Ghost Town

Visual artist Issam Kourbaj and I are currently enjoying 30 seconds' fame after being featured in a Cambridge University Newsletter article on ghosts. The piece, which is also being printed in the Cambridge Evening News, is illustrated by Issam's haunting photos of the city, taking using camera obscura.

The article marks the publication of two ghostly volumes by Oleander Press, the first a set of supernatural tales from Jesus College and the second a collection of ghostly fiction by a former Chaplain of King's. It's a spine chilling read... though, I must confess, I'm not convinced by the article's claim that Christ's Pieces is a disconcerting place to be:

"On a misty November evening, with the perimeter trees masking the city’s landmarks, it’s hard to navigate the criss-cross of paths..."

The only times I've got lost on Christ's Pieces have been after a lock in at The Champion of the Thames, when I could have happily wandered round in circles all night...

Seasonal Terrors

As the pubs begin their annual tirade, and the Saturday night streets of Cambridge fill with women in tinsel-trimmed boob tubes and Santa hats, it's time to face the long countdown to Christmas again. Scarred from too many winters working in pubs where 'Santa Baby' played on loop all day long and the stalwart drinkers started December with a seasonal arm-wrestling match (repeated with gusto throughout the month), I've usually had about enough merriment and mince pies long before Christmas eve.

Luckily, this year December also means the opening of Robert Lloyd Parry's show 'A Warning To The Curious' at the Corpus Playroom in Cambridge. He'll be re-telling one of M.R. James' finest tales from Dec 14th to Dec 19th, and it's not to be missed: http://www.nunkie.co.uk/

And, of course, no Christmas would be complete without a cynical marketing ploy, so I suppose this would be my cue to remind you that a copy of my pamphlet 'A Pint For The Ghost' might make a good stocking filler. To be frank, it'd make a rubbish stocking filler, being the slender volume that it is. But if you're as bad at wrapping presents as I am, you'll find it reassuringly square and unchallenging.

Or, if you prefer, you may be able to own 'A Pint...' on cd by the time Christmas comes to town. Neil and I spent this weekend recording the stories and poems from the show, with a huge amount of help from Ian Cartland, who is currently editing the material into a proper recording. If we're pleased enough with the results, you may soon be able to buy a CD featuring new music by Sam Genders, as well as my ramblings and Neil's sinister tones.

Finally, in the spirit of festive cheer (or seasonal boredom) I'll be doing my own ghostly 'Twelve Days of Christmas' here on the blog, posting a different, new ghost story or poem on the site every day between Christmas day and January 5th. So if you can't afford an advent calendar, look no further...

Go forth and be merry.

A tale told by an idiot

Of all the quotes that abound about life being a stage, Shakespeare still gets the biggest thumbs up from me for saying:

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

On Sunday night, above a pub in Camden, I ended up strutting and fretting in equal measure. Having never even attempted to act before 'A Pint For The Ghost', I somehow found myself on a stage in front of a packed house, pretending to be a grumpy Yorkshireman.

How did all this sound and fury come about? Last year, I wrote a short play 'Careless Torque' about two climbers, trapped in a mountain hut. Here's a trailer for you. Imagine a gravelly voiced American bloke who makes a trip to the offy sound like the end of the world:

United by boredom in the northern town where they grew up, Niall and Jackson became partners in crime as teenagers - bunking school to climb on the rock outcrops of the Peak District. Ambition took Jackson to university, but kept Niall at home, labouring for cash and taking risks with extreme climbs. Now, with Jackson about to start a job in London and give up climbing for good, the pair have decided to reunite for one last adventure: a dangerous route on the north face of Mont Blanc. But when a blizzard traps them in a small mountain hut in Chamonix, they find themselves with nothing but each other, and their separate versions of a past that both have struggled to forget...

This would all have been well and good, except that, following an unfortunate turn of events, I found myself without any actors just three days before the performance.

My first thought was to go to Wetherspoons, find a pair of blokes propping up the bar and drag them to a London stage. But even the drunks in Cambridge sound posh, and my characters were meant to be northern. After a manic afternoon of bribery, blackmail, treachery and corruption, I was rescued by Simon Perkins, a fine actor with a good line in Barnsley dialect. Five minutes on the phone to him convinced me that I was talking to Ian McMillan. I was sold.But the cast was still only half complete. With the clock ticking, there was no other option: I'd have to play the part of twenty-something lazy and feckless Jackson myself.

