Good God! There's writing on both sides of that paper!

Not normally my thing, but the composer has set a couple of my translations of the German Thirty Years War poets Andreas Gryphius and Paul Fleming. St Albans, 19 November.

"Born in Flight, a new cantata by leading young composer Alexander Flood, will receive its world premiere as part of the concert by Radlett Choral Society at 7.30pm on Saturday 19 November in St Saviour's church, Sandpit Lane, St Albans. It sets three poems dating back to one of the most horrific conflicts in European history, the Thirty Years' War. That conflict was fought for complex reasons both political and religious four hundred years ago between all the great powers of the time. It laid waste to vast areas of what is now Germany. Imagine a war lasting from the start of WW1 to the end of WW2 in which proportionally twice as many people died as both world wars combined and we get a sense of the carnage that scarred the psyche of the German people for centuries.
The poetry of Born in Flight, in translations by the Welsh poet and novelist Sheenagh Pugh, reflects the typically matter-of-fact response of people of the time to the uncertainty and transience of life. The final section of the cantata sets a lament for a baby born as a refugee who died only a few days old. There are clear parallels between that time in Europe and today in the Middle East, and the rich sounds of the cantata combine elements of music from both time periods.
Composer Alexander Flood, who will also be conducting the performance, says ‘Serious composers today sometimes find it difficult to write music that can connect with and move an audience. I hope that Born in Flight can spark across from the performers to the listeners and provide a memorable and dramatic expression of poetry that is as relevant to our lives today as when it was written’.
The concert also includes two profound compositions by Gabriel Fauré, and J.S. Bach’s exquisite Cantata 18. Fauré’s Requiem is his best known works, described by the composer as ‘dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest’. At the age of nineteen, Fauré composed the music for Racine’s text in his ‘Cantique de Jean Racine’ for a competition at the school of church music he attended in Paris, which won him first prize.
Radlett Choral Society and the Mariana Ensemble, with Soprano Sarah Gabriel and Bass Samuel Evans, will be conducted by Alexander Flood.
Tickets at £12, accompanied children under 16 free, are available from RCS Box Office 01923 226836/243545, or on the door."

Agent 160 is a writer-led theatre company that produces work from its female playwrights, based across the UK. (In 2010, Sphinx Theatre Company hosted a conference where it was revealed just 17 per cent of produced work in the UK is written by women. It seemed like a good idea to do something about that.) I have a huge interest in their work, naturally, because one of their playwrights is my daughter Sam Burns.

Right now, they are involved in a project to create a Fun Palace, a concept first mooted by Joan Littlewood. In 1961 Littlewood had a vision, of a Fun Palace that would be a temporary, moveable “laboratory of fun” that would welcome everyone. It never happened. But now, her vision is being brought to life for the 21st century. On 4th-5th October 2014, hundreds of pop-up local Fun Palaces will appear across the country, open to everybody, and free.

Agent 160 is working with the Wales Millennium Centre to make one in Cardiff this October; the idea is for lots of short plays to be performed and for the audience to join in a massive, group-written play, and see it performed. However, as is so often the case, they need a bit more money and are raising it via a Kickstarter. It's already got to well within £1000 of its target, but momentum is all in these things, so here I am promoting it. It's here, and well worth supporting especially if you live close enough to go down and have a look at some of the brilliant young women writers' work. Here's the list of playwrights:

Sandra Bendelow
Sam Burns
Vittoria Cafolla
Poppy Corbett
Branwen Davies
Abigail Docherty
Clare Duffy
Samantha Ellis
Sarah Grochala
Katie McCullough
Sharon Morgan
Kaite O'Reilly
Lisa Parry
Marged Parry
Lindsay Rodden
Shannon Yee

- and yes, it's got me in it, hence the ad, but look how many countries are represented! And who, having ever been a fan of Round the Horne, could resist going to a reading in the Balls Pond Road? It should be easy to get to, if you're in or near London. Here's the gen; for more, go to the Pelmeni Poets website.

Our next reading will take place on Wednesday June 12th, 2013 at The Duke of Wellington, 119 Balls Pond Road, London N1 4BN. 6.30pm for 7pm.

how-to-find-us

We are very excited to be hosting the award-winning Punjabi essayist and poet, Amarjit Chandam; the lyrical South African poet, Isobel Dixon; the accomplished fiction writer and poet, Martina Evans; Iraqi poet, novelist and painter, Fawzi Karim; the Shetland-based poet, novelist and critical writer, Sheenagh Pugh and the acclaimed Dublin-born poet, Roisin Tierney.

To be precise, I now have a recording in the Poetry Archive, that magnificent project started by Andrew Motion, while he was laureate, to record poets reading their own work. (Though I also got to read a bit of George Herbert while doing it, which was immense fun, because they let you read one poem from someone who lived too early to be recorded.) There's a CD, from which you can find sample poems on the web page. Thanks to all concerned.

