Deborah Tyler-Bennett reading and NEW BOOK!

Deborah Tyler-Bennett will be reading at Shindig! at The Western, 70 Western Road, Leicester, on Monday 16th September 2013 from 7.30pm, and also promoting her new book, TURNED OUT NICE AGAIN! Stories inspired by the Music Hall and Variety Traditions.

The history of the music halls, and the history of variety, is, in many ways, the unwritten history of England. Unwritten, but not entirely unsung. It was a brief time when the workaday cares of long hours, unscrupulous employers, summary dismissal, and the constant struggle for economic survival could be mitigated, even in wartime, by the simple expedient of spending a few hours roaring out a chorus in a smoky atmosphere redolent of bright lights and greasepaint.  It began in the music halls, at a time when performers could become famous for a single catch-phrase, or for having a larger-than-life flat cap, or for filling the stage with flags.

            And, for those watching who themselves had an inkling of music or comedy, a spark of talent, and could put an act together, it became a potential escape route from the mindless drudgery of watching machines at the factory or mill. In the First World War, men marched to the front singing music hall favourites such as “Tipperary” and “Pack up Your Troubles”; in Hitler’s conflict, it was Gracie Fields and George Formby whose music bolstered the troops and reminded everyone once more what they were fighting for, in a way that patriotic speeches could never do.

            Deborah Tyler-Bennett’s collection of stories draws deeply on that tradition.  Inspired by the music halls and variety, these stories chronicle the lives of a linked group of characters in the East Midlands in the heyday of musical comedy.  Alf and Shirl, Vi, Courtney and Bean (“the boys most likely to…”) Beryl, and the redoubtable Grandwem are all expertly drawn and brought to life in these pages, their trials and triumphs, tragedies and tribulations.  

            Starting out in wartime Mansfield, we follow Beryl’s development, intertwined with the stories of the other protagonists, in their box-and-cox, hand-to-mouth, precarious existence as entertainers in wartime, and a whole host of minor characters who provide both context and bitter-sweet humour, including a budgie called George Formby.  If you liked Priestley’s The Good Companions you will love this book; if you appreciate the culture and social history of the East Midlands you will love this book, and finally, if you simply enjoy good, compelling writing with some deft touches and knowing insights, you, too, will love this book.

            Turned Out Nice Again will be published on 30^th September 2013, at a retail price of £10.99 (plus £1.50 postage, if ordered direct from the publisher).

Strange Alliances - book blogger Elaine Aldred interviews Gez Walsh

http://strangealliances.wordpress.com/2013/09/09/gez-walsh-a-style-all-of-his-own/

An Island by Steve Rudd

An island should be hard to get to; hard to reach.
First, you should drive down winding roads,
Arriving at a small seaport, say Sunday evening,
Drive through the hot backstreets of summer,
At teatime, and the shops all shuttered
Paint-peeling boarded, all locals elsewhere…

Down to a nineteen-fifties quayside
With ropes  and bollards, tar and cranes,
Then clank down a ramp onto a gloomy car-deck
Smelling of diesel, deep in the ship;
Cast off, and feel the engine throbbing.

You should arrive, eventually, to the keening welcome of gulls,
In a small harbour, lined with sober stone houses.
An island should be a destination worthy of itself;
Staying, not “hopping”, we have no desire
To move on, and no return booked, or expected -

This beach of peace and stones an end in itself, 
And not a passage elsewhere.
Inland, the mountains bare their flanks
Of scree to the searing of the sun;
The burns and the waterfalls mere trickles of dry stones,
Now, and the hare and the hart
Lie panting in the coarse and brittle bracken.

An island should be defined by its tides,
And be as timeless as they flow
From low to high to low, 
Keeping the moon captive,
Tethered over white deserted beaches,
Where the grey water slides like rustling silk.

An island should be a place of beauty
Whose mountains, seen from afar, become veils
Alluring by virtue of their secrecy;
Dark obscured by light, then counterchanging
Shapes now there, now absent;
A beauty all the more for being rugged
And ground out slowly, over a million years.

