Lorraine, Kerry and Noel - Hail to the Trinity of Cuban Dance Teachers!!!

Another great night last night at Les and Lorraine’s SALSA REPUBLIC in Chorlton, Manchester. Particular highlight this time was a workshop by Kerry Ribchester. Kerry is Director of Key2Cuba, an award-winning producer and director of Cuban music videos, and one of the country’s leading dance teachers and choreographers.

She’s an old friend of many of us in Manchester, and it was really exciting to have her here in her home city, giving us an intensive workshop in Rumba, Son and Salsa – and how to blend the three together. And she was joined, unscheduled, by Noel Hernandez, another leading teacher who just happened to be there and, as an old friend of Kerry, joined in. It was challenging but great fun and an excellent, confidence-building workout.

Amanda and I went to Cuba with Key2Cuba in 2008, shortly after I published Travels on the Dance Floor, and it’s certainly the most authentic and intimately Cuban holiday it’s possible to have with any tour provider. Most of my own travel has been solo and independent, but if you prefer to go with a group, and to have intensive salsa and Cuban dance classes laid on, plus transport to the best clubs and many other good things, key2Cuba is the way to go. It leaves other operators way behind.

Salsa Republic (run by Les Murray and Lorraine H. Mason) are this year offering not only their excellent monthly salsa party but are inviting a leading dance teacher each time, so you get the workshop as well as the party. The value is astonishing – last night we paid £10 for the whole evening. That basically means a Kerry Ribchester workshop for £3 (as usual, the party alone was £7). So look out for the next Salsa Republic – don’t know yet who the teacher will be but it will be good.

Meanwhile – don’t forget LOS VAN VAN, Leeds, 2 March! See you there!

I’m just back from a visit to Ennerdale – one of the most beautiful and least changed valleys in Lakeland. BBC TV’s Countryfile had called to ask if I’d be filmed talking about Tom Rawling, the wonderful Ennerdale poet, beside How Hall,the farmhouse where he spent so much of his childhood. (The programme goes out on 19 Feb. 2012).

How Hall, the Ennerdale farm where Rawling spent much of his childhood

Rawling (1916-96) was a magnificent poet – perhaps Cumbria’s best 20th century poet in my view – and, though largely forgotten at the end of his life, he’s been undergoing a renaissance of appreciation since his poems were reissued by the Lamplugh and District Heritage Society in 2009. The name may sound parochial, but believe me Rawling is a fine and perhaps major poet, bringing to life in vividly textured words the farming life of an earlier generation, the landscape and the fishing. All of it, as you read, is gritty and real enough to get your hands on, and profoundly beautiful at the same time.

(Do email stanandmarina@aol.com and get hold of a copy of his poems – it’s only £7.50 and I’m sure will become a collector’s item in the future.)

 I enjoyed meeting a very friendly BBC team, including producer Dean Jones and presenter Ellie Harrison, and despite the cameras, radio mics and freezing temperature we talked pretty spontaneously in the sunshine and open air, with a rich authentic odour of cow muck in the background (the farmer was manuring his fields at the time).

After filming I had a wonderful walk in the freezing air and bright sunshine around Ennerdale Water.

And the previous day, I’d taken time out to walk up in the snow to Bowscale Tarn, that amazingly dark, melancholy and beautiful place. I’ll put some pictures in here.

Snow on Haycock across Ennerdale Water; Angler's Crag in middle distance

Bowscale Tarn: a study in subtle blacks and whites just before sunset

Delighted, today, to receive in the post my copy of 99 Words – the anthology Liz Gray has compiled by asking ninety-nine people ‘If you had breath for only 99 words, what would they be?

Liz was left, after an accident, unable to speak or write for more than a few minutes at a time. She started to realise how precious words are, and how we waste them. Eventually she had the idea of asking people what they would say if they had just under a hundred words left.

