Watching a Radio Show – Birmingham Literature Festival & BBC Radio 4

BLF Radio 4 Roger McGough, Jo Bell, Ian Duhig and Rachel New

Photos were taken on my mobile to capture atmosphere and although they are not the sharpest focus they are still covered by copyright.

After the launch (Thursday 3rd October) my next booked event was on Sunday 6th for the Radio 4 recording of Poetry Please (a show that has been running for 30 years) presented by Roger McGough.

I was very excited! I had hoped to post about this sooner (offline issues) as the live recording was broadcast last Sunday (a week later) on the 13th October. With the wonders of the internet you may still be able to access it and give it a listen.

It was a great experience, just being part of a live audience. But the afternoon held far more treasures than just that.

Roger McGough, who I have met before, walked past me whilst I was queuing to get in for a start! He was the host of the show and they had a team of actors reading many of the chosen poems. They also had Jo Bell (Canal Laurete and featured poet on my National Poetry Day post on this blog) Lifted and the first poem she performed was ‘Lifted’ it was great to hear it live. And I discovered the joys and influences of Ian Duhig’s poetry.

After the first recording I got brave and spoke to Roger and took a few photos of him. Bless him for his time and acceptance of flashing smart phones.

One of the great things was although the majority of the audience were Radio 4 listeners, there were plenty of young people too. I heard a couple of ladies refer to us as Roger’s groupies, I have to correct, we were not. He is such a kind poet, willing to pose for photos and chat to us.

I then got braver and went to speak to Jo Bell. I forget how friendly poet’s are and still expect a bit of a brush off from them…. Fortunately so far everyone has been lovely and genuinely seemed interested in conversing. I hadn’t realised that Jo Bell was the director of National Poetry Day until we started talking. The Director of the Poetry Society was also there and she mentioned the familiarity of awritersfountain blog as she was keeping track of National Poetry Day posts and had seen that I posted Lifted – Jo’s poem on NPD. It is a great honour that someone in her position has fleetingly visited…. On a par with a Royal visit from the Queen (although I doubt she reads many wordsmith blogs…)

I realised Jo was also performing and hosting a workshop and I felt guilty I hadn’t tickets for either… I have kept excel sheet accounts of my expenditure this year and so far the world of writing has cost a monthly salary! I am running low on funds unless I enter and win some monetary competitions soon. Her performance was on a day I was already attending the festival, I thought I might try to go, as it turned out I had to work.

It was great meeting Jo after choosing her as my National Poetry Day Blog Poet (an accolade I am sure she will treasure as much as her Canal Laureate and Directorial role!)

After a brief chat and another photo (wish I had washed my hair and thought more about wearing make up!) – I snapped a few other website publicity shots – here’s one of Jo and Ian together.

Then went out for the interval between recordings…. and found Mr Roger McGough behind a table handing out autographs! Well signing books mainly.

They (BBC Radio 4) have a new book – which they were unable to advertise (BBC) which celebrates 30 years of Poetry Please, it is a doorstop size volume that would do battle with any winter draft. Roger was signing them. I bought the last but one copy hurriedly and hoped that he wouldn’t have left the signing table. Which he hadn’t but Rachel New (the resident writer for BLF attempting a 10 day sentence – writing 30,000 words over the festival) appeared at the same time to meet Roger herself.

I also wanted to speak with her -I’d failed to find her in the library on the Knowledge floor because in my mind she was in the big circular garden room you can see a few metres away from the entrance.

Roger was busy signing books so I struck up conversation with Rachel first, then he was ready to sign mine and I was still talking to Rachel – I felt really rude about this as I handed him the book and said ‘please sign this’, I also missed out on a personal message as he couldn’t get a word in edgeways to ask me my name as I manically gushed over Rachel’s challenge!

I hope he didn’t think I was going to flog the signed book on Ebay or something. It is on my shelf along with the other publications bought at the Literature Festival. I stood there awkwardly for a few seconds trying to make up for my rudeness, but by then Rachel and Roger were in full flow (talking) and it would have been rude to butt in and only fuel the fire that I was an obnoxious member of the public who at first ignores the great names and then attempts to talk over the top of them! So I withdrew and took this photo –

which was snapped by crew members for the official BLF website. (I spoke to Lee, the festival photographer on the last day of the festival in the hope that I may be able to use some of the brilliant BLF website pictures, unfortunately Lee was unsure and they have been locked so that we can’t use them, fair enough I suppose.)

The 2^nd recording was With Great Pleasure and The Echo Chamber, with Paul Farley (due for broadcast January 2014.)

The second half was just as fantastic as the Poetry Please recording and the production included some people choice poetry as well. I wasn’t brave enough to introduce a poem – but I did have my chance and could have been on the radio show (Poetry Please) too! I thought I had stepped into the poetry limelight enough today and instead shrank into my seat!

And not mentioned in the programme was the greatest surprise of all. Katie Sultana – an exceptionally talented and confident teen, she won a National schools competition for reciting poetry -she was so talented. I wanted to hire her there and then to perform my poetry for me.