Commonword Blogs

Big apologies to all commenters of 2012. In order to fend off a hacker, we had to remove the comments of that year. Rest assured those who read them apreciated them. The system is back up and running now so comment away again! - pete

Writers in the North West of England were invited to send us food poems for our forthcoming food anthology. Closing date: has now passed.

http://www.cultureword.org.uk/wanted-poems-about-food

-pete

Overheard at a (University!) bar. What’s the reply to this?:
Spoken word artists are very good actors. They inject lots of their personality into their performances, and now video, soundtracks, and props...so much that the poems themselves are trivial compared with their repartee, banter and other clutter!

Caller: How’s it going with A, B and C?

Me: It’s good. More A, B and D now. How about you and delivery of X,Y and Z?

Caller: I want to talk about something beyond the alphabet here. The 27th letter if you like – let’s call it Omega. I think it would be a brilliant idea for us to deliver Omega.

Me: Sounds fantastic. And does Omega come attached with any finance to make it happen?

Caller: The finance is aspirational at this point.

Me: I see. Well how about the budget for the X, Y and Z, how’s that cooking?

‘George Clooney Is Lonely, Can’t Sleep’
So said a newspaper headline today, being read by the man in front of me on the bus. My immediate thought was, ‘hey, me too, half the world’s lonely and can’t sleep, why is this news?’

Caller: A conference only for black writers? That’s racist to white people!

Me: Under the Equality Act 2010 and its provision for Positive Action, the conference is justified because we as an organisation reasonably think that Black writers suffer a disadvantage linked to their race and have a disproportionately low level of participation in the UK writing industry and bestseller lists and the Conference encourages this group to overcome this disadvantage and encourages participation. The event is moreover a proportionate response to the issue... Does that fly for you?

Day In The Life 1

Caller: So this conference, what are the chances of me finding a decent partner there?

Me: One of the established outcomes of the Conference is an increase in professional partnerships among delegates.

Caller: I’m talking about meeting someone fit – that kind of partner, my brother.

Me: Um, life changing encounters can occur at conferences which fall into the realm of the personal.

Caller: So I’m going to meet someone fit if I sign up for this Conference?

Aged 24, I was in Paris for a job interview. I got there from Manchester clinging to my brother on the back of his BMW Tourer motorbike. We stopped in Paris’s Arab Quarter. I found a great bunch of people, great community there. Then on through the banking quarter. I was struck by how in the central Paris banking zone there was not one black face around. And in Paris Central back then, the only black faces I saw were serving in take aways or manning the crepes stalls. Switch to the UK and the near present. In UK football, for a long time all the management was white.

James Brown came onto a stage with that twitching, stiff-legged, electric-kinetic , roaring presence. His songs, including the anthemic ‘Say It Loud’ struck a chord like no-one else’s did. I watched him on stage dancing with Sammy Davies Jr (via youtbe – I aint that old!) and the difference in dancing styles, expressing a difference of attitude to life, was immediately apparent. Nobody did that James Brown stuff like James Brown.

Black Writers Conference? Why not ‘Black & Asian’ Conference? How about ‘Urban’ Writers Conference?