In Person
Saturday, February 22, 2003
I'm about to go on holiday to South Africa! Yippee. It will be really hot. We're staying in a place outside Capetown by the sea. There are baboons and surfers. Hard to imagine when you're in Newcastle in February. I shall return as a bronzed babe with sand between my toes.
This week I've has a rather busy social life. Wednesday was the PROUD WORDS AGM. THis is a year long festival of creative writing for lesbians, gays and bisexuals and friendly people. There are workshops and readings and other things. I was around when it began about four years ago. Now it's got accounts and a constitution and all sorts. I went down to do a poetry reading after AOB. I got given a beautiful glass bowl made by my friend Cate Watkinson as an award for services. It was unexpected and really lovely. Now I don't know where to put this wonderful objet d'art. I move it all around the house.
Rosie Lugosi, the vampire lesbian did a set of songs and poems on the same night. Although I'm a cocoa and pyjamas girl myself, she was very entertaining with her whip and wig (sounds like a pub).
On Thurdsay there was an art opening of paintings by Emma Holliday. Emma paints familiar places from around the area, like the Baltic, the river, buildings etc, and is a wonderful colourist. She is really producing some fantastic work at the moment. I met Clare and Shirley, who I said I would mention in my weblog...they were looking very well, I thought. I was glad to see that Emma had cheese and pineapple on sticks, as lately you seem to get nothing but crisps at such dos!
Now I must pack my flip flops and beach towels. Wish me luck!Posted by julia @ 09:22 AM GMT
Thursday, February 13, 2003
I went to see my dentist yesterday who is also a guitarist. I was thinking about how nice it is as one gets older finding the right people to do things to you. I like my hairdresser too, and my acupuncturist. I suppose we all gather a little troupe of people who 'see to us.' My dentist came to the 'Valentines Poetry Reading' that I was involved in last night. There were six poets and two musicians all reading and singing about love in its widest sense. the reading had been directed by the dramaturg Duska Heaney, and we'd done lots of work reading the poems in different ways, like they were shopping lists, or directions to somewhere. She put us all on luxurious looking sofas, and we didn't speak between poems, so there was no rustling of papers, or talking about why we wrote the poems. This helped to make the reading wonderfully short. Poetry readings are very odd affairs...often you haven't the faintest idea what the poet is on about. Still, this one was very successful and we got a good audience. Actually, I think poetry audiences are on the increase. Perhaps it's because everyone feels a bit distressed at the moment and poetry is good medicine for complicated feelings. On Sunday Sean O Brien and Kathleen Jamie read at Live Theatre. It was a fantastic reading. Kathleen read poems about dolphins and whales, and Sean's work was as inventive and brilliant as ever. Poets have so many good ideas, all packed into tiny poems. When I'm writing fiction I think reading poetry is very inspiring. It is where all the best images and ideas come from...where language is being made.
Now I must get on with my radio stories. I keep thinking about the women's hour listeners. Once I went to hear Jenni Murray read at Hay on Wye from her book about the menopause. It was a hot day and the marquee was full of intelligent, grey haired,no-nonsense menopausal women who were all sweating and fluttering fans. Terrifying!Posted by julia @ 12:59 PM GMT
Friday, February 7, 2003
I am hurtling from event to event at the moment. Last Sunday we had an evening at Live Theatre when writers read from their work about the North, and picked extracts that explored 'Northern-ness.' It was a really interesting evening, with David Almond, Andrea Badenoch, Margaret Wilkinson and Sean O'Brien. Much of the work looked at our heritage of coal mining and industry, and hardly anyone talked about more recent changes in the Northern landscape. The question which was raised, but not answered, was what it meant to be a 'Northern writer.' All of us were very influenced by the landscape, even if we weren't native to the North East. I have been living here for years, and just about everything I write is based in Newcastle. The Taxi Driver's Daughter is set right in the city, naming particular streets and areas. I have never found that being specific about where something is based stops it becoming relevant to readers who live elsewhere. Andrea Badenoch said an intersting thing; that when you come from a place it is always much more complicated to describe than if you talk about somewhere as an outsider. I often think that my relationship to this city is a very emotional one, like a relationship with a person. Anyway, when we got to the discussion part of the evening the audience were unusually quiet. I wonder what they went away with?
There's been other events too...a reading of the poetry MA students from the university at the Literary and Philosophical Society. It was packed with people. It seems to me that poetry audiences are getting bigger at last. Next week the writers from the university are reading together at the Gulbenkian studio for Valentine's night. This event has involved much talking and rehearsing. We are trying to present poetry in a more inventive way than the usual lectern and shuffling papers method. I think it will be a really good night, with the poems creating a dialogue between writers, all on the wide subject of 'love.' I am going to lie on a sofa!
This Sunday Kathleen Jamie is reading at Live Theatre with Sean O Brien....Jamie is really one of my heroines as a poet. Her work is rich and direct and fiery and full of fearsome women. These events at Live Theatre are Free...what a gift!
I have finished reading 'Cold Mountain.' I can't stop thinking about it. It's a book that is full of hunger and food, and everytime I open a can of something I think about Inman eating a bear over a fire, or nibbling walnuts to stop himself from starving.Now I'm reading Michael Faber's latest book...a great heavy Victorian epic that is impossible to read in the bath as it's so heavy. The title has the words Crimson and White in, but I can't think of the order they go in.
I feel very lucky sometimes, to be able to live in this nest of words, and not have to do a boring job that I would like to leave but can't.Posted by julia @ 03:43 PM GMT
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