Former frontbencher cooks up a storm with book on Alice Bacon
Rachel Reeves MP is the 2nd female Member of Parliament for Leeds West and joined-first for Yorkshire. Rachel is a former frontbencher and was Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2013. Following the election of Jeremy Corbyn’s as leader in 2015, she did not return to the Shadow Cabinet after her maternity leave.
Olivia and Hannah meet Dominic Berry (right) Q1) What are you promoting by being here at Ilkley Literature Festival? We’re promoting two very different things. We’re promoting the fact that we think creativity is really helpful for young people, that it can help if you are experiencing difficult emotions it can help you feel self confidence, it can give you a lot of empowerment. It can give you the ability to say what you think in front of other people. I’m promoting the idea that art is not some silly extra curricular subject that isn’t as important as maths or science. I’m promoting the fact that it really is helpful and important. But I’m also promoting the fact that I’m a poet who sells books and because this is my living and Martin’s living were promoting ourselves as artists who believe that live art is better than music, TV, films, concerts because you can engage with us, you can get involved. So we’re promoting ourselves and how good we are at inspiring young people. Q2) What first inspired you to start writing and start performing? Go on Martin, you answer that one I’ve chatted enough already. {Martin} I just needed a creative outlet as I started when I was quite young myself I think I started writing poetry when I was maybe eleven or twelve years old. We started writing poetry around the same time. We didn’t know each other, we lived in different countries actually. I grew up in England, Dom grew up in Wales, but yeah I really needed some way to express myself during what I was going through and I never was good at football but I was always good at rhyming, I was always good at writing, I was always good at telling stories so I kind of ended up going down that route. So I started young and it helped me in a lot of ways actually and then by going out to some poetry events when I started it and I met people like Dominic when I was really young actually, about 14 years old. I was going to events that I was probably a bit too young to go to actually, and I was meeting great people like Dom and loads of other people and they really inspired me to carry on. Q3) When did you start becoming interested in writing? As a child I really enjoyed it when we had books at school, but when the teacher then said: go and write your own stories then that was absolutely brilliant for the same reasons as martin said: having that ability to channel my emotions and my fantastical creativity. Q4) We heard you went on a two month long tour of New Zealand and Australia and we wondered where you went? All over, so it was a two month tour so it wasn’t in one venue or even one city, so, we went to Aukland, Wellington, Christchurch, Little River, Hawks Bay, Napier, Brisbane, Melbourne, Newcastle, Sydney. That was exciting, really, really exciting. And we went to Paramater, that was the final gig and my favourite one. Because it was a really big crowd of people that had been online and they knew my poetry and they were saying, oh, are you going to perform this poem, tonight, and when I was growing up in rural Wales we didn’t have internet, it was just in the big cities, we didn’t have it in the countryside. So the thought of people in a small place knowing my poetry is amazing.
But now the internet is so big. Really lovely, I really loved it. Q5) Why did you receive the awards you received earlier this year? I like the fact that you know that I’ve won things that’s so nice. Because people voted for me, that’s brilliant. {Martin} I’m going to jump in here. I’ll tell you the reason. It’s big headed if Dom says it, but it’s ok if I say it. The reason Dom won that award is because he’s so active on the scene. The way you win these awards is by votes, public votes. There are so many fantastic artists out there, who don’t get out there, they don’t promote what they do and perform live. Dom’s always out performing live at every opportunity, as you mentioned, touring and stuff. The bigger fan base you have and the wider you spread your work, people hear what you do, they like it and they relate to it, then they vote for you, and of course by being good at what you do, too. So I’d say that’s why Dom won. {Dominic} I do put myself forward. Today, Ilkley literature festival have invited me, that’s lovely but in New Zealand, the Aukland gig, the very first one, they invited me but no-one on Australia invited me. Australia is further away from New Zealand than I thought because if you look on a map it’s quite close. But it’s actually quite far away, it’s like saying, oh you’ve got a gig in Ilkley, when’s your gig in Belgium, it’s a similar distance. So I was very active, I did just say, let’s just go and approach these people. Although they then did the research, it was me who approached them; I didn’t sit around going ‘I’m such a great poet, I’ll wait for them to come to me.’ So when it came to voting, people had seen me perform. Like Martin said, you’ve got to be good at what you do as well but you’ve got to go out there and present work that is of a good standard. To get it to a good standard you just practise, practise, practise, every day is a school day, you’ve got to keep on trying to get better. Q6) So do you have any tips you’d give our budding writers? I think that life’s really unfair, life can sometimes be horrible and that those are the times that really test us. And in those times if we choose to give up then we know what will happen, nothing will happen if we choose to give up and then that’s going to be the end of whatever you are pursuing. If you don’t give up and if you keep trying your best when things get really difficult then you don’t know what’s going to happen. Now it was a long time before I started winning competitions. The first competition I ever entered, Martin won! And I could have been a bad loser, couldn’t I? I could have had a bad attitude, that could have been the end of it for me, as that was my first ever competition. I could have said ‘oh who’s this joke, who’s this kid’ but I didn’t, Martin and I became friends and I kept on trying. It was years and years before I won any competitions, and it wasn’t like I was entering the same poems, I was watching the people who were winning, thinking, ‘they’ve won and I haven’t’. I could be bitter and go ‘I’m a genius, what are they thinking?’ Or I could try and learn what it was that they did to win. In my opinion the poetry I’m writing now is better than what I did when I was younger and I think that is because more people want to hear it. So just keep on learning and try your best not to be disheartened when things get difficult because things get difficult for everyone.
