A Fine City

My place is most definitely Norwich, a fine city as it says on the rust pitted sign that welcomes you in on the A11.  The ‘graveyard of ambition’; the home of Alan Partridge; Normal for Norfolk they say- shorthand for the narrow-minded, insular and reactionary.  Well let them.

When I stand on my front step, with my back to the resolutely middle class contents of my home I look out on modest Victorian terraced streets stretching to the horizon; which helps assuage the guilt of moving south (Norwich being 13 miles south of Crewe) and adopting a lifestyle alien to the upbringing that I’d walked (ran) away from in 1973.  A short walk away is Anglia Square; as pug-ugly a square of ‘value’ shops as you’d hope to meet.  Towering above it an empty office block, obscuring the view of the cathedral at the north end of Magdalen Street.   Magdalen Street was voted Britain’s most beautiful street in 1963.  Shortly after it was enhanced with Anglia Square and a flyover for the new inner ring road http://www.nr23.net/govt/unfinished_mag_st.htm .   Between the empty shops:  curry houses, Asian and East European food shops.

Just before it reaches the River Wensum it changes.  The fish shop by royal appointment, then The King of Hearts café and gallery on the corner with Fishergate and if you wander up Elm Hill opposite, past its antique shops you’ll reach the Art Cinema, the Art School and The Playhouse Bar crammed with students and behind the bar is the poet Andy Mac’s moustachioed happy face.  There’s also Expresso with its pavement tables and next door the Amaretto Delicatessen part owned by Henry who’s just opened a new book shop The Book Hive with the launch of Southampton Dada by Nick Rogers from Cant Books a new press in Norwich.

I came here from Cambridge seven years ago (I’d completed a number of photographic project/commissions here).  Since then the balance has tipped to writing.  There are more writers here than churches, the City pulses with literary activity and is applying to be the England’s first UNESCO City of Literature.

I saw Carol Anne Duffy (30^th Sept) at UEA as part of their Season, sitting next to Nathan Hamilton poet, publisher (Eggbox), corduroy wearer and impresario.  He showed me all the wonders of his i-Phone – the idea of a phone that can also be a mouth organ is a tempting one.  CAD was good, although she read the same poems she always seems to read.   Afterwards I spot George Szirtes and his wife Clarissa and give them a wave, they wave back and leave by the opposite exit.  I look for them outside, but they are nowhere to be seen.  Perhaps they are hiding from me behind the bins, or have sprinted to their car.

Back home, my wife Helen Ivory is workshopping with some of her students in the dining room.  Helen is Academic Director for Creative Writing for Continuing Education at the University of East Anglia.  Up to a third of her one day a week is taken up by saying her job title.  The people around the table have worked their way through the courses on offer and still want more, or want something less formal (and cheaper) than the diploma courses.  Helen runs two such groups, I hide upstairs, sneaking down to steal biscuits.  Helen’s second book The Dog in the Sky (Bloodaxe) contains lots of love poems about me and I strongly recommend it – the book, not writing love poems about me (although do feel free).  I come out of it very well, heroically even.  Readers meeting me in the flesh though are disappointed; they don’t say anything, but I can see it in their eyes.

The following Wednesday a poetry reading at The Forum, Norwich’s state of the art library, as part of an animation collaboration with the Art School.  George Szirtes does the first reading, others follow: Sarah Roby winner of this years MsLexia Competition, Tom Warner one of Faber’s next batch of pamphleteers, Andrea Holland and also the splendid My Dark Aunt http://www.myspace.com/mydarkaunt with Andy McDonnell’s (he of the Playhouse bar) dark word play with haunting music.  Helen does the final reading, finishing with some dignity on a chicken voice.  Some of the animations are good, but most suffer from paying no heed to the pace of the poem  A joyful leaping dog with a stick represents Andrea Holland’s moving poem on her dog’s death, as far away from the poem’s intent as possible.

The next night is National Poetry Day and I find myself on stage with George Szirtes at the Art Centre.  I got the call the preceding Sunday, the intended and no doubt scholarly host no longer available, so had four anxious days to prep.  Last time I was on this stage I was compering a Mod Fest.  George is a prolific and award-winning poet, he’s just been short-listed again for the TS Eliot prize and an award he won in 2004.  It’s nicely full and George is eloquent and moving, talking about his life and work supported by his poems and some family photographs.  George and I have a certain amount in common (not the awards) in our personal histories and the impact of the Second World War on our parents’ and indirectly our own lives.  I’m going to write more about my side of this in another post.  George fled Hungary at the age of 8 with his parents during the uprising in 1956.  He’s written about photography a lot, so I’ve enough to cling to and with George’s help manage not to make an idiot of myself.

It must seem that George Szirtes is ubiquitous in Norwich.  He’s certainly a vital figure to the poetry scene here and the city is crammed with poets who owe a great debt to George in their development, including Helen and I.  This from his excellent blog http://georgeszirtes.blogspot.com …… still that Norwich should be full of writers I have taught or worked with, so that I feel a bit like father to hundreds of rebellious shining illegitimate children of the Muse – and be wary, reader, it is not just Norwich….

We also have Luke Wright here from the performance end of poetry.  With Aisle 16 and in his own right he has been become an important part of Britain’s performance poetry’s scene.  He runs the Poetry Tents at the Edinburgh and Latitude Festivals, he’s a provider of opportunities to others, in particular the younger writers and even an old fart like me.  He’s just started Nasty Little Press  http://www.nastylittlepress.org .  He is frighteningly energetic and part of a tight group of friends in Norwich that fizz with creative energy.  Recently from this group in Norwich: Molly Naylor is working on a play for the BBC and a spoken word show for Apples and Snakes, Hannah Walker was on the shortlist for the prestigious Bridport prize, John Osborne’s first book Radio Head was a Radio 4 Book of the Week and Tim Clare’s We Can’t All Be Astronauts won best biography/memoir in the East Anglia Book Awards and the magnificent Yanny Mac  had yet another comeback.

My small contribution to the scene here is to run (with a hard working committee) Café Writers, a monthly live-lit event.  We are mostly funded by our competition so please enter (deadline 30^th Nov) here www.cafewriters.org.uk and find out about us.  We get an audience of around 50 or so and sometimes many more.  In October we had 90 for an event launching the first four of the Faber New Poets with the support of the Writers’ Centre, a literature development agency here going from strength to strength and involved in much of the above. www.writerscentrenorwich.org.uk .   5 of the 8 new Faber Poets are from Norwich or have studied here.  Next month we have Neil Astley publisher of Bloodaxe reading his own work.  Support readers tend to be emerging writers and more local (Sarah Roby in November) and we also have some open mic opportunities – all for two quid.

Elsewhere in the city there have been events throughout the month.  At UEA amongst several events there was the launch of the UEA anthology by Nathan Hamilton’s Eggbox http://www.eggboxpublishing.com .  Every month there is Poetry Link at the Art Centre who regularly programme live lit events.  In September the headline was the David J; one of the best spoken word performers I’ve seen.  He conjures theatre with the simplest of devices and catches the complexity of issues missed by others; he also questions the moral certainty of the audience.

I could go on (and on) I’ve only mentioned the half of it.  This blog was brought to you by the campaign to bring yet more writers to Norwich.