Poems and Pictures ……… a special event ........ at the Royal Oak .........

I knew I would enjoy the launch of "Poems by Lindy and Pictures by Peter" at the Royal Oak today. 

They told me they had “invited Manchester’s top literary artists to come together for an afternoon of spoken word and poetry in celebration of their new book of poems and pictures but despite, working before on projects,  up till now, they have never collaborated on a book which has produced so much wow".

Adding "the idea of illustrating stories is not new and the very first illustrated books were published in 1461 by the cleric and printer, Albrecht Pfister, who was born around 1420 in Bamberg.

What’s unique to this book is the vivid imagination of Peter’s startling images set against the raw emotion created by Lindy’s poetry". 

And the event was a success with over 40 people attending with a host of poets who offered up a mix of the funny, the serious and the poignant.

Now I confess I never wrote down the names of all those who performed, but Peter and Lindy will put me straight and I hope will also come back with not only the names but the details of their books of verse.

Leaving me just to say looking around at the audience they like me had a good time and of course to say that "Poems by Lindy and Pictures by Peter"  is available  from www.pubbooks.co.uk  and Chorlton Bookshop.

And Lindy tells me "Thanks,  Andrew for attending our event and taking these great pictures. 

Other poets taking part were: Pauline Omoboye , Alice Spencer , Amanda Nicholson, Pinbadge, Melanie Neads, Steve Smythe , Lynn Walton - what a great mix of poets and poems and it was wonderful to see so many people there, including other local poets and members of our lively'. Chorlton Arts scene".

Location; The Royal Oak Function Room,

Pictures, the event, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The poem man

I am not sure my old friend Rod Whitworth will approve of the blog title but as we have known each other for half a century I guess he won’t mind.

We first met in 1974 when we discovered we both lived in Ashton-under-Lyne, and as we both worked at the same place it made sense to travel in together.

Although I have to confess Rod did the driving and was born in Ashton while I had only washed up there in the spring of that year.

Since then, we have drifted in and out of each other’s lives occasionally meeting up to swap stories of grandchildren, books we have read and where in Manchester to get the best cheese barm.

And it was on one of those encounters that I discovered Rod was a poet, and an accomplished one as many of his poet friends testified yesterday when he and others read their poems.

It was a zoom session which allowed a large audience of friends, family and publishers to come together from around Britain and out across the world.

And we gathered in recognition of his new book of poetry My Family and Other Birds, at which point I could fill the page with reviews but will add just one from Peter Sansom, poet and co-director of The Poetry Business who wrote “it's so compellingly written that it's also that rare thing, a poetry page-turner.  Wonderful."

Me and Rod, 2012

But enough of the praise which Rod would downplay anyway, instead it is another example of the talents so many people have, but for a variety of reasons do not always bubble to the surface.

I think of heaps fine photographs which match the best of the “recognised photographers” but are the work of people who were busy with the day job and the everyday preoccupations of the school run, what to cook for tea and Aunt Edna’s birthday present.

Some only took to taking pictures late in life, others squeezed them in between other things exhibiting them on social media rather than in a gallery.

Or those who took to writing, perhaps through a writing group but equally found an audience through social media.

As a secondary modern boy who at the age of eleven was judged “wanting ability” and consigned to a school which lacked the resources and prestige of its neighbouring grammar school I still need sometimes to shout that we all have that ability to express ourselves in a meaningful way which resonates with others.

And that is it.  My order for My Family and Other Birds is on its way.*

* My Family and Other Birds, Rod Whitworth, 2024, is available from the author at rod.whitworth@me.com or Vole Books,  https://www.dempseyandwindle.com/rodwhitworth.html

Poems from the fields ...... John Clare and 19th century rural Northamptonshire ....... today on the wireless

My old friend David Bishop first introduced me to John Clare a almost a decade ago.

And so I was pleased the Radio 4 have rebroadcast this.*

"In a programme first broadcast in 2017, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Northamptonshire poet John Clare who, according to one of Melvyn's guests Jonathan Bate, was 'the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced'. 

Clare worked in a tavern, as a gardener and as a farm labourer in the early 19th century and achieved his first literary success with Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery. 

He was praised for his descriptions of rural England and his childhood there, and his reaction to the changes he saw in the Agricultural Revolution with its enclosures, displacement and altered, disrupted landscape. 

Despite poor mental health and, from middle age onwards, many years in asylums, John Clare continued to write and he is now seen as one of the great poets of his age.

With Sir Jonathan Bate, Provost of Worcester College, University of Oxford, Mina Gorji
Senior Lecturer in the English Faculty and fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and Simon Kövesi, Professor of English Literature at Oxford Brookes University

Producer: Simon Tillotson".*

Picture; Harrowing in Mustard on stubble from A Farmer’s Year, 1899


*John Clare, In Our Time, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08cstfr