Some of the exchanges between Niall and Jackson certainly took on a new dimension:

JACKSON: I’m freezing my bollocks off.

NIALL: What bollocks?

Indeed.

It's also worth pointing out that Niall (referred to throughout the play as 'a whippet) was being played by the tallest man I've ever met in my life.

Did we get away with it? Who knows. But we certainly had a laugh along the way, and I've learned a lot about performance which should feed back into 'A Pint For The Ghost'. You can read more about Sunday's shenanigans here.

To Brum and back

Happy Halloween to you. It's been a busy week in the life of 'a pint for the ghost'. On Tuesday, Neil, Patrick and I dug out the pint glasses and fake whisky again and headed up the motorway to Birmingham to perform at a book festival in the central library. Birmingham is full of spectres. According to the local paranormal investigations team, there's a ghost in the Three Tuns pub that likes to stroke people's hair. So it was with trepidation that we set up our stuff in a darkened theatre and got ready to take to the stage again.

There was definitely some sly spirit at work: the stairs seemed intent to leg Patrick up, and I kept breaking glasses. Despite my clumsiness, we survived and made an executive decision to use real beer on stage instead of the evil concoction Super Malt (which has been giving me nightmares since June). It was very interesting to perform in a less intimate venue than the setting of the Hotbed festival, and we discovered theatres are possibly not the natural habitat for the landlord and his ghosts. Nonetheless, it was a great experience. And none of us got our hair stroked.

On Friday, the pamphlet was launched in style with readings from some fine poets (including a pub crawl with Michael McKimm and Tim Wells' encounter with a goth on the bus) and music courtsey of Gareth's ipod. Ta, Gareth! And if that weren't enough excitement for one week, you can now listen to the landlord's stories from 'A Pint...' online at Short Story Radio. The tales are read by Keith Drinkel, who played Liz McDonald's boyfriend in Coronation Street years ago, as well as appearing in the comedy series 'I Didn't Know You Cared'. Find a dark room, light some candles, pour yourself a dram, and click this link.

Freaky Friday

There's no rest for the wicked. Today, Neil, Patrick and I are off to Birmingham Book Festival to perform a scaled-down version of 'A Pint for the Ghost' in the West Midlands. Then, tomorrow, I'm making the long journey to Barnstaple to perform a few poems from the show, amongst other work, for Apples & Snakes. Luckily, I've got some good reading matter, having purchased a book with the intriguing title 'Michael Jackson's Beer Companion' in London on Sunday. I can't find any evidence that it's by the late pop star, but it makes for an interesting read...

The week finishes with the launch of my tall-lighthouse pamphlet 'a pint for the ghost' on Friday 30th (the night before Halloween) upstairs in the spooky Betsey Trotwood pub, Farringdon. Joining me on stage will be John McCullough whose fantastic tall-lighthouse pamphlet is appropriately named 'the lives of ghosts', Michael McKimm whose first collection 'Still This Need' is full of haunting poems, and Tim Wells, whose cracking poems need no introduction and often feature that fine institution, the pub. We'll be taking to the mic from about 8pm, so please come and join us at The Betsey.

If you can't make it for Friday's merriment, but you'd like a copy of the pamphlet, you can get one online here. But you can't get a pint online, or try one of the Betsey's famous whiskies, which make the perfect companion to ghost stories!

Whisky: a friend in need

I was performing in Soho last night, and I asked the crowd whether there were any whisky lovers in the audience. It hit me immediately that it’s hard to be a true ‘lover’ of whisky, because I’ve come to regard it as a long-standing, shit friend - the kind who legs you up in the street, steers you into embarrassing conversations and nicks twenty quid off you on a Saturday night. The sort of friend you stay mates with all the same, because no matter how much they abuse you, they’re always there when you want a good weep.

Over the course of our acquaintance, my fair-weather friend has encouraged me to spend an hour trying to get into my neighbour’s house instead of my own (“but I DO live here officer!”), pushed me headfirst over a garden wall and convinced me that The OffSpring’s ‘Pretty Fly For A White Guy’ is an excellent choice of karaoke song. But whisky was also there the night I sat by a pitch black canal with no company except a moon as bright as a lamp, and the time I stood on Birchover rocks in the snow, so I keep reminding myself that we’ve had a good innings.