The result is a delightful little book full of wisdom, delight in the world, philosophy and playfulness. Contributors range from public figures like Desmond Tutu and Tony Benn to writers like Ursula LeGuin, Russell Hoban, Maggie Gee and Ben Okri (not that any of these are ‘like’ one another – but that’s part of the book’s charm). There are peace activists and Buddhist meditation teachers, musicians, actors, a ‘welfare funerals officer’, whatever that is, an astrologer, a fairground historian, a calligrapher and so on and on. Not on and on forever, though: only 99 of them! (Or actually 101 because a couple turned up unexpectedly that were too good to omit.)

And among them all is me, for some reason I don’t quite understand. I got this email out of the blue about a year ago, putting the basic premise to me and asking me to contribute. I agreed – it seemed interesting – and then forgot all about it. Then, as happens, came another email, telling me the deadline was nearly here. Help! I felt I would like to contribute a poem – that’s what I hope I do best – about something important. I looked through my unpublished recent-ish work, looking for short poems. Aha! There was a poem written – with tears in my eyes, I admit – when my daughter was pregnant.

Someone had just told me that at that number of days, the baby would be the size of an apple-pip, and the poem had just poured out. I put the poem, minus title, onto a page and clicked the ‘word count’ button, without much hope. Unbelievable: it was exactly 99 words! And it was about the most important subject I could have chosen: love, new birth, someone who will go on in the world (hopefully) long after I’m gone.

Amazingly, Ursula LeGuin says she had the same experience: she checked a poem she wanted to use, and lo and behold, it was 99 words long! Amazed by the coincidence, she says ‘I feel like an Augur or something.’ There must be a touch of magic about the whole business. Anyway, 99p from each copy sold goes to the charity PeaceDirect, to support local peacemakers in war zones. So click that button, or go to that bookshop, and buy, buy, buy!

Merry Christmas! and a Happy New Year to you.

Carcanet’s New Poetries series is rightly respected as a showcase of exciting talents of varying kinds. The latest volume was launched yesterday and I want to call attention to a fine new poet whose work has excited me a lot.

I’ve been reading Helen Tookey’s work with growing admiration. Her quiet, precise poems have a genuine eeriness – a spooky quality that I’ve met with nowhere else in recent poetry. I think it comes from the fact that she has interests in both archaeology and psychology, but knows intuitively that they aren’t separate – that when we dig up the past it’s our own roots we are looking at; and when we explore the dark corners of our personal psyche, we’re also daring to open up the hidden aspects of our culture and society.

 ‘At Burscough,Lancashire’ is a case in point.  Here it is (with permission):

At Burscough, Lancashire

 Lancashire’s Martin Mere was the largest lake in England when it was first drained, to reclaim the land for farming, in 1697.

 Out on the ghost lake, what’s lost

is everywhere: murmuring in names

on the map, tasted in salt winds

that scour the topsoil, westerlies

that wrenched out oaks and pines, buried now

in choked black ranks, heads towards the east.

Cloudshadows ripple the grasses as the seines

rippled over the mere by night, fishervoices calling

across dark water. Underfoot, the flatlands’

black coffers lie rich with the drowned.

The poem is about a lake that’s no longer there. Helen Tookey uses its absence to evoke the landscape (a strange, nondescript no-man’s-land) in vivid, sensuous detail but also with semantic depth, so that the placenames on the map recalling the lost mere merge into the sound of the wind, and the trees which still turn up now as fossilised bog oak and the like become disturbingly evocative of mass human graves. Ruminating on the loss of the mere, she writes, by implication, an elegy for the communities that lived and worked there and have now, like the lake, gone with hardly a trace. She also hints at the other cultural obliterations which have stained past centuries. The ‘choked black ranks’ recall ethnic cleansing, forced migration, mass starvation. And the simple fact that, over the centuries, many people, fishers and other, must have drowned in the lake and been forgotten. Even money is there, faintly, with the substitution of ‘coffers’ for the expected ‘coffins’.