When she was at Secondary school, Rachel was inspired to get into politics by the huge cut-backs made by Margaret Thatcher and John Major. This meant that her and her fellow pupils had to share old text books and study in pre-fab huts. She had to make a change. Because of this, Rachel secured a place at Oxford University where she read Politics, Philosophy and Economics and got an MSc in in Economics. She went on to become an Economist before a politician. Her hobbies include swimming, reading and travelling and this meant that she was very passionate about saving the Bramley Swimming Baths as one of her first actions as MP for Leeds West. She also fought for improved bus services in and around the Leeds area which has had a massive impact on the citizens of that area. Alice Bacon, the daughter of a primary school teacher and miner and the woman who inspired Rachel, defied all the odds to win her seat at Leeds West in Clement Attlee’s landslide victory in the 1945 election and all the way to 1970. Rachel was so inspired that she wrote a book about her called ‘Alice in Westminster’ which she is reading at the Ilkley Literature Festival 2017 at the Ilkley Playhouse.
Poet-tree, an interview with Jade Cuttle I met up with Jade Cuttle, Cambridge University student and poet in residence for the Ilkley Literature Festival 2017 to discuss her poetry and songwriting. She began her poetry career in the Foyle Young Poet of the Year competition, introduced to her by her English teacher from high school. She has a YouTube account on which she posts her songs and also covers of songs by other artists. Jade Cuttle tries to merge poetry and song together, and often her acoustic concoctions have no chorus and are basically “song-poems”. When asked what her favourite song is, she talks about her song: “Leaves and Lovers” and how she inspires lots of her work, poetry and songs alike, by trees. She talks about how trees are similar to people and how we should learn more about them.
Joe interviews Jade Cuttle, Ilkley Literature Festival’s Poet in Residence
An interview with artist Mike Smith, by Zahabia
Walking through the manor house door, we were met by a explosion of colours prints and textures. The first artist we met was Mike smith. Welcoming, warm and energetic he was pleased to answer questions about his exhibition. Mike smith creates his art with lino prints; Mike gave us a quick demonstration on how he made his prints. Lino is a material made for floor coverings although it isn’t very popular in houses any more. It is used more, in dance studios and theaters. Carving out the images on the lino, then using lighter colours of oil paint to create prints of wildlife and birds When I asked Mike, how long he had been an artist for he said since the ‘swinging 60’shumpty Dumptys!’ Go along to manor house to see Mikes amazing Lino prints.
Jade tells me about what she enjoys about poetry and songwriting, about the attention to detail of poetry and the freedom and “catchiness” of song. She feels that song is good for people and that it can make them feel relaxed or happy or hyped or anything. She goes to Cambridge University and tells me why she went there over Oxford or anywhere else. She feels that Cambridge has “great support for poets” and that there were “lots of great poets.” She also feels that the professors were passionate about poetry and songwriting and taught her lots.
An interview with Rachel Feldberg, Festival Director
Joe interviews Rachel Feldberg, Ilkley Literature Festival Director Rachel Feldberg, the Director for Ilkley Literature Festival, discusses her favourite parts of directing the festival. She talks about comedic playwright Alan Bennet, who grew up in Leeds, and at 83, is one of the oldest authors at the festival and how she was very excited to meet one of the most famous playwrights in the Western World. She also mentions comedian Sarah Millican and Pointless presenter Richard Osman. Rachel Feldberg says that the main challenges of organizing the festival were deciding which authors and/or artists to admit, a process that she began in January this year, about 6 months before the actual festival. She also talks about actually running and organizing the festival as it goes on, and managing all 238 activities and performances, 7 or 8 which run at the same time as each other. There are only 30 people on her team, and over 200 authors and artists to manage. She talks about how she enjoys meeting all the people; the athors, the artists, the children, the parents, etc. and how she loves to see people having fun in the venues. Rachel also mentions how she loves reading and saw a man sitting outside on a freezing night, reading a novel under the streetlights.
