Tag Archives: LeftLion

Scribal Gathering of Poetic Dissent

Posted on by

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.

Bold Strokes on the Bookspage at Leftlion

Posted on by

If anybody has visited the literature section of LeftLion’s new website over the past month then they may be forgiven for thinking that I’ve been murdered by a group of lesbians. This is because I went for a cuppa with Victoria Oldham (Bold Strokes Books) who wanted help promoting ten lesbian authors who were giving readings at Waterstones at the end of July. Victoria is originally from America and still relatively new to the city (at least in terms of contacts and the literature scene) so I made her aware of all the usual suspects who may be able to help.

I was really eager to get an interview with each of the ten authors over the proceeding weeks to help promote the event. This was important as LeftLion has been more of a meow than a roar when it has come to discussing gay culture (barring of course the excellent ‘Gay up me duck’) so this was a chance for us to really redeem ourselves as well as widen our audience.

It was inappropriate for me to do the interviews which led to an interesting discussion as to why. As obvious as this might seem, is it any different to say interviewing a refugee from Somalia? Both identities are equally disparate to that of my own. And as I soon discovered, reading Sarah Waters doesn’t count as some lesbians feel she doesn’t go into enough sexual detail – which reminded me a little of the Larry Kramer (The Dead Heart) argument about homosexuals being defined by promiscuity.

The great thing to come from this discussion was the discovery of local author Rebecca S Buck who is now our resident expert on gay and lesbian culture who kindly did all of the interviews currently online. This is fantastic news, as along with the acquisition of Ian Douglas as our young adult fiction reviewer, and Christie Fearn as our new ‘local history’ reviewer, we are really starting to get a team of genre specialists together.

But the best laid plans of mice and men…our server went down a week before the BSB launch which meant we couldn’t feature all of the writers that Rebecca had worked so hard interviewing. There were other consequences as well. Firstly, we had to prematurely migrate to a new server which has meant we’ve had to launch our new website early –glitches and all. Secondly, I don’t have administration rights yet and so I’ve been unable to upload new content and so the home page is full of lesbian interviews that led up to the event! Talk about feast or famine. I’ve also potentially lost five years of contacts as I can’t access my old email account. But enough of that, LeftLion 42 made it out on to the streets and features an interview with Roman Nottinghamshire author Mark Patterson.

With regards to future reviews of lesbian fiction in LeftLion, these will go in ‘normally’ like any other book. I think it’s important not to make a big thing of sexuality as defining an author although obviously it needs to be mentioned if it’s essential to the narrative. I’ve never been a fan of colour coded reviews. The ‘pink press’ is as bad as calling elderly writers the ‘grey press’. But we can be more sensitive in the magazine whereas we had to be more explicit promoting the Bold Strokes Books event online as it was a specific gathering of lesbian authors.

Writing the front page intros for these interviews was fun, particularly given the LeftLion house style: Lesley Davis ‘Imagine a Gotham City full of lesbians all playing Mario and you have a little insight into the mind of this author..’ or Gill McKnight ‘Romantic lesbian fiction that features werewolves. What more do you need to know?’ Yeah, I was right not to do the interviews…