And, in defence, whisky isn’t the kind of mate who rings you up the morning after the night before to give you an earful about what a twat you made of yourself (wine can’t resist popping round to shriek: “but you MUST remember dancing on the pool table…”). It preserves a blissful nonchalance, almost as if nothing happened at all.

It was my friend Alastair who introduced us, at a party. He’d known whisky for years, didn’t have a bad word to say. It was only later that I found out people had been slagging her off: I heard some bloke called Logan Pearsall Smith (erm, obviously, I know a lot of people with names like that) muttering that “whisky has killed more men than bullets.” Which is a bit harsh to be honest. And according to Ralph Emerson “as a cure for worrying, work is better than whisky.” Well, that depends very much where you work, doesn’t it Ralph? I used to sit at the reception desk of the Chesterfield nightclub Livingstones, and I was definitely calmer when I was up in the bar after closing time with a Famous Grouse than when I was downstairs in the cloakroom having to confiscate lollipop lady signs, large inflatable dolls and traffic cones.

And without whisky’s steady inspiration, I wouldn’t have written this poem from ‘a pint for the ghost’:

A dram for all the men I’ve never drunk with

Sigmund Freud refuses every neat Ardbeg
or soft Caol Ila swirled beneath his nose,

but Byron knocks them back in one, then winks
and taps his glass against the lacquered tabletop.

Beside me, Marx is dishing out full measures
of the sherry-finished, twelve-year old Ledaig

but Larkin’s nothing but a bitter man, he says,
he’ll have no truck with spirits.

I’ve brought them to my local, in the snug
armpit of Sheffield, where the landlord

doesn’t bat an eyelid if my wise companions
sometimes slip their guard;

pass fingers through their glasses, take a shortcut
through a wall to reach the loos. It’s Sat’dy neet

he says, there’s stranger folk in here than these.
And, after all, he’s seen the likes of me before as well,

he gently lifts them out of corner seats
past closing time; the women who arrive alone,

who murmur toasts into the air, who raise a glass
to men who’ve never answered them.

* * *

And, just for a laff, here’s my whisky top 5. Arguments, additions, free samples from distilleries all welcome…

5. Bushmills summat-or-other – I had it once and it was nice but I don’t know much more than that.
4. Bruichladdich – unpronounceable and brilliant.
3. Macallan – what a winter walk in the park would taste like.
2. Caol Ila 1996– stinks of cigarettes. As many of my best mates do.
1. 10 year old Ardbeg – the real deal.

Definitely not making the list is a bottle of whisky I once drank in Chesterfield, which was to Bells what Blue Shark is to Red Bull, and was possibly called something like Rings…

Deepest darkest London Bridge

Before I went to London Bridge to start the Shunt residency last week, a page from 'ghostweb' had already had me in stitches. 'Spirit energy', or the powers of photoshop? You decide...

Nonetheless, walking through Shunt lounge (pictured above!), the first sounds you hear are screams of terror from the London Dungeons. By night, the place is a gloomy maze of dark archways, eerie corners and green lights. Worse still, if you'd stumbled into the Vaults last week, you might have been ambushed by a terrifying group of apparitions: haggard, sun-starved, muttering. Yes, that's right, the most unearthly of species - poets in a bar.

The theme of our residency at Shunt was 'when no-one's listening', which strikes me as a ghostly topic in itself. The other performers all put me to shame with their inventiveness: poems featured an onslaught of paper aeroplanes, the voice of a drinker's liver, the subconscious mind of Dave and even the voice of God. My piece was about the things objects in the bar might say to each other when there's no-one around, and it's posted below, just for a laff...

While you weren’t listening...

I heard the glass
say to the tabletop:
I like the way you hold me.

I heard the table
answer back:
I like the way you feel.

The barstools
thanked the floor
for all the nights it propped them up

And though
I didn’t catch the floor’s reply
it sounded delicate

and I wondered
what the wind says to the trees outside
to make them swoon like that

and what it tells
the grass
to set it shivering,

or what it is
that’s spoken when you
press that bottle to your lips,

what passes there
between you
in that silent and repeated kiss

that seems to say
I’m here,
I’m listening.

What the devil am I up to?

October's a busy month as well as a haunted one. If the launch of 'a pint for the ghost' on October 30th wasn't enough to be getting on with, I'm currently in the middle of a residency at the strange and spooky Shunt lounge, below London Bridge.

