Jackie Kay at the Guild Hall

“There’s this poet reading at the Guildhall, Friday night...” So you know what that will be like. Lots of obscure references and foreign words, some introvert mumbling into the night because they’ve got no home to go to.
Wrong. Jackie Kay is not like that. She’s lively, outgoing, endlessly enthusiastic about writing, reading and meeting people. I first encountered her ten years ago, and everyone I know who’s met her since, on courses, at workshops, at readings, has responded in the same way to her energy and warmth.
She writes rhyming poems for kids, and there’s a comic epic about Ma Broon and colonic irrigation, which she read in a rich Glasgow accent. She paused in the middle of reading one story, at the line “I’m not interested in spreading a banana on another man’s toast” to say – “Oops, that come out sounding worse than I intended.” And from a writing point of view, she’s been lucky with her background – born black, of African parents, adopted by white Scottish communists, with a father passionate about Bessie Smith. It’s material to die for.
But she makes the most of it. The poem that made her famous was The Adoption Papers, a wise, witty exploration through three voices of what adoption means to three of the people involved. One of the highlights of Friday’s reading for me was Pride, a long poem in which she’s on a train, and a fellow passenger stares at her, sure that she’s of Ibo descent. She is, and went to Nigeria to trace her birth father, to whom she was a guilty embarrassment. He wanted nothing to do with her.
So it’s not all laughs. There are searing love poems, like Spare Room, where a lover senses the increasing distance between her and her partner. There were audible gasps in the audience, as the full brutality of intimate betrayal sank in. And then there’s The Lamplighter, a full length radio play for four voices about the slave trade. This is her most recent publication – as she signed my copy she made me kiss the book, because this was absolutely the first one to be sold.
If you heard it on Radio 3 you’ll know what I’m talking about. The plan was for Jackie Kay to read from it at this reading, but that would have made a less varied and entertaining evening, and the one extract she did perform clearly cost her a lot. But you haven’t missed out; for less than ten pounds you get a copy of the script, and a CD of the broadcast, so my detached, impersonal recommendation is to grab it while stocks last.
All through the evening Jackie Kay would throw out odd jokes, reminiscences, friendly comments about audience reaction. At one point she paused reflectively, musing “Who knows, we can ponder these things…” But the aside that seemed to linger was her enthusiasm about the Guildhall, and the audience. Looking around she said “Hey, we could have a poetry lock-in.” It was a great joke, but after she’d stopped laughing Anna seemed to be thinking, plotting maybe. Watch this space…

Paul Francis 21.9.08

Rose Tremain Orange Prize Dinner

Winning this year’s Orange Prize for her novel ‘The Road Home’ has brought Rose Tremain a level of critical acclaim and public attention that many of her loyal readers consider long over due. On Friday 29 August a mixed bag of Tremain aficionados and new readers met at the home of Marilyn and Patrick Pietroni to discuss the merits and the appeal of her account of the immigrant experience in Britain. The discussion, like the excellent supper provided by our hosts, was full flavoured, nourishing fare that worked as well to pique the appetite as to satisfy it.

Few punches were pulled as people spoke with frankness and in equal measure about both the novel’s universal appeal and the magnitude of its failings. The former, I believe it’s true to say, focused chiefly upon the subject matter, the latter the writerly success with which Tremain explored it.

Tremain has chosen a subject which can hardly fail to compel – the experience of the outsider in search of a new future. Her hero Lev, of undetermined Eastern European origin, is presented as a kind of universal every man, whose odyssey reveals the weaknesses and hypocrisies of a society where the fear of difference frequently reveals itself as active hostility or – worse still, perhaps – passive neglect.

But there were concerns among the group as to how honest an account of migrant life Tremain actually offers. While many of the stock images of the migrant experience are there – accidental arrests, misunderstandings of language and intent, impoverished working environments, exploitation and patronisation – many felt that the tale lacked the gritty realism needed to make it credible. After all, though Lev endures his share of hardships, he triumphs in the end. And he is aided along the way by a series of beneficent supporters who’s tendency to pop up exactly when they’re most needed stretched the credulity of at least this cynical reader. All in all, one can’t help but be left with the feeling that the migrant experience isn’t all that bad, actually, as Lev makes the transformation from displaced worker to capitalist entrepreneur with surprising ease. His experience is, in the long run, a tacit reinforcement of ‘on yer bike’ cultural values that Normal Tebbitt (remember him?) would have recognised and applauded.

Fortunately, the journey from Baryn to London and back again isn’t the only one that Lev makes and, to the minds of many in the group, it is the second journey which Tremain describes with more profound insight and genuine empathy. Lev’s real journey home is the journey back from loss to belonging. As the novel opens Lev has lost his love, his livelihood and his home. With them, has gone his sense of worth. As the bus carries him relentlessly across Europe he is leaving behind all that has anchored him to the past and motivated his expectations for the future. His greatest ambition now is only to survive and to endure.

That he finally discovers within himself the ability to begin again, to turn a barren (Baryn) existence into one that promises new life, not just for him, but for his small community of family and friends, is Lev’s real triumph. And it is the account of this second journey which is Tremain’s real achievement.

So, all in all, we agreed to acknowledge but set aside concerns about the believability of some of the books minor characters, the stereotypical depiction of the London arts scene and the novel’s sometimes creaky narrative infrastructure to conclude that Tremain has written a good book, though not a great one.

On whether it was a worthy winner of the Orange we were divided. There was a general feeling amongst those who had read Tremain extensively that she has produced other novels with greater merit. Having not read them, I cannot say. Yet, I have a sneaking suspicion that it was Tremain’s subject matter, rather than the quality of her writing, that captured the judges’ attention in this case. Perhaps they, like so many of us, want to believe we’re not such a bad lot after all, that we understand the plight of the outsider and behave differently – and better – than our fellows. In doing so, however, do they run the risk of turning Tremain’s book into a politically correct fashion accessory, rather as Sophie made of Lev when she paraded him, uncomfortable in his too-expensive suede jacket, to boost her own kudos among her literary friends.

Annie Garthwaite.