Litfest

October 30, 2008

Litfest in Motion! (a view from the wings)

Filed under: Jonathan Bean — Tags: — Jonathan Bean @ 1:24 pm

Litfest08 went live last night, kicking off in fine style with 2 very different events. At 6pm in the Dukes gallery, a small but active audience listened intently as Sarah Hymas talked about the recent process of commissioning 3 poems and 3 short fiction pieces from 6 writers – Jenn Ashworth, Maya Chowdhry, Annie Clarkson, Meg Peacocke, Jane Routh and Ian seed. Sarah was joined in the discussion by Martin Chester, our litfest designer, who talked about the process of working with the writers and editor to present the texts as large scale posters, and by Jenn Ashworth and Jane Routh who read their works and talked about the process from the writers perspective.

The posters are all available as either downloads or to purchase from the litfest website.

Sadly I can’t tell you what was actually said in the talk, as I was outside busily getting the bookstall ready for the later evening event with Andrew Motion (who also snuck into the poster event and was very complimentary about it on stage later), but I can reveal that the wine, olives and tortilla chips went down a treat, and that’s always a good sign.

Andrew Motion proved himself to be a charming and delightful gentleman as well as a consummate writer and reader of his work.

Andrew Motion on stage at Litfest08

Andrew Motion on stage at Litfest08

I know this not because I was in the audience for his (by all accounts) excellent reading (I wasn’t, I was up at the back getting a few snaps, so heard a few minutes only), nor because of his engaging after show conversation at Pizza Margherita, but because stationed for the evening at the bookstall I am perfectly positioned to hear the audience comments as they browse the books during the interval and after the show. Here’s a few I overheard…

“Wasn’t he a nice man? and such a clear speaking voice too”

“Fabulous”

“What did you think?” -  “Yeah, cool”

“I really enjoyed that. Much more than I thought I would”,

and my favourite…

“That was great, but I still wouldn’t let him walk my dog”

October 29, 2008

Poster Commissions live

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — Martin Chester @ 6:11 pm

Ahead of the grand launch at the Dukes (Lancaster) tonight (that’s Wednesday, Oct 29, at 6.00pm – check your watch you might still have time) we’ve launched the posters we’ve commission from six local writers.

You can download versions to read online, or higher resolution to print (for free) on your home (or sneekily on you office) printer.  These are A3, but can be scaled down if need be.  They are, however, designed to be printed at A3, so please keep that in mind when you are printing them.

Alternatively, why not buy a lovely A1 version of either Jane Routh’s Between or Annie Clarkson’s Okarito.  They are nice prints on very nice paper.  The details are on our website.

And to do any or all of that, click here

October 20, 2008

The nearly final posters

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Martin Chester @ 11:23 pm

After much angst, gnashing of teeth, creative and despairing moments in equal measure, the posters are reading for final output and printing.  Watch for them at the festival, especially for their launch on Wednesday, 29 October in the Dukes Gallery.

Seeing them together, I’m quite excited.  Sarah, can we print them all?

October 19, 2008

On a wet Tuesday night,

Filed under: Guests — Tags: , — Andrew McMillan @ 7:42 am

the Castle sits ominously above the city conducting the weather and the darkness that’s wrapping itself around the streets like a scarf.  I could go on, but this blog is meant to be about Paul Durcan, and he could write something much better deeper and beautiful anyway. I’m ashamed to say that this last Tuesday night was actually my first encounter with Durcan’s work; and what a first encounter it was. This wasn’t a performance, discussion nor even a reading; this was a Reading, in the sense that demands the use of a Proper Noun.

Surrounded by 650 shields bearing the arms of every English monarch, Lancaster Castle Constable and High Sherriff of Lancashire since Richard the Lionheart, in a room where voices seem to be pulled up into the dome of the roof, the audience had every right to expect something grand. They were not disappointed.  As Durcan stepped up, in an almost stately manner, an impromptu bell-ringing session began. After quelling the audience’s nerves with a quick joke, he began to read anyway. The bells
soon stopped ringing. A woman in the row in front of me turned around and muttered  the power of poetry, eh?  and smiled in a way that I like to think only poetry can make people smile.

Durcan’s poetry was at times funny, moving and profound. His two-liner about an Irish resident commenting that they never go abroad for their holidays, only to America, reminds me of the dry, ironic whit of Thom Gunn whereas longer poems move the audience to fits of laughter and quiet contemplation in equal measure. All but a few of the very shortest poems draw applause from the audience. Not the sort of polite applause that sometimes prevail at poetry gatherings either, but the sort of applause which seems utterly spontaneous as if compelled by the words themselves. There is no banter with the crowd, no discussion except the simplest of notes on a place or a reference specific to a certain poem, there is nothing but the text. Nothing but the poems.

When it s over the audience pushes towards the book-stall, buy little sections of what they’ve just witnessed, and head for home. As I step outside, I realise the heavy rain of before has been replaced by a calmness of leaves and stars. I think of that woman on the row in front of me, how right she may well have been. The power of poetry, eh?

