videonero.blogg.se

• #Unfaithful rebirth gala windows#

‘Trick’ turns on the ‘challenges of masculinity’, addressing a stunt that doesn’t quite go to plan. He was pleased with the audience’s applause, noting that his father’s response to the poem had been more ambivalent, and his second poem also investigates masculinity. ‘Camping on Arran, 1992’ recounts a trip with his father, recalling the moment when the pair ‘lay like hands held in one pocket’. Mark Pajak is from Merseyside, although he began with a poem set in Scotland. Her voice as she read was silky and low, curling itself into the ears of those present. That refuses to comply with the national weather, Though from the Midlands, she now lives in Cumbria ‘In the city I was born in’ was written when she was yearning to be back there, but living in Nottingham: Polly Atkin also turned her focus to the idea of home, noting that she has a ‘slightly troubled’ relationship with the concept. ‘Weighing of the Heart’, then, was written in tribute to the surgeons in Newcastle who were able to return her husband to health. A second poem addressed the personal happiness she had found in the North of England – a joy that was interrupted when her husband fell ill. ‘I’ve always shied away from writing about race, but I feel the moment for shying away has passed’, she said.

Her first poem was written in response to the fifty year anniversary of Martin Luther King receiving an honorary doctorate from Newcastle University. The poem is moving, ending with the speaker’s troubling thought that his mother may not have heard his whispered words of thanks.Īndrew then introduced Degna Stone, who enthused that it was ‘fantastic hearing everyone read’. Zaffar’s second poem, ‘Prayer’, begins and ends in a hospital, where the speaker ‘hurled language’s hurt’ with grief at his mother’s illness. ‘Spark Hill’ opens with the repeated word ‘fight’, acoustically unsettling the audience, and is set in Birmingham. A Faber New Poet, Zaffar writes ‘intelligent and considered poetry’, Andrew proclaimed, and he started by reading a poem centred on a childhood fight. ‘I never read that poem any further south than Manchester’, Kim joked.

The poem’s repetitions carry it forwards, and it ends with a lovely image of Kim’s ‘people’ as wolves, talking to the moon in their sleep. The type of carers paid pence per minute to visit an old lady’s house. I come from scaffolders and plasterers and shoemakers and carers, I come from people who swear without realising they’re swearing. Her poetry, he noted, is ‘rooted in her family identity, in her working class identity, and also, importantly, in the female experience’. Andrew McMillan is definitely that kind of writer’.Īndrew himself praised the ‘multitude of voices that we have in the North of England’, and was excited to introduce the afternoon’s line-up of readers.Īfter reading a poem of his own, entitled ‘Jacob with the angel’, he introduced Kim Moore. A Festival Laureate, Stephen asserted, should be someone who ‘can take on subjects that are topical and provocative. Andrew was introduced by Professor Stephen Regan, who commented that Andrew had been a ‘brilliant’ Festival Laureate, visiting schools in the region, as well as interviewing Alan Hollinghurst and hosting a poetry breakfast.

The event was curated and presented by Andrew McMillan, this year’s Festival Laureate, who noted that the poetry gala provided him with an opportunity ‘quite selfishly, to put myself in a room with poets whose work I admire’.

#Unfaithful rebirth gala windows#

We were gathered in the beautiful interior of Durham Town Hall, surrounded by stained glass windows and oil paintings, to hear some of the most exceptional poets currently writing in and around the North of England. This was one idea behind the Northern Poetry Gala at Durham Book Festival, which brought together several of the North’s newest and exciting writers. Defining the North is an always-provocative challenge, but poetry – with its attention to language and voice – provides a fine form through which to explore and celebrate the region’s identity.