 But it’s all held together by a consciousness which sees in a context of myth. The ‘fisher voices calling/across dark water’ are voices from the other side of the river – Styx or Lethe – that separates the dead from the living. These are the souls of the dead that might call to us in sleep. Could it even be that they are fishing for us? The choice choice of ‘flatlands’ is deft also – and again a neat substitution, because we would expect ‘wetlands’ (indeed, the remnants of Martin Mere are now a bird sanctuary run by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust). Not just a neat label for the nondescript alluvial west-Lancashire landscape, it suggests a flat earth that might tilt up one day and show worrying things underneath. For the mathematically aware it also recalls Edwin Abbott’s 1884 Flatland, a brilliant Lewis-Carroll style fantasy which enables even the simplest person to understand the amazing nature of spatial dimensions.

 Helen’s poem shows us just how many dimensions an absent lake and a depopulated landscape can have. And she tells us about it in such deceptively gentle and musical tones, hovering on the edge of blank verse, but always staying flexible, floating  between four stresses and five – ‘rippling’ and ‘murmuring’ as the poem says. It’s like listening to a lullaby that soothes and seduces with its beauty; but just might give you nightmares.

I’m looking forward to this evening as I’m introducing Victor Rodriguez Nuñez, a Cuban poet whom I met at the Stanza Festival last year in St Andrews, to give a reading at Manchester’s Instituto Cervantes.

Victor Rodriguez Nuñez

Victor teaches at Kenyon College, Ohio in the USA but insists he is not a political exile from Cuba, just a wandering intellectual to whom geographical boundaries don’t mean a great deal.
To my amazement, he and his co-translator Katherine Hedeen have done me the compliment of translating a group of my own poems into Spanish, something I never expected and which came as a complete surprise. It will be great to see him again after so long, and the reading should be memorable.

Had a great night out on Saturday – good old rock and roll with one of Britain’s legendary guitarists. 

We went to see Wilko Johnson at the Manchester Academy. Wilko has a unique guitar style that blends what used to be called  ’lead’ and ‘rhythm’ – basically, he plays both at once in a percussive, economical way that owes something to Chuck Berry (and before her to Sister Rosetta Tharpe – see my post on her from way back) but is really all his own.

Wilko’s name may not mean much to you if you’re under 40 but he is still remembered as the star attraction of a sensational rhythm and blues band called Dr Feelgood back in the 1970s – just before the punk era dawned. Wilko was famous for the way he would go whizzing around the stage while he played – he never seemed to keep still and he would slide and tear around as if he was on skates, with a weird hypnotic glare on his face.

More recently the band - and Wilko above all – have been the subject of a fascinating film by Julien Temple called Oil City Confidential about the band, its history and the highly individual Wilko, who is a natural star – quoting Shakespeare and Milton fluently (he read English at Newcastle under my old friend Robert Woof, later curator of Dove Cottage – another crazy genius), demonstrating his highly personal guitar technique, and climbing onto the roof of his house in Canvey Island, Essex, where he has a high-grade astronomical telescope. In fact, he’s such an expert that there’s a Facebook group campaigning for him to take over on The Sky at Night when Patrick Moore finally has to retire!

Amanda and I had a quick chat with Wilko in the dressing room and he told us that he’s now got a solar telescope, which has darkened lenses so you can look directly at the sun, so he’s able to watch the solar flares erupting.

But mainly we listened to Wilko and his band performing a classic set of blues numbers and Dr Feelgood songs.  Exciting, energising and great fun.  And if you want to meet one of British rock’s great characters, or learn about a key episode in British popular culture, or just see a fine documentary film which I guarantee you’ll enjoy, do get hold of Oil City Confidential .

Rose Castle: A Gem of the Northern Lakes

Rose Castle is a gem of northern Cumbria – a beautiful house centring on a pele tower built in the 1340s and once the palace of the Bishops of Carlisle.  It belongs to the Church. But there is now a threat that within about one week it will be sold to the highest bidder with no arrangements for public access and little protection for its future. Yet there is a plan to take care of its financial liabilities and allow public access to this beautiful and tranquil place.

Please read the information below and sign the petition at www.friendsofrosecastle.org  NOW before it is too late.