October 16, 2008

flax goes large

Filed under: Sarah Hymas — Tags: — Sarah Hymas @ 4:09 pm

Once again we at flax are a little overwhelmed and while it might be to do with the large coffee I drank (and didn’t pay for at Kendal train station this morning – due to an animated conversation about The Testament of Gideon Mack with the coffee seller. Sorry! Although it wasn’t as if I jumped on the nearest train with it foaming in my hand – but hung around the platform for 15 minutes).

Our giddiness is more specifically related to the vision of us flaxers being oversized. No McDonald’s for us pious chumps, but we’re pulsating in glorious sunshine yellow in the windows of our local Waterstone’s. Of course I’ve now blown our cover, bcause apparently we were unrecognisable … see what you think

Paul Durcan and The Bomb

Filed under: Andy Darby — Tags: , — Andy Darby @ 3:56 pm

After much milling about the audience settled down and took their seats. Jacob Polley gave an enthusiastic introduction to the wonderful Irish poet Paul Durcan. Durcan took the stage or strictly speaking as the reading was at Lancaster Castle’s Shire Hall, he took his place at the Judges’ bench and was about to open his mouth to read when a peel of bells broke out and the ringers began their clamour. There’s always something that you can’t plan for!

Despite that unexpected interruption, or should I say accompaniment, Paul gave a great reading to a rapt audience who were seated mostly in the well of the court. If you were there you know how good it was, if not then I guess you’ll never know what a great reading you missed. Ask a friend.

After supper, I dropped Paul off at his hotel and I walked home via The Dukes Theatre, where I stopped for a quick pint and found myself stood next to the IRA man, Patrick Magee, who in 1984 planted a bomb in Brighton’s Grand Hotel killing five people and injuring dozens more. The Dukes’ current play is The Bomb by Kevin Dyer.

I had nothing to say to him, not a single coherent thought entered my mind. I could not move beyond the fact that he had intended to kill people and had executed his plan. My inability to utter a word made me even more impressed by Durcan’s writing and the stance against terror that he has taken for so long.

October 9, 2008

work shoes

Filed under: Sarah Hymas — Sarah Hymas @ 3:34 pm

Since we’ve just discovered how to upload pics from the mobile phone, we thought it time to let you in on our current office wear …

October 7, 2008

Poster Project 2

Filed under: Sarah Hymas — Tags: , , — Andy Darby @ 4:13 pm

Screen shot, posters

A week or so on and I’ve hit the point of having one poem to look at (sorry to Jane Routh, yours was just at the bottom of the pile) and one to revisit (Annie Clarkson).  Above (or left depending on how the blog software decides to work) is a screen shot of all the ideas I have produced to the point of presenting them to Sarah Hymas (editor) in the coming days.  I began thinking mostly of typographic ideas, and then moved things like light and shade and space.  However, the most successful are more visually representative.  Each time I work on a piece of writing, I come out with one I’m particularly fond of, which is good, but is never the one I expect it to be. So, I’m looking at typography for the last few, so expect a nice glossy photo!

October 4, 2008

Poster Project

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — Martin Chester @ 4:09 pm

Flax books has commissioned six writers to each produced a piece (three short fictions, three poems) for posters.  I have then been asked to design these posters, two of which will be printed on A1 to be sold at Litfest08 and all six will be available to download from the website so you can print them at home, if you choose.

As part of the project, I’ve been asked to blog the process of designing.  And this is entry one.

I’ve been working on the project for a while, so this will be a bit of a recap.

My first step, even before looking at the poems, was to research contemporary posters.  Using Creative Review magazines and blog, as well as a number of books, I tried to get a sense of how the top designers approached posters.  The first thing I noticed is most of the really good posters were light on text, so the help here would be limited.  However, I came to two conclusions from the research. 1) The text needed to be a part of the image or to make the image – we are not talking concrete poetry, fear not. 2) The posters needed some sense of stucture, just a small element to connect the range of posters and to give me a starting point to build from.  The first bit of work I did, then, was to add this element to a template I would work from. Next I read the poems and scribbled ideas down, in words, not sketches, so I can’t show you these.  I decided not to design with the pieces in front of me.  The idea was to work from the images, mood, colours or moods the writers had left me with. Indeed, I worked with the next piece I was going to work on, so I was taking on one piece while desinging the other.

Below is a photo of my desk as I worked on, Ian Seed’s Man.  And it shows the first process of, in my experience, almost every design process…

…failure.  This poster has been rejected. but did take me down a few lines which have been useful.

Somewhere around 4am last Saturday, I woke up with a conclusion that if I made all the posters similar, using a pastel background, a wide text column and a slim image column, and the images and text in monochrome.  I had a solid idea for Man by then, and one for Maya Chowdhry’s kah kow.  This conclusion allowed me to approach the work with a lot of freedom, despite being thrown out by the time I started working on Maya’s poem in earnest.  So, that is where I am at the end of the first post (it brings us up to the end of last weekend).  More later

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