Ways With Words

The Wonder of the Wondermentalist

The Wondermentalist Cabaret came to Ways With Words at Dartington. Trumpets (to give yourself a fanfare before you enter places); a guitar that played itself, like something from a children's story book; the Dead Poets' Slam; Beryl the Feral read haikus.

Best joke of the evening - "It was possible to get a good educaion at the Rudolph Steiner school. It was extra-curricular, an after-school club."

Matt Harvey ran the show with a rod of iron. It was slick, fast-moving, professional.

The topic for a collaborative poem for the evening was 'Windmills'. Rapid-fire, cut and paste poets collected lines from the audience in the interval, and this was the poem they glued together . . . literally:

Windmills… what are you like?

Do you mind how I wind the windmill will?
Gyratory, vibratory, mistral–seeking blades
Sentinel shifters of airy semaphore
Windmill nimbys, nimwill wind me, spin me
Whisking up clouds for a sunset soufflé
An un-winged plane, going nowhere fast, forever…
Turbine be forever mine
Swish, swoosh, swish, swooshhhhh!!!
Oh how revoltingly Dutch.
Wind mills – (on) tall hills – (are) modern ills – (with) fancy frills
Puffing, blowing, huffing, flowing
Ghostly forms, foolishly arrogant in your ridiculous white attire
Why do your wings wave like a waffle?
A pickled onion spinning with its stick
A Spiro-graph of air-borne flight, fights…
Wind grinding pepper-pot, slow sail stew
Scarecrow comedian making a point
A lighthouse on the land, warning of approaching corn
Making flour by wind power, takes about 59 minutes! Doh!
Big sails waiting for wind kiss, sky caress, open arms
Sail this steeple across swollen sodden swamps
Slender blades generating “power”, strong stems – 3 turning petals
She loves me, she loves me not, “she loves me”
Whooshing, whirling, wheeling
Web, windy, wild, westerly
Focused on flour or flux
Though the mills of god grind slowly, they grind exceedingly small
Revolving doors
A Mandela milling the wind 
Ranks of slim white sentinels saving our skins
No ill winds please, keep it sweet
The sails on the mill go round and round…
Who can mill the wind?
And, once ground, what kind of cake would it bake?
Something light and airy? Self-raising? Or f-air-y?
Windmills – do they always wind with time?
Do wind farms really make all the wind?
There once was a windmill in old Amsterdam
Where mice loved to dine on bran flakes and spam
The slow wave of the giant’s arms
Not waving, but drowning.

A wonderful Wondermentalist evening. One of Matt's poems ends with his father asking, "When are you going to get a job?" Let's hope he doesn't.

'And now it's your turn' - The questions audiences ask writers at Ways With Words

There's a myth often perpetuated by writers that the questions asked most frequently at literature festivals are, 'Do you write with a pen or a computer?' and 'Where do your ideas come from?' Oddly I have never heard either question asked of writers and in the seventeen years I have been running Ways With Words I have sat through thousands of talks. Maybe before my time as a festival director the idea of writing novels on a computer may have seemed like a cheat: all that cutting and pasting, it wasn't proper writing. Word processing a book after it was written was fine but surely you couldn't be creative on a computer? Now if a writer mentions on stage that they don't use a computer there's a gasp of disbelief. The writer is considered quaint, eccentric.

'Where do your ideas come from?' seems an interesting and quite profound question. I don't know why writers are scornful of it. To start with it suggests that the writer's work is idea based. No bad thing surely, though it's not a question to ask a biographer. If asked of Valerie Grove it would suggest that her biography of John Mortimer was based on speculation rather than fact. Not one for a memoirist either. On Thursday Julia Blackburn will talk of her complex Bohemian parents and the alcohol, drugs, sex, betrayal and suicide that was part of her childhood. 'Where do your ideas come from Julia?' would be an insult.

On the other hand it's a very good question for Lloyd Jones who wrote the Booker short-listed novel, 'Mister Pip'. What made him decide to write about a young girl on a tropical island and Dickens' 'Great Expectations'?

This summer's Ways With Words at Dartington has only been running three days but already many fascinating questions have come from the audience to their sitting targets. (Martin Bell, Jonathan Dimbleby, Jon Snow, Gervase Phinn, Oona King, Penelope Lively - and many more have been in the firing line so far.)

A few that bounced from reader to writer are:

To Penelope Lively -

"How does it feel when someone asks a question about a novel that reveals something you hadn't thought about?"

"Do you procrastinate or rush to get to your desk?"

To Christina Lamb and Martin Bell -

"What would you do about Zimbabwe if you were PM of England?"

"Do you have to be fit to be a foreign correspondent?"

To Oona King -

"Where did New Labour go wrong?"

"Quick psychological overview of George Galloway?"

Witty, clever and thoughtful answers bounced back.

Jon Snow even gave a considered response to illuminate the psychology of his sock choice. The woman in the audience only asked where he bought them.

Ways With Words festival of words and ideas continues at Dartington Hall, Devon until 20th July.
Still to come to talk and answer questions besides Valerie Grove, Julia Blackburn, Lloyd Jones -  A.C. Grayling, Claire Tomalin, Tony Benn, Michael Frayn, Jonathon Porritt, Roy Hattersley - and many more. 

You Are What You Wear – Or Are You?

“Is there a dress code for Ways With Words?” I am often asked both by people who come to work for us and those who are attending the festival.

“Yes there is”, I reply firmly. “It’s a festival so you must dress festively.”

This often sends people into a tizz. It worries them more than if I said they had to wear a smart suit but there is a sub-text here. “Dress festively”, is a short hand for saying, “I want you and everyone who comes to Ways With Words to enjoy themselves. Life at a festival is special; it’s not a run-of-the-mill, ordinary time. It’s like a party, only better. Putting on festive clothes creates a party mood. Your clothes say, ‘this is a different sort of day’.”

But telling people to dress festively is also saying that Ways With Words enjoys diversity. Everyone’s interpretation of festive dress will be different. (Comme la Soupe, as I wrote last time.) No uniform here, though I have seen rather a lot of linen suits on men at the festival. I generally hate uniforms, for many reasons, but one is that they deny people the chance to be creative in daily life. Getting dressed each day is like doing a picture or a sculpture. Some days not many people will be attending the gallery of your life so the art of your clothes may not be appreciated. But a festival is different. It’s like being in Tate Modern, so any clothes-creativity will be appreciated by huge crowds. No wonder people look worried when I tell them to dress festively. Really I am saying, “Create a work of art; lots of people will come to see it.”

I love putting on the morning work of art but I have never deconstructed the philosophical, psychological and social aspect of our clothes too closely . But John Harvey has in his book, called simply CLOTHES. He says of party clothes (those I call festive clothes):

“Our worries are pushed off with our workaday clothes …… Clothes ..intensify the mood of the moment…. party clothes can be freedom, expectation in the in the shape of loose unbuttoned sleeves, exhilaration in the lift of chiffon panels....”

So get out your chiffon. Unbutton your sleeves, your mind, yourselves: Ways With Words is starting this Friday and, odd as it may sound with a festival to run, I have spent the weekend ironing.

Come in your finery to hear John Harvey speak on Clothes at Ways With Words festival of words and ideas at Dartington Hall, Devon on Tuesday 15 July at 3.30pm, chaired by Kay Dunbar - of course.

This event is part of a day called THE ART OF LIVING and has talks on Deception, Wellbeing, Illness and Hunger as well.  All fascinating topics and worthy of a Blog.