The residency is connected with Apples & Snakes and explores the idea of listening, involving three performances in the busy main bar at Shunt. I'm working with a ridiculously talented group of writers and performers including Byron Vincent, Molly Naylor, Joe Hakim and Joshua Idehen. You can read more about the residency here and, even better, you can come and see us perform tonight and tomorrow from 8pm.

Throughout October, you can hear me reading extracts from 'a pint for the ghost' amongst other work, at loads of different places. Including:

Sheffield's fantastic 'Off The Shelf' festival on October 17th
Soho Theatre on October 21st
...and in deepest Devon on October 28th

Watch this space for more reading dates.

'Course, today is National Poetry Day, so in the spirit of that, here's a favourite recent poem of mind, taken from Don Paterson's book 'Rain' which won the Forward Prize last night:

Rain

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one long thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from the play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a rain-dark gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign,
and I’d read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood—
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.

A long overdue update

Apologies for the recent, deathly silence that has fallen on the blog. I wish I had an appropriate excuse (out battling the fenland ghouls, or out sampling the fenland pubs) but it's work rather than spirits that are to blame.

I may have been quiet of late, but there's no rest for the pub ghosts of England. The lovely Catherine Smith sent me an article last week about a troubled pub in Southsea:

A pub landlady is hoping to enlist the help of an exorcist in order to banish a ghost that insists on topping up customers' glasses.

Janice McCormack, of the Apsley House in Southsea has become increasing vexed at the ghost's machinations.

"It happens when customers pop to the loo or put their pint down for a second," she explained. "When they look back there's an extra inch of beer. It must come from my pumps."

This peculiar spirit with a penchant for spirits first made his presence felt nine months ago. Regulars have nicknamed him Reedy, in honour of the famously thirsty actor Oliver Reed.

"My regulars love it but it is costing me," Mrs McCormack added.

"People are drinking less as their pints are being filled up all the time. My stocktaking figures are all out. We get more customers through the door but it seems to be people expecting a cheap, never-ending pint."

Ms McCormack believes she will need to adopt to a suitably supernatural strategy to rid her premises of the generous ghoul. If a séance doesn't work, she intends to enlist the services of an exorcist.

I can't promise that there'll be such mysterious refills at The Betsey Trotwood, Farringdon on October 30th, but I can promise you that if you come to London that night, you'll find a host of poets reading at the pamphlet launch of 'a pint for the ghost'. I'm launching my tall-lighthouse pamphlet from 8pm in the Betsey, with guest readings from John Mccullough, Tim Wells and Michael McKimm. Since it's the night before Halloween, ghostly costumes are encouraged... If you're in London on the 30th, please do come to the launch, it should be a great night.

A Pint For The Ghost: The Next Stage

Now that I've had time to catch my breath after the Hotbed festival, it seems like a good time to reflect belatedly on the scratch performance of 'A Pint...' on Saturday 27th June. After a frantic day of rehearsals (and a brief escape to the Cambridge Blue to gulp down A Pint For The Writer), actor Neil Jones and I were nervously reading through our scripts in the dressing room when we heard an usher utter these fateful words:

"We're going to need some more chairs in here...the tickets have sold out."

Full house! So we invited an audience of 60 odd people (by which I mean approximately 60, not to imply that all the audience members were odd) to join us in a strange and ghostly pub for the evening. Highlights from the show included a fantastic score by Sam Genders, a brilliant performance by the landlord, Neil, and free shots of whisky for lucky members of the audience. Choose your seat wisely when the show goes on tour!

So where next for the show?

• Hot of the press, a pamphlet containing the poems for the show and a few extra ghostsly pieces has just been published by tall-lighthouse press. It will be launched soon, but you can buy your copy already from the tall-lighthouse website HERE. According to Ian McMillan, it's 'an exciting collection from a writer who knows the value of the past and how to set it against the present to illuminate them both'.

• I'm going to be doing another performance in Cambridge before the end of the summer for everyone who couldn't make it or couldn't get tickets to the scratch performance.

• I'll be applying for a touring grant from the Arts Council and, if I'm successful, hope to take the show on the road towards the autumn, starting with a launch in London.

• I've started doing some themed workshops for schools in Cambridge and will be developing these further in the coming months.

Thank you to everyone who has been such a tremendous support so far. Please do keep following the blog to keep track of 'A Pint For The Ghost' and its errant Derbyshire spirits. There'll be more to come soon!

The final fling

Time's running out until the scratch performance of my one hour show this Saturday at the fantastic Hotbed festival, though there's still a chance to get tickets from The Junction's website here.