I first discovered Rose Castle when I was researching my Literary Guide to the Lake District: Coleridge and the Wordsworths went there on their way to Scotland in 1803 and Coleridge wrote in his notebook:

“We are delighted with Rose Castle, the thickset green Fence to the garden, the two walls, the lower making a terrace / the House, the Orchard crowding round it – The Chestnuts – the masses of Ivy over the gateway, from one great root. This stands on the other side of the wall to my left as I face the gateway – Go in, the ivy over the Coach-House, belonging to the same mass – the horns of the dark old mulberry Tree among it – the Swallows & their Shadows on the Castle-House walls – the green shaven Bank, like the roof of a House between the main Building & the Castle, properly so called / the great Nets on this castle, to cover the fruit Trees – all, all perfect – Cottage Comfort & ancestral Dignity!”  – Coleridge, Notebooks, 1427.

Here is what my friend Philippa Harrison has written about the house and its peril:

LAST CHANCE TO SAVE ROSE CASTLE FOR THE NATION?
Only one building represents the unique history of the establishment of a Border between Scotland and the North West of England, Rose Castle, created for the Bishopric of Carlisle to administer the “lands which were Scottish”, before Cumbria finally became English a hundred years later than the rest of the country. Also the preeminent English castle in the medieval Scottish wars and reiver skirmishes in the North West, Rose is the only remaining monument to our turbulent border history there. Its retention, with public accessabilty and as an educational resource, is vital for the maintenance of any sort of national historical perspective.

Although today Rose, its land and gardens, have a wonderful, indeed exceptional, sense of serenity and calm, it mirrors the development of national and dynastic struggle, architectural taste and the role of the Church in England since the Norman Conquest. Now the castle mainly reflects the Gothic Revival style, its chapel well recognised as an outstanding example. But there remain the pele towers and the crenellations of the fourteenth century when Rose was burnt three times within twenty-five years only to rise again each time, phoenix-like, to become a symbol of triumph over adversity. Later besieged, taken and burnt in the Civil War, Rose was rebuilt by the Cumbrian people yet again while secular castles were abandoned and left wasted.

In this sense Rose belongs to its people, a people easily ignored by the distant centres of governance. Since Rose was decommissioned as the Bishop’s see-house , it has been made clear to the Church Commissioners that there is a local plan for removing all financial liabilities for the castle from them if they so wish, a plan which will preserve the spiritual, historic and educational value of Rose for future generations. To achieve it, everyone needs to work together. However within ten days the Church Commissioners appear to be intending to recommend that Rose goes under the hammer with no stipulations about public accessibility, educational use, use of the chapel or the great public rooms.

This situation is of paramount importance for the North of England, a travesty of natural justice and a betrayal of eight centuries of care from the bishops of Carlisle and the Cumbrian people.

Only public protest about disposal without any guarantee of the preservation of a unique resource for the public good has any chance of affecting the outcome. A petition at friendsorrosecastle.org has been hastily set up. Every press comment about the importance of Rose for the national heritage will count.

The Bishop of Carlisle has written that he very much hopes “ that a really worthwhile use for Rose can be found”. Amen.

Looking around for something to read recently, I spotted Alan Hankinson’s biography of Geoffrey Winthrop Young. It had been on my shelf for years and I didn’t even recall clearly who Young was. What the heck, I thought, I’ll give it a try.

It turned out to be totally gripping. Young had been a pioneer of mountaineering and a brilliant climbing writer, a heroic ambulance driver in World War I (where he lost a leg) and after the war pioneered mountaineering with an artificial leg. He had many German friends, and worked secretly with Germans opposed to Hitler to try and bring about the dictator’s downfall. His exploits were incredible, literally, and Hankinson’s book brought the whole thing to life, telling the story with such verve that I couldn’t stop reading.

But also the book reminded me of Alan. I first met him when I gave a talk on Thomas De Quincey in Cockermouth in 1981. Alan was a deep-voiced, jovial, lionlike chap with a mane of white hair: hugely well-read, deeply friendly, vastly intelligent and entirely likeable.

After that I bumped into him quite often around Cumbria (he lived in Skiddaw Street, Keswick); we talked about this project and that, and I was delighted when he won prizes for his wonderful book Coleridge Walks the Fells, in which he retraced the course of Coleridge’s great 1802 walk around the Western Lakes, comparing how places are now to how they were then. The book is a classic.