I have tried many times, on many visits,
To sum up my thoughts, to capture my relationship
With islands, especially this one;
But, as with all best loves, her essence
Her essential self, under the surface, eludes me

And all I know is  that, like all good lovers,
Arran keeps me coming back for more.

[Parts of this poem are due to be broadcast by Eamon Friel on The Late Show on BBC Radio Ulster on 31st August 2013]

Angels by Steve Rudd

People claim they can see Angels: so what?
Angels are just a problem of scale - you look
At clouds for long enough, they will sprout wings;

Angels, sylphs, undines, gnomes and salamanders,
Why should we count any of them holy?
Their iron wings stretched out to gather the traffic,

They are the lightning when two spheres collide
And the electric air tintinabulates, sparks,
Arcing with choirs of cherubim and seraphim
As two worlds swing and sway, their portals open,
pealing like the bells of angelus.

Like Blake, I've started seeing them everywhere:
Angels hovering over power stations -
(The stations of the cross)

They watch for me: and the hitcher who vanished
From my backseat on that dark and rainy night
Has probably left a single downy feather:

"So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be"
Does this include that tall dark stranger
By the black canal, who waits
Wings folded patiently, for the lonely midnight drunk,
(Who is also me) to see him safely home?

Does this include the gardeners, now dead
Who left their nurseries for other trenches
But come back on summer evenings
When early moths float under earth-scented leaves?
I do not know about these messengers, enigmatic hearsay,
Tales told by old women to their daughters
Told by old men of Mons to cub reporters.

I only know that, now I speak to angels,
All angels have become one angel,
Whose voice I will hear from now on in my mind:
All angel voices are now one voice, and it's yours.

Garrulus Glandarius by Steve Rudd

Mister Popinjay, up on his branch

Considers all the angles

Before committing;

Head on one side,

Matching the slant of light through branches

Jaunty but wary

Like a young lad, out upon the town,

Entering an unfamiliar bar.

Mister Popinjay

Brought me the summer

- a gift for which I’m grateful -

By decking his house with green

And wearing gaudy feathers.

Fluttering down from somewhere near at hand

He lets me pay him peanuts for his trouble.

Mister Popinjay

Is nothing special

In the greater scheme of things –

He gets a bad press, like cuckoos and magpies

And yet his gaudy feathers’re numbered

Like the hairs on my head

As are those of his colourful siblings

- Or so I’m told.

Mister Popinjay,

Millions of years

Turned you from dinosaur to bird

And brought you to my feeding-table

This Sunday teatime, to what purpose

God alone knows;

Now the moment’s gone again –

You’ve flown far from me, like a lover –

-  “they flee from me, that sometime did me seek”

- But you have seared my mind with coloured feathers and

Infected me with your sheeny jauntiness, now my head too

Is held sideways, looking for the sunlight, jaunty but wary,

Even if you never return, though I hope you will, often,

That, at least, I have to thank you for.

Deborah Tyler-Bennett interviewed by Strange Alliances

http://strangealliances.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/deborah-tyler-bennett-on-lacing-words-together/

Storm Damage by Steve Rudd

Counting the cost, the morning after;

Not as bad as I’d first thought

The roof is still in place, and all the chimneys

Still lean as crazy as yesterday

One plastic greenhouse lurches over, all

Seed trays in a jumble, its strained sides

Still ruffled by each diminished blast,

And the fence of willow screen lies flattened

Twigs and branches strewn around

As though God had cast the I Ching,

Sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind

With a power that swayed even cathedral spires

Dislodging bats and rooks, unwilling into the night.

I have lived through many storms,

And each has left its mark on me

Each scar, rebuffed by the vast blast,

Despite the wind’s moan, I remain a survivor

Who has spent many nights lying awake

Listening to the tiles fall off my life,

Too scared to go outside

Or get up there and stop it.

But, today, it’s not too bad,

Like many things in life, it could have been much worse,

And so today we make a list

Of all the things needing fixing,

Sigh, and stoop to build again.

Things that need fixing; a long, long list,

Starting with me, although I fear

There, I might have to manage my expectations;

This sunshine’s only temporary –

Enjoy it while you can;

For there will be other nights

Listening to mysterious crashes in the dark,

The howling winds of despair,

The sound of breaking glass.