Hotbed is set to be a brilliant weekend of performances, including the famous one page play competition, and the intriguing 'Stand By Your Van'.

A pamphlet for the ghost

After a hectic month of work and thanks to the heroic efforts of my editor, Les Robinson, my tall-lighthouse pamphlet 'a pint for the ghost' is almost finished, containing poems from the show and some extra ghosts besides. Though it won't officially be launched until later in the year, there will be advance copies available at the Hotbed festival on June 27th. If you believe Ian McMillan (and I always do), the pamphlet is "full of ghosts of language, ghosts of long forgotten stories, invisible ghosts that haunt landscapes we think we know well...an exciting collection from a writer who knows the value of the past, and how to set it against the present to illuminate them both".

When I was gathering quotations for the book, I ended up revisiting great ghost poems by other writers, and realising what a potent theme spirits have been for some of my favourite poets. I started with Robert Frost's 'Ghost House', which evokes a ramshackle, haunted cellar. Then, I moved to Edward Thomas' 'The Other', with its account of a strange pursuit: Thomas' narrator is tracking a man who might almost be his double from inn to inn, though when he finally catches up with him, he meets with a poor welcome... Finally, I turned to John Burnside's work, which is full of allusions to the other, the liminal, the strange. 'The Good Neighbour' is a poem that has haunted me for years.

When I first embarked upon 'A Pint For The Ghost', I wanted to create something that could have a life both on and off the page. The poems in the book create a very different mood to the one they conjure in the show. I hope the ghosts of South Yorkshire enjoy seeing themselves in print...

tall-lighthouse is an independent poetry publisher based in south east London, with a fast growing reputation for publishing a diverse range of writers (including Kate Potts, shortlisted for the Michael Marks award). The press is currently celebrating its tenth year; more details about upcoming events on the tall-lighthouse website.

Martin Figura's photos

Here are a few images of 'A Pint For The Ghost', taken by poet & photographer Martin Figura at the Escalator showcase last month... Terrifying stuff, as I'm sure you'll agree (and that's just my hair).

I'm still busy in rehearsals for June 27th at the moment, so much so that, to my shame, I missed the Cambridge beer festival recently. I've had to console myself by compiling a list of my top ten UK pubs...

10. The Bear, Alderwasley, Derbyshire
Medieval tapestries on the walls, and a dark interior that disguises the sinister bears lurking round every corner.

9. The Fat Cat, Sheffield
Beer straight from Kelham Island brewery, located in the middle of the former industrial quarter. A trip to The Fat Cat will take you on a scenic tour of Sheffield’s red light district. Well worth it for the best beer in town.

8. The Fat Cat, Norwich
A pub by the same name in Norwich with the biggest guest ale board I’ve ever seen, including the famous Fat Cat Marmalade.

7. The Marble Arch, Manchester
I’ve never been to The Marble Arch to see its incredible interior, but my dad’s so in love with it it seems to have become part of family legend and I almost imagine I’ve drunk there...

6. The Blue Ball, Grantchester
Brilliant cider and all the folk music you could ever wish to hear. Walking back across the fields to Cambridge in the dark is brilliant after a few pints.

5. The Queens Head, Newton

Mulled wine and poetry in the winter, and a bard for a landlord.

4. The Bricklayers Arms, London

The first place I ever got drunk in the capital as a teenager, after a happy day eating chips and drinking Sam Smiths beer.

3. Fannys Ale House, Saltaire

Brilliant ale and always packed to the rafters.

2. The Devonshire Cat, Sheffield

It seems all my favourite Sheffield pubs have a feline connection. This pub has a beer menu longer than the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

1. The Arkwright Arms, Duckmanton

My local at home; brilliant beer and an assortment of family drunks. The Arkwright has been the ruin of many a Christmas dinner at home, with my dad and grandad falling asleep on the turkey.

Derelict London

Roddy Lumsden just sent me this link to a brilliant site about derelict pubs in London: http://www.derelictlondon.com/id45.htm I'd never come across it before, and some of the pictures are incredibly haunting.

