purple elephants corner: Cambridge Wordfest; Part One. ‘Stop! I wanna geddorrrfff!’

April 25, 2006

Cambridge Wordfest; Part One. ‘Stop! I wanna geddorrrfff!’

Whoah! What a busy couple of days, so busy in fact that last night I turned on the laptop intending to blog about the weekend and research John Betjeman for the impending assignment and while I was waiting for it to log on (ah the pleasures of dial up) I fell asleep. Not that you lot bore me or anything and nor does Betjeman, well at least I don’t think so because as I slept I dreamed that Westminster Abbey was in Slough. I was just exhausted and I’m sticking to that story.

After the Sandi Toksvig and Joolz Denby/ Serpent’s Tail disappointment I cheered myself up by grabbing one of the last tickets for Lionel Shriver, who was interviewed by Debbie Taylor (of Mslexia fame) about her brand new novel Double Fault. The fact that she wasn’t talking about her most famous work opened up many jokes during the questions from the audience along the lines of ‘I need to just talk about Kevin for a moment....’ Ok so maybe you had to be there. Shriver is a witty enthusiastic and confident public speaker and I was surprised to discover that she had been publishing novels barely successfully for almost 12 years before the K book was released. Ah there is hope for the rest of us yet.

Next up was Being Alive, an intriguing theatrical presentation of the poetry from the latest Bloodaxe anthology of the same name. The pieces chosen were reasonably wide ranging from funny to poignant, and irreverent to political, including works by Fleur Adcock, W.H. Auden, Norman MacCaig, Naomi Shihab Nye and Carol Ann Duffy. The actors, Gem Ahmet, Natasha Godfrey and Lewis Harwood kept the performance simple but lively, scarcely steering us away from the words themselves. My only complaint was with the circular screen behind them projecting hyper fast footage of the neon lights of Las Vegas strip whenever the set designer felt the need to emphasise the what-is-the-world-coming-to aspect of a poem. It only served to convince me that I was on some dastardly roller coaster, at moments I almost screamed out loud, ‘Stop! I wanna geddorrrfff!’
If this sounds interesting to you then there is a list of future dates here.

Talking of getting off, I still have things to do before bedtime so you will have to wait until tomorrow for my account of Julia Briggs’ talk on Virginia Woolf’s relationship with Cambridge and the fabulous Joy of Six.

*Best Noel Edmunds voice* And you will be back after the break. I know you will.....

Posted by purple elephant at April 25, 2006 10:55 PM