Nine days that transformed Bath – the annual literature festival
Colette Bryce & Daljit Nagra appear in You Are Here
As Bath Literature Festival 2010 draws to a close, Judy Darley enjoys some of the highlights, and looks at how the festival transformed Bath, just for a short while, into a place where poems appeared like high-brow graffiti pinned to random walls and some of the world’s finest writers and thinkers walked the city’s streets.
Where, what and why
Staged in Bath’s dramatic Masonic Hall, You Are Here opened onto a simple set of three chairs, three glasses and a jug of water. Colette Bryce entered and began the performance with a poem than rang out and enticed us with the flow of words, then Daljit Nagra and Jo Shapcott joined her on stage and one poem followed another, like beads falling down a thread, ringing out as they connected.
Each of the poems is written in the first person and explores idea of who and where we are. As the hour crept on, I began to gain an image of the poets speaking to us and their individual strengths as writers.
Three poems, three views of the world
Colette offers pockets of vivid imagery, of spiders trapped beneath wine glasses held back by something they can barely see; juxtaposed with her poem of an Indian rope trick perfectly executed.
Daljit’s poems are more irreverent; rich in humour and social observations, but deeply moving at times, while Jo’s words build quietly, examining her most intimate thoughts and sensations with increasingly resonant power.
It was an experience that left a mark in the air of this impressive room. Lighting added layers of coloured shadows to the ornate Masonic backdrop, adding another dimension in cohesion with thoughtful placement sand replacements of the chairs as though they were chess pieces, along with partial recordings of some poems.
One of James Runcie’s aims as the festival’s new artistic director was to “telly” things up a bit, and the performance reminded me of the best of the kinds of things screened on Sky Arts.
A moment’s metamorphosis
I returned on Monday to hear a talk with fiction writers Adam Foulds, the author of The Quickening Maze, and Chloe Aridjis, who wrote Book of Clouds. It was, as James Runcie put it, all “a bit earnest”, but very interesting as chair Helen Taylor, a professor at Exeter University, got them talking about their characters’ journeys into metamorphosis madness.
Each of the writers have a real skill for vivid imagery and an evident passion for their subject. Held in the Guild Hall saloon, the event was far emptier than You Are Here, but that may have been because it began at 4.30pm on a Monday when many of the potential audience members would have been at work.
As I left I spotted a yellow, A4 poster bearing the poem of the day, another of James’ innovative ideas. Monday’s was a cheerful but poignant reminder to relish our youth, entitled, “We will have fun growing old, you and I” and written by Jennifer Martin, a creative writing student at Bath Spa Uni. It’s these inclusive acts of art and poetry that make the festival really belong to the town.
Communicating silence as a way of life
On Wednesday I headed into Bath for Sara Maitland and Harry Eyres: Too Fast! Ironically terrible rush-hour traffic meant I was rushing all the way there, so it was a relief to slip into the calm interior of Bath’s Central United Reform Church. Harry Eyres, as the writer of the Financial Times’ Slow Lane column, was a wonderful choice as Sara’s interviewer, with a journalist’s deft talent for keeping things moving.
Sara opened the event by taking to the pulpit and reading an excerpt from A Book of Silence, before talking us through her motivations for seeking out, experiencing and writing about silence. More than any other writer I’ve encountered, Sara lives her book, so hearing her speak was like dipping back into the pages.
When the discussion was thrown over to the audience it soon transpired than many of the people, mainly women, present, had the same reverent passion for silence as Sara does. The links between silence and mental illness was touched on, as was the idea that there are both negative and positive kinds of madness, with the difference sometimes being no more than a difference in interpretation.
Of all the events I attended, this was the one I felt moved to discuss afterwards, at length, with ideas and perceptions racing through me.
And that, in my opinion, is exactly how a literature festival should always leave you feeling - intrigued, often appreciative, but always inspired.
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Having Ruth Palmer playing Bach and Bartok on her Strad. in the Octagon was a wonderful idea. Hope this will happen again. The film was very good too.
Would love to see the You Are Here show. Any idea is it coming to Ireland?