Ian Hamilton Finlay Born on the 28th October 1925 in the Bahamas, although his nationality was Scottish. Ian Hamilton Finlay was known for his contribution to Poetry, concrete poetry, Art, Gardens, sculpture and publishing. He was thirteen, when the outbreak of world war 11 began and he was evacuated to a family in the countryside, at the end of the war he worked as a shepherd, before beginning to write short stories and poems. In 1942 he joined the British Army. I think looking at his work that this is where he has taken his inspiration His most notable works, include the little seamstress with Richard Dermarco He used to work alongside artists , which left him often open to the critics scorn. What is interesting about this artist, are his prints and concrete poetry in that it mainly depicts boats and sundials and pottery, but when he died in March 27th 2006, he was suffering from agoraphobia and couldn’t enjoy his outdoor sculptures You can find his work exhibited in the Ilkley manor house as part of the Ilkley literature festival. By Zahabia Naveed
Visual Poetry with Sandra Flitcroft The poet and artist Sandra Flitcroft is leading a free beautiful and intriguing visual poetry workshop inspired by Ian Hamilton Finlay. Sandra told us that in poetry the image is as important as words. She works as an art teacher and selling her artwork in shows across the nation. When she was young, Sandra did a lot of dancing but never made any artwork until she contracted chronic fatigue syndrome and making art made her feel relaxed and she is able to express herself. She is originally from Lancashire but has lived in Leeds, Yorkshire since 1979 and now Otley. Her favourite style of art of art is painting and crafts and she loves all types of books including biographies of women artists, crime fiction, Sci-Fi and classical. If she had not been an artist she would’ve wanted to be a teacher or still run workshops. Visual poetry is origami poetry, stone gardens and sculptures. The artist that the workshop is inspired by called Ian Hamilton Finlay, sadly passed away in 2006 leaving many appreciated artworks behind.
Poet and artist Sandra Flitcroft
Meet the journalists
Zahabia is 12 years old and loves swimming, climbing and table tennis. She also plays guitar. She came to the Newspaper in a Day Workshop last year and loved it so she decided to return for a second time! She is from Bradford and is in Year 8. Zahabia got into writing last year when she was in Year 7. She joined the Young Writers Group in Bradford. Although she loves writing, her dream job is to be a lifeguard or a climbing instructor.
Joe is 13 and is in Year 9 at Guiseley School, where IT is his favourite subject. Although he doesn’t do a lot of writing, he does coding and has a great mind for maths - he can even solve a 13x13 Rubik’s Cube! He decided to take part in the workshop after a day writing a newspaper at school. He likes reading, especially Fantasy literature, his favourites being Game of Thrones and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy which he has read multiple times! Aside from all that, Joe is also a footballer and plays in goal.
Olivia is 12 and from the most exciting place in the world: Menston! Her hobbies include hockey, football, horse riding but she also loves writing, especially creative writing (she loves making things up!) Her favourite books are Harry Potter but she says her own writing is about the real world!
Hannah is 12 and loves in Ben Rhydding near Ilkley. She loves sport, especially surfing, which she learned to do in Ireland. Hannah started reading when she was 7 and her favourite books are the Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan. She got into writing last year and really enjoys free writing. She would love to go to Australia and surf!
Callum is 14 years old and lives in York. He plays the drums, ukulele and piano and he plays in a cricket league. He is in Year 10 at Millthorpe Secondary School and has just begun his GCSEs. Callum is interested in psychology and fascinated by how the brain works. Callum is also multilingual, speaking German, French and Spanish and if he could travel anywhere in the world, it would be New Zealand or Italy. If he could meet anyone, it would be Benedict Cumberbatch because he is such a talented actor.
Helping out our young journalists this year is Foluke. As a student currently in her second year of a course in Computer Science at Oxford University, Foluke is volunteering to be involved in this course to gain work experience. She was born in Nigeria in 1989 and currently lives in Leeds. She enjoys playing piano and tennis because she can forget her life troubles and concentrate on taking her anger out on the ball. Her favourite genre of books is crime and mystery and she has even met Lee Child the author of the Jack Reacher series.