Erudite without being pretentious, learned without being dustily academic, philosophical without being obfuscatory, David Vernon’s wonderful book, Beethoven: The String Quartets, whirls the reader through Beethoven’s sixteen string quartets, locating them in every possible context - social, political, religious, historical, contemporary - as well as rigorously exploring their relationship to the rest of Beethoven’s oeuvre. Vernon comes across as a polymath, an intellectual and a man of culture. That he also demonstrates wit, warmth and humanity is the icing on the cake. Beethoven: the String Quartets is the kind of book that sets the gold standard for non-fiction.
About the reviewer Neil Fulwood lives and works in Nottingham. He has published four full poetry collections with Shoestring Press, No Avoiding It, Can’t Take Me Anywhere, Service Cancelled and The Point of the Stick; and a volume of political satires, Mad Parade, with Smokestack Books.
George Musgrave’s The England No One Cares About: Lyrics from Suburbia is a fresh, original exploration of England’s suburbs: what they are, where they are located and why they are ‘forgotten.’ Throughout the book, which is academic in many ways but poetic in others, Musgrave writes autoethnographically about the important role that storytelling has in all of our lives.
Towards the beginning, there is a focus on Musgrave with others, including where he has lived: one example is ‘George & Victoria’ (Victoria is his mother) and then ‘Tuxford and Louth’ – places he has resided. There are even links to playlists connected to different life experiences. Readers are able to listen to these through the links provided.
The third chapter – ‘What Stories Do, Why Stories Matter’ – is of particular interest to me. Earlier parts of the book concentrate on Musgrave’s own story; but here, in this section, the focus is broader. There is a specific emphasis on rap music and songwriting as forms of storytelling. In the fifth chapter, ‘Small Town Lad Sentiments,’ Musgrave includes a collection of songs written over a four-year period - all contain lyrics linked to the specific themes of the book. I really like the way that these song lyrics are included amongst more academic sections, although I can’t deny that these would be best if listened to, preferably being read by Musgrave himself.
Closer to the end, Musgrave explains that the book is ‘a deep and extended vignette on one person’s subjective experience of peripherality.’ This is explained further, thankfully, with Musgrave saying how it is linked to ‘a physical removal from centres of power and/or decision-making.’ Essentially, then, he is referring to many rural, or semi-rural, areas of the country.
The book concludes with thanks, albeit subtly, to ‘George & Camille’ – his children. Musgrave states how his son is the fourth generation in a row to have the same name as him.
The England No One Cares About: Lyrics from Suburbia is a thought-provoking, varied read, a book that offers plenty to all readers.
About the reviewer
Matthew Tett is a freelance teacher and writer living in Wiltshire, UK. He is the creative producer for StoryTown and a developmental editor for the Flash Fiction contest. In his spare time, he enjoys running and hiking in the countryside.
Here is one of those unclassifiable pamphlets which makes perfect sense when you think about it. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? Take any number of conductors - magnetic figures all - encapsulate their style, their motivation or their hallmark, and present them as a sequence where the reader can guess who it is. Art as an enigma, much like the alchemy of conducting itself. You can read the unnamed stanzas in Neil Fulwood's nifty little collection, and check your answers at the back of the book, like any good test paper. I scored four and I'm disgusted with myself; maybe I am listening to the wrong recordings, but I enjoyed the guessing game nevertheless.
Of course we do not learn overmuch about the conductors as they march past - the poems are between eight and twelve lines, so the poet has to hit the ground running with a bijou design of those dimensions. What we have are lightning sketches, illuminating without becoming cartoonish. Judging by the correct four guesses, the pictures are accurate too: for instance, there are films of Adrian Boult wielding his trademark 'billiard cue,' and he was as sparing in his gestures as the poem implies, 'deployed with a slight / supple turn of the / wrist.' I like how 'wrist' is separated from the preceding line, emphasising the clean gesture. The collection is full of expert touches like this, the 'punchline' exactly situated, the felicitous phrase which brings the portrait alive.
There are references to war-torn countries, driven individuals rebuilding themselves, and the conductors as self-made people as well as media stars - familiar enough ideas when it comes to international artists, but relayed here in Fulwood's uncluttered and direct manner with not a word wasted. Each segment dovetails in with its neighbours so well that there is no 'odd one out,' which sometimes happens with a sequence. I would have welcomed a couple more lines for each conductor, because I was interested to know more about them - but it was not part of the poet's design; and anyway, that's what biographies are for.
