Category Archives: Events

Scribal Gathering of Poetic Dissent

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Our Scribal Gathering events are few and far between but when they happen, they’re special. On Friday 4 November we put on a Scribal Gathering of Poetic Dissent to mark the two hundredth anniversary of the ‘Luddite’ rebellion in Bulwell and to show respect to the ‘Occupy’ movement who are currently residing in Market Square. As is often the case with events you are organising yourself, they bring little joy on the night as you’re running around making sure things are going alright and that performers know what they’re doing.

I kicked off the event with a fifteen minute introduction with Motormouf, a young beatboxer from Nottingham who’d previously impressed with performances with Nina Smith and Maniere de Bohemiens. It’s really important when you’re dealing with political content that you don’t start lecturing on the obvious and so we went for a simple format whereby I’d discuss current events and then when I asked Motormouf what he was ‘mad as hell’ about or his opinion of Alessio Rastani – the City Trader welcoming the recession, he’d break out into beatboxing. Then, just when you expected him to continue in this vane, he freestyled a poem about Rosa Parks that was outstanding. Contrast is the key; mess with expectations. I planned this routine in one meeting with Motormouf and it’s so good to work with someone who listens and trusts your judgement. The purpose of the routine was to make him look amazing and me the talentless ‘dumb blond.’ Tis a humble life.

Photo by Leftlion.

The Lambhorse Cabaret performance was a theatrical masterpiece, creating fake explosions courtesy of balloons and party poppers to bring down the system. They were joined by Stickman Higgins – who I wrote about in my last blog. Stickman is joy personified; he has so much energy it’s like he’s swallowed the sun. He played the part of an elderly Jamaican man and walked around greeting the audience before freestyling as the Lambhorse played on.

The key to large events is variety or else you overdose on the written word. Johnny Crump offered this by scratching on the decks with film visuals projected behind him. We also needed a variety of poets. Aly Stoneman was short and sweet, teasing the audience with her Ms Hood poem – in my opinion the perfect formula as then the audience want more. Joe Coghlan and Jonesy bounced an electric set off of each other, complimenting their differing styles. Debris Stevenson had the audience joining in which got everyone in a great mood whereas Scruffy Dave and Tokin’ John went for more traditional readings. And of course our joker in the pack was Al Needham who has not only made swearing socially acceptable but an art form in itself.

Photo by LeftLion.

Chester P was our final act and proved that you don’t need a stage persona to perform. Simply exuding personality and being yourself is enough. But who is he? He looked like a crazy old man with autism as he nervously shuffled back and forth on stage on the tips of his toes as he delivered a stream of consciousness that washed over the audience like a tsunami. Every now and then you’d catch a phrase, a joke or a clever metaphor and before the beauty of this observation could settle, bang in came another. Wow.

Of course not everything went to plan. I’d spent ages recording Big Issue Sellers and Protestors in V for Vendetta masks and then recorded audios to be dubbed over the top which related to the film. But these weren’t edited together properly and so our hopes of having an anonymous production didn’t work. This, however, is inevitable when you’re relying on the goodwill and free time of various people to help suture everything together. The event was a collaboration with Dealmaker and LeftLion, photographs were kindly taken by Ralph Barklam with Adrian Towell filming proceedings and Stupeflix made the brilliant video to promote the event. The night was dedicated to Peter Preston who recently passed away and although a free event, we left buckets on the bar for people to donate to the Alan Sillitoe Statue Fund – or to be sick in.

Now we need a theme for the next event. I’m thinking Berlusconi’s Bitches or perhaps updating the Roald Dahl classic…the Fantastic Mr. Liam Fox. So much choice in a corrupt world. Thank goodness for villains, life would be dull.

Sillitoe fundraiser

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Friday night saw Antenna host their biggest event to date as just over a hundred people came to celebrate the life of Alan Sillitoe. For the fundraising event, we showed Saturday Night and Sunday Morning on an enormous screen, a Q&A with Nicola Monaghan and David Sillitoe and music from Blue Yonder who we’ve shoehorned into events due to their Arthur Seaton-inspired song ‘Propaganda.’ I can’t emphasise how proud it felt to see so many people, particularly given that most would have seen the film countless times before.

David Sillitoe is, to quote my girlfriend, ‘a real darling.’ He hasn’t read all of his father’s books (yet) and doesn’t proclaim to offer knowledge on specific literary questions – which must be a little frustrating for the many fans hoping to find those elusive answers yet to be answered in academic journals or newspaper columns, but in this he displays one of his father’s unswerving qualities: unashamed honesty. It also surprised many of the audience that David has never considered writing himself although as Nicola Monaghan observed, ‘my father is an electrician and I’ve never been interested in learning about wires.’

I’ve read Saturday Night and Sunday Morning four times now and seen the film so many times that I know it more or less word for word. It is my version of Star Wars; Sillitoe my Obi Wan, Arthur Seaton my Han Solo. Yet each time the brashness and self-belief of Arthur Seaton never fails to impress me. Seaton is a complex character whose promiscuity is understandably offensive to many women, yet to see him in such one-dimensional terms is to miss the bigger picture and the context of the book. Sex – just as it was for his grandfather, old man Burton (A Man of his Time) – is an escape from the humdrum and drudgery of work and routine. Yes, his actions have consequences and cause harm. But this is the process of life, the learning curve. Wisdom comes from individual mistakes. It doesn’t come through lectures from authority figures. This is the great existential angst of the book, as captured in the fishing metaphor.

“Everyone in the world was caught, somehow, one way or another, and those that weren’t were always on the way to it. As soon as you were born you were captured by fresh air that you screamed against the minute you came out. Then you were roped in by a factory, had a machine slung around your neck, and then you were hooked up by the arse with a wife. Mostly you were like a fish: you swam about with freedom, thinking how good it was to be left alone, doing anything you wanted to do and caring about no-one, when suddenly: SPLUTCH! – the big hook clapped itself into your mouth and you were caught. Without knowing what you were doing you had chewed off more than you could bite and had to stick with the same piece of bait for the rest of your life. It meant death for a fish, but for a man it might not be so bad. Maybe it was only the beginning of something better in life…if you went through life refusing all the bait dangled before you, that would be no life at all. No changes would be made and you would have nothing to fight against.”

Fishing and sex offer Seaton the same thing, a temporary escape, and so feminist readings of the book fail to take into consideration these other, deeper-rooted problems. I mention this as Nicola Monaghan recently gave a talk at Central Library and named SNSM as very influential. This was received with sighs of disapproval by various females in the audience, which Nicola was quite surprised at – and no wonder. In Kerrie-Ann (The Killing Jar) and Frankie Cavanagh (Starfishing) she has created two very strong-willed individuals who take control of their circumstances and take no prisoners. Remind you of anyone..?

For more information on future Sillitoe events see our brand new website. Our next event will hopefully be a showing of The Ragman’s Daughter and some short story readings. But more of this later…