Reviews
Off the Rails - Friday, May 15, 2009
Q: What do you get if you put ten poets together in a railway museum with a brief to read poems about trains and journeys?
A: A really brilliant night, with fascinatingly varied range of work and styles.
As part of Colpitts Outreach programme, we put on a show at the Head of Steam Railway Museum in Darlington. One gem of the evening was Les Thomas, ex railway worker and octogenarian, who recited poems he had written to advise his colleagues about safety. He brought some props with him,too, but declined to wear them. Andy Croft took the opportunity to preview his coming collection with Bill Herbert and Paul Summers, with poems about the Moscow Metro: fascinating and illuminating. Jackie Litherland brought out the poignancy of meeting and greeting, which is a feature of the poetry organiser's lot. Annie Wright managed to work the declension of Latin verbs into a train journey through Kent. Jo Colley read a poem about mysterious Allen's West to the background of a short film. All in all, the poets were able to look at the subject from all angles and produce some lovely colourful and powerful work, all brilliantly em ceed by Simon James.
Readers were, in order of appearance:
Les Thomas
Ian Horn
S.J.Litherland
Joanna Boulter
Annie Wright
Andy Croft
Jo Colley
Tom Kelly
Marilyn Longstaff
Kate Fox
Peter Armstrong and Kathy Towers - Friday, January 30, 2009
Gareth Reeves - 10 October 2008 - Friday, October 10, 2008
Colpitts at Colpitts - Wednesday, June 11, 2008
The snug of The Colpitts Hotel is very snug but somehow a goodly number managed to crowd in to hear the Mayor of Durham, Coun. Grenville Holland, start off the evening by reading a couple of poems. We were back at home, back to our roots, where Colpitts began 33 years ago. The evening was planned to thank the Mayor for his donation from Community funds to help our survival. But the evening also turned into a wonderful and touching homage to the poet and writer Michael Standen, long standing Colpitts committee member and treasurer, whose sudden death is a loss to us all.
We know that Mick would have been delighted with his tributes from the Mayor, his sons, Guy and Louis, and the many friends and poets who had crowded into the snug.
Colpitts co-ordinator Michael Ayton read Mick's famous poem to the bar, written for the bar at Castle Chare Community Arts Centre many years ago, but deservedly revived for this occasion. There were many selections of Mick's wise and witty poetry chosen and read by those present.
The Mayor was accompanied by the Mayoress, his wife Olive, and he has written to say how both of them enjoyed and appreciated the evening.
(Lines Performed to Celebrate the Opening of a New Bar
at Castle Chare Community Centre, Durham. 16 September 1983)
I asked a muse of fire to come but it declined;
So I turned instead to drink - it didn't mind.
Art and drink both have a long tradition,
Expressing and alleviating our condition.
Both improve by keeping in the cellar,
Whether of brick or else the inter-stellar
Confines of our heads; Horace it was who said nine years
At least were needed to mature a work of art:
You write it, park it, find then take apart
Your distant labours and if they seem OK
You publish them for ever and a day.
Horace was I'm sure ‘a lovely man'
But at three days' notice - this is the best I can.
This bar is neither Tennysonian -
For weeping has occurred at getting it in place -
Nor Babylonian, nor Darlingtonian,
For Castle Chare's a poor and honest place.
And yet much committee time and artful labour
Has gone into its transformation,
Much angst and much aesthetic consternation
About the colour scheme we see
Which we hope's authentic 1983.
Unsung these efforts until now,
Ungarlanded Dave Bell's blue-spotted brow;
"Like loonies" they have worked, to quote our chairman.
It helps to work at Castle Chare, man,
Not to be as the mad world is sane -
Not narrow, timid - not safe to put it plain.
So thanks to all who run this centre
And keep an open door for all to enter
Who look for something which is within themselves,
Which daily living pushes to back shelves
And which no governmental power...Is all that keen to see come into flower.
Durham's a city built upon a rock
Whose civic virtues it's better not to knock
When the first citizen has come amongst us here
Out of interest and duty, not just for the beer,
A man what's more no stranger to the arts
And leader of the group which reaches parts
Where grants come from which others cannot reach
(He hinted at this in his noble speech).
The second citizen if we may call him so,
Our good supporter Councillor Harvey Smith,
Has also been no problem man to parley with.
Even in Durham changes can occur.
Doggarts, Greenwells, Boydells alas have gone:
No coffee beans, spacemen, woolly vests
Can now be purchased in our ancient town.
Building societies provide the only interest -
Except for co-ops starting up and down,
A real expression of community
And this decade's most hopeful opportunity.
But the greatest honour of this night,
Four years exactly since he came to lift our lid
(Officially to open us) ... is Sid.
His is the pen which most expresses
The heart of County Durham but never glosses
Over the costs exacted by unjust extremes,
Yet mines a seam of humane moderation.
So drink to Sid, the bar, and Federation!
Note: Sid Chaplin had opened the Centre in 1979. By 1983 changes in Durham had led to the building of Milburngate Shopping Mall and the closure of long-established shops. The Labour leader of the council and mayor was Derek Hanson and Harvey Smith was a hard-working Liberal councillor. Both Sid Chaplin and Harvey Smith died in the mid Eighties. Federation is the CIU brewery which had assisted in the setting up of a bar.
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