The Point of the Stick may sound like a niche pamphlet but in fact there is a wide audience who would love this collection. Instrumentalists, concertgoers, choir members and Radio 3 listeners could all benefit from finding a copy in their birthday envelopes. Better still, it's so pocket-sized you can take it with you to a marathon recital and read it during the interval. As a concept album, it is small and perfectly formed. Go, little book! I am posting my copy to a pianist friend who will appreciate both the poetry and the subterranean references to complex lives and their overwhelming dedication to music.
About the reviewer Rennie Parker's latest collection is Balloons and Stripey Trousers (Shoestring, 2023). She was born in Leeds but lives in south Lincolnshire, and currently works for an FE college. Blogs here, daily nonsense on Twitter @rennieparker.
You can read a review of Balloons and Stripey Trousers on Everybody's Reviewing here.
Orfeo’s Last Act is an ambitious dual-narrative novel, telling the tale of the Renaissance Jewish musician Salamone Rossi and the modern-day Professor of English Emilia Constantine. During an early music conference, Emilia finds the original last act of what is considered one of the first operas, Orfeo, in a trunk in an old manor house in East Anglia – left by Rossi when he was working there as a teacher over 400 years ago. The find reveals Rossi, and not Monteverdi, to be the original composer of this fifth act, and gives Emilia a dilemma in terms of what to do with this discovery.
The novel is well researched with a firm understanding of the historical era; the writer clearly understands her music and there is a nice reimagining of how this final act might have been created.
The novel’s structure itself is interesting, with the Renaissance strand on the left-hand page and the modern strand on the right-hand page; at first, I wasn’t sure how to read the book – all the first part then all the second part, or alternate strands. I suspect that it can be left up to the reader how they choose to read it. I chose to read the first part in its entirety, then the second part, but I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has tried reading alternate chapters, to know whether this gives a different sense of the intertwined stories.
The story rattles along at a fair pace, and there is a huge cast of characters to get to know alongside a vivid sense of how life was for Jewish communities in Europe during the Renaissance, which comes across very clearly. Indeed, there is much research and scholarship that has gone into this novel, and clearly this is a really important era and subject for the author, as the back cover tells us that she has an early music group and plays the music of Rossi herself, which is a lovely addendum to the book.
About the reviewer Dr Kim Wiltshire is a playwright and writer whose research involves theatre / writing for social change and arts for health. She is currently a British Academy Innovation Fellow and is a Reader and Programme Leader for Creative Writing at Edge Hill University.
Kim Moore’s What the Trumpet Taught Me is an exciting, innovative experiment with the memoir form. It uses precise vignettes of a girl and woman’s experiences with music (specifically, learning to play a cornet and trumpet over the years). These snapshots are short pieces of prose or prose-poetry – often barely longer than a page – which link chronologically to explore themes of family, education, class, gender, sexism, creativity, community, work, desire, bereavement, performance, power and self-empowerment. One of the book's joys is the skilful way that Moore explores these major issues through the prisms of a trumpet and one woman’s life and reflections.
Given her expertise as a poet, Moore consistently plays a poet’s notes: observation and imagery, rhythm and atmosphere. The writing is absorbing throughout, virtually always in the present tense, which helps to retain its visceral immediacy. I learned too about the history of the cornet and trumpet, technical terms like single tonguing and triple tonguing, the first, second and third valve slide. It’s packed with stunning, painful insights. Here’s one: ‘I think back to all the men I’ve been taught by and my relief when they only do their job, my gratitude.’
Just over halfway through the book there’s a chilling depiction of an abusive relationship. The narrative trembles from its after-effects, and the reader wants the narrator to reclaim herself, feels relieved when she does so. Her trumpet remains a positive presence, companion and instrument of ultimate triumph. What the Trumpet Taught Me gives us music as stirring as any brass or soul band. It’s an engrossing and moving achievement.
About the reviewer Robert Hamberger’s fourth poetry collection Blue Wallpaper (Waterloo Press) was shortlisted for the 2020 Polari prize. His prose memoir with poems A Length of Road: Finding Myself in the Footsteps of John Clare was published by John Murray in 2021.
You can read more about What the Trumpet Taught Me by Kim Moore on Creative Writing at Leicester here.
Liz Lefroy’s pamphlet of poetry is innovative, beautifully composed and is as unique as Beethoven himself. Just like Beethoven’s 9th symphony, she combines two art forms, traditional and prose poetry. The artistry of her language, the vivid reflections journey us through the past and present life of Bonn and Vienna. Her themes lend themselves to the Romantic music of Beethoven, merging into the classical tones of her surroundings.