The writer Paul Magrs, (Dr Who books, YA books and many prose works for adults) has posted a brilliant all-purpose email on his blog for the use of authors who get asked to do unpaid work at literary festivals. Having agreed to appear for free at a festival, doing 4 events over 2 days, he then found they wouldn't even pay his train fare, at which point, unsurprisingly, he pulled out. This was not some sort of free festival, by the way. Though he doesn't name it in the blog post, he subsequently did on Facebook, because they were still advertising his presence and he wanted to explain to anyone who expected to see him why he wouldn't be there. The festival in question, an SF/fantasy affair, is charging attenders £45 for a ticket to all events. I wonder if said attenders realise that the authors they came to hear won't see a penny of it?

The excuse often made by such festivals is that authors will find their appearance "profile-raising" and will sell more as a result. As a commenter on the blog points out, try that one on your plumber and see how far you get. The caterers, electricians and other backroom people who enable these festivals to happen will all expect, quite rightly, to get paid and would not consider working otherwise. Yet authors, the raison d'etre of a literary festival, are with increasing frequency expected to donate their services. Quite often, too, and certainly in the case of this festival, there will be "guests of honour" who do get paid, presumably at the expense of those who don't (the year Bill Clinton appeared at Hay, he was rumoured to have been paid £10,000, while most of the writers present went home with a white rose.)

At least, though, Hay does, or then did, pay expenses. Actually expecting an author to be out of pocket by attending is a new one on me, but I suspect it may increase. Paul Magrs did the right thing by pulling out, but I really wish more writers would refuse to be treated in this way. I don't think writers should even agree to appear without a fee, unless for charity or at a festival to which entrance is not charged. It's demeaning and it's unprofessional.

It's also a dangerous precedent to set. Organisers may tell you: these are hard times, they can't afford to pay writers "at the moment" (the implication being that if your charity enables them to survive, things might get better in future). Well, if they can't afford to pay those who constitute the most important part of their festival, they had better by all means go out of business. And as for the future, let us not forget that once upon a time, young people who entered professions, especially in the media, got paid. These days, they are expected to work for nothing as "interns" and somehow keep themselves or be kept by wealthy London-based parents in the meantime. This disgraceful modern version of sweated labour has become the norm and it will be very hard to change it back. If authors let unpaid work become their norm, they may well find the same. Many non-authors have real difficulty understanding why writers want and deserve payment; I have heard people seriously suggest they should do it for love and that it somehow undermines their commitment to their art if they want to put food on the table as well. But such folk are romantic fools; festival organisers are not, or shouldn't be.

Some few lucky authors may be able to afford to appear for no fee (though I suspect they won't be the ones asked to do so). But they should refuse anyway, on principle and out of solidarity with their fellow-writers.

This man was so much part of my youth. I lived in Nottingham from when I was about 14 to when I went to uni, and at that time Neville ran the Nottingham Playhouse. He made a point of trying to include in the repertoire some of the classic texts the city schools were studying for A-level, which is why I got to see him performing Iago to Robert Ryun's Othello. I saw him in much else too, though never, alas, in the famous portrayal of Petruchio during which, as he flourished a stage sword, the wooden blade flew off and landed somewhere in the audience. Neville made a great show of looking for it, all over the stage. Then he turned to Grumio (Bill Maynard, who told the tale for years after) and uttered what was in fact the next line in the play: "We are beset with thieves". Now that's thinking on your feet. Great actor, great theatre manager.

Some folk on Planet Academia are sniffy about Billy Collins, finding him not complex and multi-layered enough. I think myself that this poem could both start and end a few lines in from where it does. But... it's funny and well-turned, and more to the point, a brilliant performance; his timing and delivery would do credit to a top stand-up. If I ever get the chance to go and hear him read, I certainly shall.

I don't copy all the reviews I write to this blog, but am doing so with this one, partly because it's a new press which should therefore be encouraged, and partly because one way or another, I know several people in Manchester, who might be interested. There's a shorter version of this on amazon.co.uk.

( An anthology of the current poetry scene in Manchester )

Anyone at a loose end in Cambridge tomorrow Tuesday 11 May? I'm reading at Michaelhouse, Trinity Street. Event starts at 8 pm (doors open 7.30). Support reader is Daniel Hardisty and there will be a brief open mike (get there early to sign up: preference is given to those who haven't read here before). Entry fee is £5/£3, and there is a licensed café serving snacks.

- for which, actually, you won't need the Vogon poetry appreciation chair. Geraldine Paine's first full-length collection, The Go-Away Bird (pub. Lapwing, Belfast) gets launched from 6pm-8pm on Friday December 12th at the Chris Beetles gallery, 8-10 Ryder Street, London SW1 (between Green Park and Piccadilly Circus tube stations).

There's a page on Geraldine here and some poems here. She's been all sorts of things that poets generally aren't, including an actress and a magistrate - she has a lovely sequence of "found poems" called Leaden Hearts, based on tokens left behind for their families by transported convicts, in which they sound as close to us as any modern bad (or unfortunate)lad. She also has close family ties with Zimbabwe and writes about that troubled place (which again, not many poets do, that I know of) in a way that manages to be both elegiac and life-enhancing. And about being a wartime evacuee child, and eating oysters, and a whole lot else.

Good collection, which I'll do a full review of later, and it'll be a good reading; she's been part of a performing poets' group called Scatterlings for some time.