A festival of books

[shewhomust]

We came back from holiday and plunged immediately into the Durham Book Festival - today is the first day since our return that we have done nothing Book Festival-related. We sailed up the Tyne at breakfast time last Sunday (eight days ago) and thereafter:

Sunday afternoon

Panel Discussion on "What is a book?" Three interesting speakers whose contributions never quite came together: the whole was less than the sum of its parts.

Sunday evening

Vane Women poetry launch - I enjoyed this, though probably mostly for the chance to meet old friends, sample Lindsay's sloe gin and learn about Harehope Quarry.

Monday evening

Two Flambard poets - I love Peter Bennet's work, and enjoy the way he presents his poems: "I think this one may be a dream, but I'm not sure whose..."

On Tuesday evening

durham_rambler had a meeting, so I went without him to a reading by four women poets: Valerie Laws and Gillian Allnutt are particular favourites, but what struck me on this occasion was Colette Bryce's reading from her new collection, which impressed me more than she has in the past.

Wednesday evening

was durham_rambler's choice: two authors of military historical fiction, Allan Mallinson and Bernard Cornwell (a relation, though not a close one). As interesting as a conversation can be when it's about books you haven't read, and wouldn't normally think of reading - with the added bonus that the venue was the Town Hall, where there is no stage, so when the speakers sat down they were invisible to most of the audience. They resolved this by bobbing up and down every time they spoke, which had its own entertainment value.

Thursday evening

was only indirectly BookFest-related. desperance had booked a stall at the weekend's Book Fair, and we had agreed that we would collect his stock of books if he would cook us dinner. So there was a fabulous Chinese banquet, and frumpo and Helen to help us eat it, and samarcand dropped in to sell us copies of his book. So a festive and bookish evening, after all.

Friday evening

A poetry reading by Arnold Wesker - Sir Arnold Wesker, though that never seems right. Very much a performance, thought-out and carefully constructed - and very assured, taking in his stride even the Gala Theatre's habit of relaying the announcements about the main theatre up into the Studio - and very good tempered about it, too. The poetry was careful, reflective, interesting - and I need to read it on the page, to grasp the formal structure which I suspect is there, obscured by the reading which - as it should - followed the sense rather than the form of the poems.

Saturday morning

Book Fair in the Town Hall, hanging out with desperance - and a number of clients who had also taken stalls. It wasn't crowded - there could have been more stalls and there could have been more customers - but it was sociable.

Saturday afternoon

"From Sheep to Shelf" about how to make a medieval book, starting by preparing the vellum and going on from there. The talk took place in Bishop Cosin's Library (walls lined with seventeenth century bookcases) and included a display of some of the University's collection of manuscripts.

Finally, Sunday morning

Back to the Town Hall for an even slower day at the Book Fair

Exhausting though this was, I think it was a good idea to run the Festival more intensely over a shorter period. This alone is not enough to create a momentum whereby people go from one event to another because they can, because they are there - each event still seems to have its own separate audience, there is very little sense of being at a festival - but it can't hurt. No time now to go into the details of what worked and what didn't, though - time to bed, and maybe a little time with my book...