We are mesmerised by the budding dancer in the poems, the toil and hard work as she finally flowers, and then her voyage into motherhood. The power of Lefroy's words places us beside her; lines such as ‘I survive fleshy awkwardness’ resonate with our own adolescent selves. Of her pregnant self in the bath, the phrase ‘beached on the rounded island of myself’ is such a perfect description; for me this feeling has never been so adequately illustrated.
The strength of Lefroy's poetry lies in the marriage of the beauty of Beethoven's music, the beast of war, and the war within him, his deafness. Reading through her work you are reminded that, although Beethoven wrote beautiful music, there is often an undertone of sadness and despair. This is a story of life and development of beauty triumphing over despair; it is an extraordinary accomplishment and an absolute pleasure to read, again, and again.
About the reviewer Elizabeth Chell is currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Leicester University. She is a full-time teacher and lives in Leicester.
Stephen Johnson studied at the Northern School of Music, Manchester, and composition under Alexander Goehr at Leeds University, then at Manchester University. Since then he has written regularly for The Independent and The Guardian, and was Chief Music Critic of The Scotsman (1998-9). He is the author of Bruckner Remembered (Faber 1998), and studies of Mahler and Wagner (Naxos 2006, 2007). As a BBC broadcaster he presented Radio 3’s Discovering Music for 14 years, as well as a series of 14 programmes about the symphonies of Bruckner. He is also a regular contributor to the BBC Music Magazine. Stephen radio documentary, Shostakovich: Journey into Light, was nominated for a Sony Award in 2007. And in 2009 his radio documentary Vaughan Williams: Valiant for Truth, won a Sony Gold Award. His book about music and mental health, How Shostakovich Changed My Mind (based on the Shostakovich documentary) was published in Spring 2018, followed in 2020 by a book about Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, The Eighth: Mahler and the World in 1910 (Faber). In 1997 Stephen began composing again. His orchestral work Behemoth Dances had its premiere in Moscow in April 2016, followed by its UK premiere in London in May. In January-February 2019 his Clarinet Quintet Angel’s Arc was performed by Emma Johnson and the Carducci Quartet, and an American premiere is planned for November 2020. His website is here. Below, he talks with Jonathan Taylor about his work, and his book How Shostakovich Changed My Mind, which was published in 2018 by Notting Hill Editions.
Interviewed by Jonathan Taylor JT: Perhaps, to start with, you could talk a bit about the aims, scope and context of How Shostakovich Changed My Mind: what is it about? What impelled you to write this book? SJ: My aim shifted as I wrote it. There was a personal agenda - I was aware of that right from the start. Like Sibelius (whose Fourth Symphony I mentioned in the book), I wanted to see if writing about my own painful experiences might help get them 'into some kind of new perspective.' Therapy had brought me to realise how traumatic had been - not only my own experience of mental illness (I’m bipolar type two) but also the experience of growing up with a very disturbed and disturbing mother and a father who could barely cope. But it has also brought out just how important music had been in my own survival - and, more recently, considerable improvement. I hoped writing the book might somehow objectify all this for me. I think it did - and, perhaps more importantly, my wife Kate thinks so too. But, having talked about this book with others before I began to write, I sensed another possibility - that I might be able to offer something affirmative and helpful to people who had been through similar, or comparable, experiences. The reaction I’ve had to it, in reviews and in private emails via my website, suggests that it really did work. I’m haunted by Nietzsche’s remark that 'without music life would be a mistake.' By looking more closely at what music - especially tragic music - can do for us, I wanted to say that life doesn’t have to be a mistake. My experience is proof of that. JT: What are the particular challenges, for you, of writing (in prose) about music and musical experience – of representing one art form through the medium of another? Are there things music can do that literature can’t, and vice versa? SJ: I love reading - especially novels, poetry, history and the more readable kinds of philosophy - but I’m aware that music does something special, possibly because it doesn’t speak through clear concepts or ideas, and can therefore bypass our critical defences and engage directly with our deepest feelings. I love Ernst Bloch’s comment, ‘When we listen to music, what we really hear is ourselves’ - I quote it in the book to make it clear that, whenever I describe music, it is my reaction I’m describing, however much it may be supported by the reactions of others. Describing music using non-technical terms is very challenging, but it’s a challenge I enjoy. I’m aware of the much-quoted (and variously attributed) line that ‘writing about music is like dancing about architecture’ - yet I can’t help feeling that if I were a choreographer I would particularly enjoy the challenge of creating dance about architecture - the challenge can also be highly creative. And I think of the example of writing that have opened my ears to new aspects of music - from the musicological (Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style) to literary (Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus) to poetry (Osip Mandelstam on Schubert, T.S. Eliot or Ruth Padel on Beethoven). When I think about it, the writing on music that I’ve found most liberating has been more often literary than musicological.
