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Poetry and football
May. 12th, 2006 02:30 pmLast night might have been organised to exemplify the regional culture of the North East. We went out to a poetry reading / book launch, confident that we could make Newcastle in half an hour because the football season was over; only to discover that the traffic was surprisingly heavy, and there were an awful lot of people on the streets wearing black-and-white football strip (and one or two in green stripes, too). It turns out it was Alan Shearer's testimonial - we rushed into the Lit & Phil a few minutes after they were due to start, and publisher Peter Mortimer arrived with the books a good ten minutes later.
Since the book, North by North East, is an anthology, there were a stellar collection of poets reading (not to mention the editors, Cynthia Fuller and Andy Croft), often but not invariably about some aspect of the region. Gillian Allnutt read about the year she moved into her house in the pit village of Esh Winning, and spent the long summer evenings digging her garden and finding a way to mourn her long-dead grandmother. Sean O' Brien read about reading Wallace Stevens in the bath. Graeme Rigby read a single long poem about the year Nissan opened a factory in Washington. W.N. Herbert's Beachboys tribute started from the fact that the Vikings were so called because their voyages habitually hugged the shoreline, sailing from vik (creek) to vik - they were, in fact, beach boys. Valerie Laws made a link to another north east with her reflection on the lives of the whalers' wives of Nantucket, and how they coped while their husbands abandoned them for the sea. And more...
After which, good north-easterners all, we went to the pub, where the match was still showing on the bright screens, and the poets gathered round to watch Shearer end his playing career by scoring the winning goal.
I'm not going to pretend to know enough about either football or arts funding to draw any sort of parallel here: but the other topic of conversation was that recently - very recently, over the last few weeks - several poetry organisations (publishers and performance venues) have had funding applications turned down by the Arts Council North East (known - no doubt affectionately - as ACNE). Whether this is a genuine pattern, or simply a fluke of timing, whether it's a shift of policy or something that will be reversed on further consideration - we'll find out.
Since the book, North by North East, is an anthology, there were a stellar collection of poets reading (not to mention the editors, Cynthia Fuller and Andy Croft), often but not invariably about some aspect of the region. Gillian Allnutt read about the year she moved into her house in the pit village of Esh Winning, and spent the long summer evenings digging her garden and finding a way to mourn her long-dead grandmother. Sean O' Brien read about reading Wallace Stevens in the bath. Graeme Rigby read a single long poem about the year Nissan opened a factory in Washington. W.N. Herbert's Beachboys tribute started from the fact that the Vikings were so called because their voyages habitually hugged the shoreline, sailing from vik (creek) to vik - they were, in fact, beach boys. Valerie Laws made a link to another north east with her reflection on the lives of the whalers' wives of Nantucket, and how they coped while their husbands abandoned them for the sea. And more...
After which, good north-easterners all, we went to the pub, where the match was still showing on the bright screens, and the poets gathered round to watch Shearer end his playing career by scoring the winning goal.
I'm not going to pretend to know enough about either football or arts funding to draw any sort of parallel here: but the other topic of conversation was that recently - very recently, over the last few weeks - several poetry organisations (publishers and performance venues) have had funding applications turned down by the Arts Council North East (known - no doubt affectionately - as ACNE). Whether this is a genuine pattern, or simply a fluke of timing, whether it's a shift of policy or something that will be reversed on further consideration - we'll find out.