When I came to write my own Literary Guide to the Lake District he took a great interest – and showed it with practical help. One day I phoned him and asked if he remembered whether a particular plaque was still at the top of Grisedale Hause – because last time I was up there, I’d forgotten to check, and I needed to know for the book. There was something similar that I’d neglected at the summit of Great Gable too. The upshot was that Alan said ‘Don’t worry, I’ll go up and take a look, and let you know.’

When my book came out I was able to thank ‘Alan Hankinson, who with memorable generosity volunteered to climb both Grisedale Hause and Great Gable to find things I had forgotten to look for.’

Alan was himself of course a fine climber and The First Tigers, his history of the beginnings of british rock-climbing, is another classic and fascinating even if you’ve never set foot on a mountain. In fact, it’s hard not to keep throwing in the word ‘classic’ when writing about Alkan: he wrote so well, telling so many stories that needed to be told, and produced the perfect book on each one.

He was loyal too. Towards the end of his life he turned up more than once at poetry readings I gave at Dove Cottage and elsewhere, although he clearly wasn’t well and admitted that he was finding it difficult to write. And yet really I must have been someone he knew only peripherally, an occasional contact. But the thing about Alan was that when you met him his warmth and interest made you feel that you and he had always known each other.

Alan died, sadly, in 2007 and I didn’t hear about it until some time afterwards. Only when I read the obituaries and found out abaout his amazing career in TV, film, radio and journalism, and his war service with the Gurkhas, did I realise how many other aspects he had besides those I’d seen.

Earlier this year I was asked to run a course on English Literature for trainee Blue Badge Guides. It turned out that my predecessor in the job had been Alan. I felt proud, as well as a bit intimidated, to find I was stepping into his shoes. It certainly gave me something to live up to, though I didn’t do the job with a pint always at my elbow, as I’m told Alan used to!

Sadly his books (apart from two US publications on American Civil War battles – yes, he was an expert on that as well!) seem to be out of print. A bit of a scandal really when you know how good they are. Alan deserves to be better known. Some enterprising publisher should at least put out digital reprints of The First Tigers, Coleridge Walks the Fells, and his biography of Young. Meanwhile, I never go to Keswick without thinking of him and missing that deep-voiced laugh, and that encyclopedic knowledge of literature and the Lake District. Here’s to you, Alan, and thanks for telling so many great stories.

Ruben Blades

To book tickets, go to:http://www.o2shepherdsbushempire.co.uk/event/27695/ruben-blades-tickets

I’ll add a clip below of his classic song ‘Plastico’.

The Manor and one corner of the gardens

One of the things I love most is the connection between places and writing, so it was a treat yesterday to visit The Manor at Hemingford Grey, near Huntingdon, which is the setting for Lucy M. Boston’s Green Knowe series of children’s books.

The weather was awful - it rained and rained – and it was a 162-mile drive each way, but it was worth it. The occasion was a family party held at occasional, irregular intervals every few years: my grandfather was the brother of Lucy Boston’s mother (to put it another way, my mother’s Aunt Polly was Lucy Boston’s mother), which I think makes us second cousins, though I’m not sure. So there we were with a crowd of other relatives, close and distant, to explore the house, and talk, and just be in a magical place.

The Knight's Room: built about 1130 and alive with atmosphere (picture from the Green Knowe website)

Tolly's Bedroom, complete with rocking horse (picture from the Green Knowe website)

The rain stopped long enough for us to explore the beautiful gardens with their old scented roses, mock-orange and wonderful topiary, and to wander by the river that flows past with its swans floating calmly on the green current.

St Christopher - the statue is at the side of the house

The rooms are just as depicted in the books, with the toys, the rocking horse, the witch-ball, the quilts and a galaxy of drawings and paintings and other art works, including the beautiful original illustrations and cover-paintings for the books, which were done by the late Peter Boston, son of Lucy Boston and husband of Diana Boston who lives there now.

The house and gardens are open to the public quite often: for details and other information about the house, the books and their story, you can go to www.greenknowe.co.uk