JT: At one point in How Shostakovich Changed My Mind, you talk about some of the ways in which music – and particularly Shostakovich’s music – exists beyond the scope of logical contradiction: that it can seemingly hold two opposite emotions (for example) in balance at the same time. This has struck me forcibly too at times, in terms of Shostakovich’s, as well as Tchaikovsky’s, Mahler's and Berg’s music. What is it, do you think, about music that makes this possible? SJ: This is a very interesting, and a difficult question. Shostakovich and Mahler in particular were great ironists. Tchaikovsky does it too - I’m thinking particularly of the finale of the Fifth Symphony. It can be that a mood of tragedy or comedy - or even what seems like a straightforward ‘happy ending’ - is artfully contrived to created the impression that it ‘protests too much’ - that the emphasis is overworked, or that there may be some impression of lingering doubt within the affirmation, as in the final ‘memory’ of the minor-key Scherzo just before the massively, obsessively affirmative major-key ending of Beethoven’s Fifth. Or, since you mention Berg, there’s the emergence of the Bach chorale in the finale of Berg’s Violin Concerto - is it religious consolation, or a desolate ‘if only'? Some of the best performances have left me with the sense that it’s both - or as Beethoven put it, ’Sometimes the opposite is also true.' JT: Why Shostakovich in particular? SJ: My sense of involvement with Shostakovich goes back to my early teens, and some of my most vivid memories of music somehow coming to my aid in times of great personal distress centre on teenage experiences of his Fourth, Fifth and Tenth Symphonies. I’ve always had a rather odd memory - and I found I was soon able to ‘play back’ these works in my head as I went out for long walks and cycle rides in the West Pennine Moors near where I grew up. I spent a lot of time on my own - it slightly shocks me now to think back to that time and acknowledge this. I don’t know whether I’m truly solitary by nature (in fact I doubt it), but needing to entertain, and sometimes calm and reassure myself during these lonely excursions clearly forced me to develop my musical memory at an early age - with poetry and prose following close behind. I’m enormously grateful for that - but above all I feel a huge sense of gratitude to Shostakovich himself. His music, probably more than anyone else’s, seemed to reflect back to me the mental torment I felt, and to transform it. As I became increasingly drawn to Russia - through music, and through the works of Gogol, Dostoyevsky and Bulgakov - I found that Russians seemed to find this notion less surprising than most of my Western friends and colleagues. I remember one old Russian I met saying to me, 'There’s something about hearing your most painful emotions transformed into something beautiful …' He didn’t have to say any more. JT: Who do you think is your intended reader? Do you have one in mind while writing? SJ: At first I wrote for myself, but as I wrote I had the growing feeling that there must be many others like me. Maybe they hadn’t had the same kind of traumatic childhood experiences that I had, but had found tragic music their most powerful comforter. I had an email from a man in the USA recently who wrote, 'You made me realise I wasn’t alone.' I’m sure you can imagine my feelings on reading that. To know that you’ve made something out of your own pain that has been a light for others - it doesn’t get better than that.
JT: I thought the book was structured beautifully – as an extended essay, split into sub-sections, rather than chapters. How did the structure of the book come about? SJ: Several people have said the same, but this was the aspect of the book I thought about least.There was one conscious consideration. I’m aware of how difficult it is for busy modern readers to find longish periods to devote to an argument. The idea of having it in short sections made sense if I pictured someone reading it on a shortish train or average tube journey, or even reading it in bed at night - though I admit it isn’t the way I prefer to wind down before turning off the light. On the whole though it felt like having a carpet unroll under your feet as you walk. You can only see a foot or two of carpet ahead, but you keep walking and it keeps unrolling. Mind you I did have one very important bit of structural feedback. I’m particularly proud of the last two pages of the book, in which I recreate what it was like at around 16 to stride across the moors with Shostakovich Fourth thundering through my head, but this felt like a new kind of writing for me. Originally this came about two-thirds of the way through the book. I showed it to Kate, and she immediately adopted her characteristic frown of concentration. It deepened visibly whence came to that passage, and I braced myself for something difficult. Then she looked up and said, ’This is the end.’ For a moment I didn’t know what she meant (it sounded bad), but then I realised, and she was absolutely right. After that the rest of the book just flowed towards it.
JT: How difficult was it to find the right balance between personal (memoiristic) material, on the one hand, and musicological or literary material, on the other? SJ: I’m sorry it this is frustrating, but again I didn’t give it much thought. I liked the idea of weaving all sorts of different kinds of material together. You can suggest so much - invite reflection - this way without having to spell things out. It becomes a more creative experience for the reader - or that was my hope.
