Poets in Lancaster

I caught the train back to Manchester last night with Segun Lee-French, who was one of the readers at the launch of Flax018 at Lancaster's Storey Institute. We bonded over an unexpected love of early Psychic TV! The room at the Storey was a great venue, where the poets - all 6 of those featured in the anthology - were all given equal billing. It felt like the poems and the poets were prioritised, and, in the relaxed atmosphere of cabaret style seating with a glass of red wine, the audience were able to concentrate on the readings. Unusually, and what is the real USP, is that you can all read the poems from the ebook which is downloadable from their website. Segun's poems concerned his going to Nigeria, and finding, not the African spirituality he'd expected from his family there, but Christians, who were trying to convert him.

He wasn't the only poet to talk about "home" - and what that means - and its probably an unofficial theme of the anthology, called "The Crowd Without", to reflect the poet as outsider - like the bison away from the herd that adorns the attractive cover. I enjoyed all 6 of the poets reading, as they all read very well - though they were all very varied, making the anthology a book for readers, first and foremost. A special word for the precociousness of 20-year old Barnsley born, Lancaster-based student Andrew Macmillan, who read with a confidence like he'd been doing this all his short life. I'd been getting nostalgic about my own English degree at Lancaster which completed 21 years ago, and here was a current 2nd year student. A little humbling!

Ideas, we've had a few

On the one hand you could say we live in an age where the "big ideas" are no more, or, at best, are antediluvian (the rise of fundamentalist religion, for instance); but on the other, there's a culture of ideas being thrown around which can only be a good thing. This week alone there's been a number of conferences, in the North West, and elsewhere; and this afternoon, I was reminded of the ongoing intellectual freight of the country, when I was asked to be an observer at a PhD Viva at MMU. I was at a consultation for Manchester's Cornerhouse on Monday; and one of Cornerhouse's aspiration's is to build on its almost accidental role as a "creative hub." It's long been the unofficial capital of Manchester's literary community, as well as housing art gallery, bookshop and cinema. It's interest to surmise whether it is our art galleries and other cultural venues that are returning to a previous role as "salon". Perhaps the rise of the Universities since the 1960s has isolated cultural thought in the ivory towers - and now ideas are beginning to break out again.

Cornerhouse's "The Art of With" debate the week after next, has another contribution, this time from Tom Fleming, called "Embracing the Desire Lines." Things still aren't "open source", of course, but curated, invited, but I'm imagining that the new Cornerhouse - as a hub for ideas as well as art and film - may well need to think on how it might expand on this. Something like n+1's event/pamphlet series would come to mind. Their pamphlet on "A practical avant garde" is one of the most stimulating things I've read over the last few years - and, key to this, I think, brings the "ideas" culture beyond the big think pieces of Charles Leadbetter, Richard Florida, Malcolm Gladwell and others, and into more specific frameworks. It's why the Social Media Cafe in Manchester exists, as well, of course, to not be too prescriptive or "top down." Open source ideas have to come from the left field; from the audience; and - key to that - the participants need to be able to "curate" the ideas, not merely respond.

And I'm always keen to see art find its own place - I should get to Lancaster next week to see my first Litfest event, the launch of their exciting new Flax edition, "The Crowd Without."