghan, Al Needham, Pete Davis, Kerri Usherwood, Julia and David Sillitoe, Andy Barrett and Paul Fillingham. It felt like literature’s version of Reservoir Dogs but without the suits. We were here to film a short video for MulletProofPoet’s YouTube Youth, for event four of the Sillitoe: Then and Now project.
The filming was inspired by the Verve’s Bittersweet Harmony, with MulletProof Poet walking down a derelict street and passing us on his way. The people selected for the video all have some relation to the project and I thought this was a fitting way to give them a little bit of credit. For example, Andy Barrett is one of our mentors for the project and has been advising on how to make links with Raleigh (he has recently written a play called A Lifetime Guarantee) as well as sourcing a fantastic film on how a bike is made and putting me in contact with interesting and important people related to Raleigh, such as John McNaughton. Such people largely go unrecognised when content is produced as they are working behind the scenes and this was my opportunity to thank them. My other mentors, Wayne Burrows and Cathy Grindrod, were unable to make the shoot.
I’ll be blogging about the video in more detail when it goes live on The Space (we still have content for events two and three to go up yet – an indication of how far ahead you have to plan such a mammoth project) but for now I’ll just say that MulletProofPoet is a fantastic poet who I have high hopes for. It’s with great pride that LeftLion can claim to have given him his first publication and helped him on his way to what I expect will be a very successful career. Having said that, I’ll probably be sick of the sight of him by the end of the day as I’m off to see him perform alongside Aly Stoneman at Sneinton Festival at 2pm and then Southwell Poetry Festival at 4pm. I’m not a stalker, honest.
MulletProofPoet, Tony Roe and David Sillitoe. Photo James Walker.
But the person I really want to mention in this entry is Tony Roe. Tony is the Commissioning Editor for Inside Out and is producing a documentary of the Space project to coincide with our Sillitoe Day on October 27th. He’s also helped to edit together videos of the Occupy movement and Pete Davis for The Space as well as provide lots of useful clips of Nottingham relevant to the project.
I met Tony for the first time at a Sillitoe Committee meeting a few years back. He always has his face pressed up close to an iPad or smart phone. I’m sometimes tempted to tweet him during meetings even when I’m sat next to him because I think he would prefer this form of communication! To be able to draw on his knowledge and experience is one of the main benefits of being involved in a voluntary committee and makes all of those meetings and plans worth the effort. He’s like a walking encyclopaedia of local knowledge and could easily quit his job and live off pub quiz winnings. He’s quiet, calm and when he does chirp up, you listen. But best of all, he’s blind as a bat and has really thick lenses in his glasses, like what kids used to wear at school in the seventies before everyone got paranoid about their appearance. I guess his appearance gives him a sense of vulnerability, a bit like Jon Ronson and his crazy effeminate voice, which makes you instantly warm to him and forget he has a brain the size of a small planet.