JT: What do you think are the strengths, weaknesses, possibilities, constraints of the personal essay form? SJ: Well, to quote Nietzsche again, ’There are no facts, only interpretations.’ I don’t know if I entirely agree, but it’s a very important challenging thought. There must be objective truth, but how good are our minds at identifying it? The more I read of what I was once taught was ‘objective’ musicology, the more subjective I realise it is. I prefer to be honest about this, and the personal essay seems to me a far better way of achieving this than an academic thesis. Of course it risks veering into self-indulgence, or worse pure solipsism. I was very keen indeed to have as many level-headed people read this as possible, and to listen to their strictures. If the book does manage to avoid what a friend calls ’swimming in the me pond,’ that’s more proof that we can be better people in our work than we are in everyday life!
JT: What do you think you learned, about yourself, Shostakovich, or others, in writing the book? SJ: Plenty - too much to go into detail. But there are two things that leap to mind. First it brought home to me how astonishing was Shostakovich’s achievement in holding to what be valued in his heart in the midst of the horror and madness of Stalin’s Soviet tyranny. This was absolutely the opposite of macho Hollywood idea of heroism. Shostakovich was highly sensitive, emotionally fragile perhaps, and in later years he lacerated himself for what he considered his own weakness and capitulation. But there was something deep within him that held firm, and now it speaks to millions - look at the views on YouTube for some of his most popular works and you’ll see that’s literally true. For me though, when I read through the book before sending if off to the publishers, I was surprised at how moved I was myself, but especially by its message of hope. As I approached the end I remember a sensation like a convulsion from within - I’m not exaggerating - and found myself repeating, ‘It’s all true. It’s all true.’ I end as I began, with a reference to Kafka’s 'Metamorphosis' - apparently a very bleak parable, yet with a glimmer of light near the end. Gregor, transformed nightmarishly into some kind of giant insect and increasingly abandoned by his family, hears a violin playing and asks himself, ‘How could he be a brute beast if music could make him feel like this?’ I remember reading that years ago and thinking, ‘One day I’ll write a book about that.’ This is it.
About the interviewer Jonathan Taylor is an author, editor, lecturer and critic. His books include the memoir Take Me Home (Granta, 2007), the novel Melissa (Salt, 2015), and the poetry collection Cassandra Complex (Shoestring, 2018). He directs the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. His website is www.jonathanptaylor.co.uk.
In William Nicholson's Shadowlands, C. S. Lewis famously declares: ‘We read to know we’re not alone.’ Stephen Johnson’s remarkable essay-cum-memoir, How Shostakovich Changed My Mind, claims the same for music, and particularly Dmitri Shostakovich's symphonies and quartets: we listen, that is, to know we’re not alone. In Shostakovich's music, Johnson finds a mirror for his own mental illness, trauma, near-suicide: ‘emotions and thoughts I had experienced as terrifying vast, chaotic and threatening acquired ... a sounding form. In the midst of my long-drawn-out isolation, Shostakovich reassured me that I was not utterly alone. Someone else knew what I felt – perhaps even in some mysterious sense “heard” me.’ The music ‘hears’ Johnson despite the apparently vast socio-cultural gulf between composer and listener. Shostakovich lived and worked in the Soviet Union under Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and his music grows out of that context, often explicitly so: ‘Listening to … stories about what people had endured under Soviet Communism, and about what Shostakovich’s music had meant to them, I was increasingly aware of something like guilt. How can I claim that this music speaks to me too, a citizen of a much freer, safer country, who has never known what it is to dread the knock on the door in the small hours?’ Yet, despite this, the music does still ‘speak’ to Johnson and others who never lived under Stalin’s Terror; somehow it does recognise the ‘emotions and thoughts’ of those living in very different contexts, and Johnson lucidly sets out some of the ways in which ‘Shostakovich’s music was never solely about “I,” or even about the great Russian collective “We.” It was for anyone with ears ready to hear.’ Of course, musical experience is not often talked about in these terms, especially in the West; as Johnson himself admits, ‘listening to music’ is often understood as ‘a private, solitary activity,’ a kind of ‘solipsistic reverie.’ But Shostakovich’s music, according to Johnson, can move the listener from solipsistic reverie to collective dreaming, from individualistic pain to shared suffering, from ‘I’ to ‘We.’ Johnson expertly traces how this process is staged in the works themselves: the Fifth Symphony’s slow movement, for example, moves from individual pain and ‘loneliness’ to ‘a moment [when] the string writing fills out with a kind of grainy luminescence, through simple, rich harmonies that sound remarkably close to those of a Russian Orthodox church choir intoning a melancholy blessing. The grief-saturated, alienated voice is suddenly not alone. The suffering is shared.’ In the same movement, that is, Shostakovich’s music can embrace a whole world of 'emotions and thoughts,' a 'broad spectrum [with] “I” at one end, shading gradually into an immense “We” at the other.’ ‘Shostakovich,’ writes Johnson, ‘can meet us in moments of terrible isolation, as he can in moments of shared joy.’ We listen to him and, as Nicholson’s C. S. Lewis might expect, ‘we’ no longer feel alone; and something similar might be said of the experience of reading Johnson's beautiful memoir.
About the reviewer Jonathan Taylor is an author, lecturer, editor and critic. His books include the novel Melissa (Salt, 2015), the memoir Take Me Home (Granta, 2007), and the poetry collection Cassandra Complex (Shoestring, 2018). He directs the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. His website is www.jonathanptaylor.co.uk.
So on a Saturday night, I have a problem. I’m not much of a clubber anymore; I’m fed up of having to shout to talk to my friends, I’ve got absolutely no rhythm and I am growing ever more angry at rising cloakroom prices. I like to sit in a pub until the early hours, chatting with my friends.
But my best friend, Verity, now she likes to dance and won’t hesitate to cut into the pub conversation with a cutting, “I’m bored now.”
Some weeks ago, Verity and I were trekking through town heading to a bar (to avoid paying the cloakroom fee at the eventual club, I am wearing only a T Shirt and am freezing!), when we pass O’Neills Bar on Loseby Lane and hear Ain't Nobody by Chaka Khan being belted out. I wanted to warm up (and get a pint), and Verity spied a dancefloor…
The Nanna Radleys (a band neither of us had heard of) were playing, and your foot starts tapping (or in my case shoulders bopping) almost the moment you walk in the door.
The atmosphere was heady with pure and simple fun! There is not posturing from the band, no slightly irritating attempt to be "cool" (they just are). It is brilliantly performed covers all the way and it is clear they know their job is to entertain their audience.
I got the drinks in and Verity headed straight for the dance floor. But soon the infectious music - songs you are either guaranteed to know or at the very least sort of remember the tune - had me dancing on the edge of the crowd, clutching the drinks. The bar was packed, and all seats long claimed.
The Nanna’s (as they call themselves) are a six piece band. They are led by singers, and sisters, Lauren and Sarah Bird. Sarah has a powerful, belting voice that brims with soul and a diva presence as big and fabulous as the flower pinned to her quiff. Lauren has a sensuous voice that leads you happily to the dancefloor (shoulders bopping!) and injects excitement into the repertoire as she throws herself into a rendition of Diana Ross’ I’m Coming Out.
The rest of the band is made up of David (guitar), Glen (bass), Carlos (drummer), and Craig (keys); all (to my unprofessional yet judgmental-a-though-a-professional-eye) brilliantly talented. One really nice and quite unique point to note about the Nanna’s is the range of ages: 27 - 57. Yet their laidback camaraderie and genuine warmth can be easily felt by the crowd.
Between them, they soon even have the men dancing and you feel like they are at least partly drawn by the music and not the ladies on a Hen Night already occupying the dance floor. I soon make my way to join Verity, sufficiently embarrassing myself with my dance moves but cheered by the Hen flirting with me (I think…).
Without a doubt, the Nanna’s provide Leicester’s least boring night out. You can sit, sup and sing along or bound onto the dancefloor and enjoy the fact that it’s not sticky. Like the Nanna’s themselves, the bar was choker with different ages; this is a band suitable for all.
Alex Bliss is a writer and producer. He is co-director of Original Ink, a theatre production company who have supported local writers, directors and actors by producing evenings of short plays which include: Hashtag, Mashed and The Meltdown Test. He has written plays for the 14/48 at the Y Theatre and currently works in events at Curve in Leicester. He is writing the book for a new musical soon to be performed at the Sue Townsend Theatre called Madeline and Joe, which revolves around a relationship between a young couple trying to conceive.
Poet, musician, and teacher Darius Degher interviewed by Alexandros Plasatis
Darius Degher
Darius Degher is a poet, musician, and teacher. His poems have appeared in literary magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. His 2014 poetry book To See the Sound is a New Formalist collection that’s been praised by poets and scholars in both the US and UK. He teaches creative writing online in the English department of Malmö University, Sweden. He’s the founder and editor of the Shipwrights Review, an international literary magazine for second-language English authors. He has a BA in English from UCLA and an MA in creative writing from Lancaster University in England. Darius is also a singer-songwriter who has released six CDs and performed at iconic music venues around the USA. AP. What’s your story with the English language? Did you find it difficult to learn English?
DD. Well, I’m a native Californian, so I didn’t have to work especially hard learning it.
AP. Oh, pardon… I thought you were Swedish. How about Swedish then? Was that difficult?
DD. Yeah, Swedish took some work, and although I’m fluent, I guess I’ve never become an especially good speaker of Swedish. This is because Swedes are such excellent speakers of English that it bred laziness in me. But yes, although I’m a native English speaker, I find beauty in the English language. More importantly, I find bizarre idiosyncrasy, and this is what makes English so rich and vibrant, it seems to me.
AP. You coined the term “decentred English”. Tell me about it. And what's the difference with the term “exophonic writer”? DD. Decentered English is a term that describes the condition of English for the majority of English speakers in the world today. Since the combined number of Second- and Foreign-language English speakers now triples that of native English speakers (1.2 billion to 375 million respectively), native speakers are in the distinct minority.
I coined the term as I pondered this, thinking about how the language will, inevitably, be changing in the future and what constitutes “correctness” in the face of the above numbers. But it’s important to remember that I am not a linguist but a poet. So, the term came from a place more poetic than linguistic. Nevertheless, when my colleague Jean Hudson, who is a linguist, heard the term, she thought it aptly described the situation and encouraged me to use it.
Writers who come from the world of decentered English are usually exophonic writers.
AP. Any advice for decentred English writers?
DD. Yes, submit your work to Shipwrights. More seriously though, decentered English writers face the same challenges of craft mastery that native language writers face. But they face additional challenges related to understanding the idiomatic aspects of English, not to mention dialect and other issues. Imagine the challenges of writing accurate and believable dialogue in a foreign language.
I’m continually amazed at some my students’ ability to do this the way they do. Sometimes I’ll read a text and wonder whether the writer is, in fact, even an exophonic writer because of its remarkably high quality. Then I’ll have a Skype meeting with that same student and hear a definite accent in the spoken English. This surprises and fascinates me.
AP. And the story of Shipwrights?
DD. I founded Shipwrights some eight years ago. It began as a forum for the students in the writing courses at Malmö University in Sweden, but I hoped it would grow beyond simply that. And it has. We now get submissions from, and publish, writers from various countries. The Internet is a natural home for decentered English, and Shipwrights is open to any exophonic writer on the planet. (It’s also open to the submissions of native English writers who live in Scandinavia, because I felt it would be odd to forbid native English writers living in Sweden. So, they are the exception.)
Shipwrights, however, is still growing – and I hope to increase its reach in the coming years.
Every second year we award our Conrad-Nabokov Award to the most promising exophonic writer we’ve published in that period. The award is judged by an outside judge. Once it was judged by Janet Burroway, perhaps the world’s best-selling author of creative writing textbooks. She was surprised by the quality of the writing.
AP. How’s the Creative Writing course at Malmö University going? DD. The Creative Writing courses at Malmö University are about ten years old. There are three levels. I’ve been told that the introductory course is one of the most applied-for courses at the university. Last term there were more than 1000 applicants for the course, which accepts about 70. Sweden doesn’t have a tradition of creative writing at universities, so it was not an easy sell initially. Now that its popularity is proven, and it generates money that supports other courses, it’s been accepted. Our program of three levels is the only thing like it in Sweden, I believe.
The courses also serve another interesting function: they allow expatriate Swedes living all over the world to be part of the Creative Writing community we’ve started.
AP. Do you have mainly Swedish students?
DD. Yes, the majority of students are Swedish, but there are many who are not, including perhaps 5-10% native English speakers. That these writers blend in perfectly well with the Swedes is a testament to the English language skills of the Swedes.
In a way it makes perfect sense for Sweden to be a host of the decentered English community, because Swedes are pretty remarkable foreign-language English speakers.
AP. Why do Swedes want to study Creative Writing in English?
DD. Why Swedes (and others) want to write in English is a fascinating topic. Of course, many of my students are there for purely proficiency-related reasons; but the ones who are more serious as writers have interesting reasons indeed for doing it in English. One reason is the same one that inspires Swedish pop artists to record in English: the market is so much bigger. When you come from a language of only 9 million speakers, there is certainly sometimes a temptation to want to reach more people than that. More interestingly, however, I have students every term who claim they feel more comfortable and more inspired writing in English than they do in Swedish. This is really interesting to me. And this population of decentered English writers is not limited to Sweden, although Swedes may be the most proficient. I’m also getting increasing numbers of students each year from places like Russia and Greece who also want to write in English.
AP. Thanks for this, Darius. Can we listen to one of your songs now?
About the interviewer Alexandros Plasatis lives in Leicester and had short stories published in Overheard: Stories to Read Aloud (2012), Unthology 6 (2015), and Crystal Voices: Ten Years of Crystal Clear Creators (2015).
Sizzle your ears within the grooves of Hotwalker and you will be royally rewarded. If you have not come across Tex-Mex troubadour Tom Russell before, this is the place to start. Epitomising the underground vibe, Russell, operates on the fringe, he drops deep grooves, man! Hotwalker is littered with literary-magma, baby. It’s beatnik heaven. Street gems abound. Russell turns us on to influence after influence: Rambling Jack Eliot, Lennie Bruce, Jack Kerouac, etc. A storytelling maestro is Tom Russell who invokes hobo-magic, compadres ̶ tapping into a lost America. His concept mines spoken word from a bygone age. Americanana-schtick is conjured, selected and crafted by Russell for our indulgence. The “twang” is hair raising, evocative and thought provoking. He gives us a veritable musical history lesson inside his bold sound-picture.
The rough-neck raconteur approach he incorporates, works, which is accompanied by country power-chords that mesmerise time after time. This concept sucks you in. His sound is sweetly infectious. Ear-candy – I dare to suggest. Hotwalker acts as Russell’s homage to a disappeared “beatnik” America: “A Ballad for Gone America” may well have been its working title. And what Hotwalker really zings with is loss, creative loss.
Freak performer and poet Little Jack Horton’s reminiscences on Charles Bukowski and himself getting drunk together and stealing a train is one priceless anecdote. An array of whacky intros and gravelly commentary by Russell are delivered from the gut; they are insightful and truly reel the listener in. But his beautiful peon of a ballad about David Van Ronk concerning his influence upon the budding Greenwich Village folk scene in New York is a standout masterpiece. It rips the tears out of you because of its naked vibe. I wonder if this song helped inspire the Cohen brothers film Inside the Mind of Llewyn Davis. Another standout moment on the album is Edward Abbey’s “Benediction,” which captures Abbey’s playful anarchic tones masterfully. Bakersfield and the west coast Oakie sound in the Hoover camps are also explored with honesty and bravado: the other side of the tracks, dude. The American outsider is musically explored with compassion and insight throughout Hotwalker. If there is a flaw within Russell’s superlative concept – it leaves you gasping for more! Long live OUTSIDERS. Twang-on, Tom.
About the reviewer Laurie Cusack is currently writing short stories for a PhD in Creative Writing at DeMontfort University, exploring the Irish Diaspora and issues surrounding it. He has been published online and has had stage plays and radio plays performed.
Well, now I don’t know what to think; over the last seven months since I bought the ticket, I’ve been eagerly anticipating a gig by Peter Hook & The Light, a chance to hear some long-time and very warmly-regarded music given a punchy reworking by a man who, although really genial and engaging, has spent the last eight years moaning ferociously about his erstwhile colleagues.
Music Complete, the new New Order album has come out this week and though I expected little, I took the plunge because I couldn’t bear the idea of there being New Order songs I hadn’t heard. I’ve been here before, of course, dashing out to buy Get Ready when it came out, and I still feel that appraisals of that LP – then and now – are a little too charitable. Maybe the reviewers have heard something I have not, and maybe Hooky was therefore right to cast aspersions on the validity of a New Order in 2015.
What use a new album? What do they mean to anyone? Is it a desperate imbroglio to recoup what was pissed away on the Hacienda and Dry? If so, the people who chopped and murmured their way through Blue Monday during a ToTP performance in 1983 have unquestionably paid their dues, and in a few days’ time I will experience for myself the thunderous renditions which Hooky gives to the old numbers.
And then I stick on the album. Restless is N.O.-by-numbers, albeit replete with arresting swathes signalling Gillian’s return; the icy blast of Singularity comes over all Joy Divisiony at the beginning (specifically, Insight and Shadowplay) but it is with Tutti Frutti and People On The High Line where the jaw really drops and the comparisons drawn are not with New Order’s earlier work, but with Chic, or Earth Wind & Fire. And it doesn’t let up there.
In summary, Music Complete is New Order’s most engaging record in donkeys’ years, and by a country mile; I’ll let you know next week if Hooky mentions it on stage, or if there are any clamours for its songs during the set.
About the reviewer Alex Hales is a 42-year-old Southampton resident of occasionally amicable manner, enervated by the intransigence of dogmatism.