Staggering to read that six rural pubs close every week in England and Wales. The picture above is a photo of my old local, Duckmanton Lodge (or Ducky Lodge if you come from Calow...), the Civil Service Club where I used to spend hours exploring as a kid, or was seen-and-not-heard at the bar with a packet of crisps and some lemonade while my dad and step grandad had a few pints. It was strange to go home the other week and see the place boarded up: the grounds are just too big to make a business viable, it seems.Walking round Chesterfield recently, I also lamented the death of the beer garden playground. When I was a kid (get the violins out), almost every pub had a climbing frame and a couple of tyre swings out the back. Fathers everywhere must be despairing these days: I remember my dad's familiar refrain, "I'm just taking Helen to the swings...'.

Mind you, not that I minded the beer. Family legend has it that, at the age of five, my dad had taken me to the beer garden of The Arkwright in Duckmanton. Having drained his glass and set it on the table, he was astonished when I piped up: "Let's have another one!". He was less impressed when he returned from the bar with a full pint and I proceeded to climb on the table and kick it over...

The Ghosts of Chesterfield

The countdown has begun! The first full performance of ‘A Pint For The Ghost’ will take place at the Hotbed drama festival in Cambridge on Saturday, June 27th at the ghostly hour of 9pm. There will be music from Sam Genders, visuals from Issam Kourbaj and a special guest playing the part of the pub landlord.

As part of the visuals for the show, I’ve been gathering some images to use in a projection. This involved a trip around haunted York, a visit to some of my home town’s boarded up, derelict buildings and, of course, an all important visit to The Arkwright Arms in Duckmanton to collect some photos of beer. Thanks to my able assistants Danny, Milner and, of course, my dad for being so willing to help me in my quest to photograph empty pint glasses.

Though The Arkwright has the best beer for miles in Chesterfield, it would have been more appropriate for us to have visited Somerset House; a pub just up the road from where my parents live in Calow, and where I used to spend many a Friday night drinking Guinness as an impressionable teenager. For Somerset House has its own haunted history. Legend has it that the pub is plagued by the ghost of a young girl who was tragically killed in the 1930s:

‘(The pub) was the residence of a wealthy gentlemen farmer. In 1934, he had been shooting with a number of friends and had brought them back to his home for a drink. The men put down their guns and stood outside talking. Also present was the farm labourer who lived next door and his three children. One of these children, a ten year old boy, picked up a gun and pretended to shoot his sister. The prank went tragically wrong when the gun went off and the girl was injured. She ran into Somerset House, but died a few minutes later. She was only seven years of age’. – Derbyshire Ghosts and Legends

The young girl makes her presence felt in the pub by locking doors, turning off lights, whispering the names of bar staff and even scratching them in their sleep:

‘In 1988, the landlord, Bill was in the taproom when the barmaid, Carol, asked him what he wanted. She had heard a voice call her name and since no customers were in, had assumed it was Bill. Bill knew it was not him and both were extremely puzzled. .. The next day, Carol’s arms were covered in scratches which had appeared overnight. She denied that she could have scratched herself in her sleep as she was in the habit of biting her nails and they were extremely short. Bill then pulled up his shirt and revealed his back. It looked as if it had been clawed by an animal...’

In The Arkwright Arms, the only spirits I could discern were in bottles behind the bar, but you never know....

An aperitif for the ghost

Well then. Last Friday, I took myself off to Norwich in a Skoda, armed with a bottle of whisky, a battered chair, a trilby hat and a couple of pint glasses, ready to perform a twenty minute extract from 'A Pint For The Ghost' at the Norfolk and Norwich Arts Festival.

Ten hours later, powered by nerves and Nescafe (erm, other brands are available...) I was standing on the stage in front of hundreds of people, wearing a giant bandage and listening to a recording of one of my poems being played over sinister music written by Janie Armour. It had been a tiring day of rehearsals, but Patrick (my director) and James (the director working with all the Escalator winners) were always on hand to make sure things ran smoothly. Thanks to them and to Ed, Ben, Danny and everyone else who calmed my nerves and helped me survive the day!

My favourite episode was when I was walking down the corridor of Norwich Arts Centre with a bottle of whisky which I had filled with apple juice for the performance. Realising I'd been a bit over-zealous with said apple juice, I took a long swig from the bottle to stop it spilling out. A woman, hurrying to the cafe, stopped to look at me with horror and disapproval.

And what was the verdict on the show? Apart from a technical hitch with the microphone, it went pretty well, though you'll have to come to the Hotbed festival on Saturday June 27th to see for yourself! My dad's a man of few words, and I imagine if he had been there he would have nodded, said "it were allrate" and then gone to fetch me a beer from the bar.

That puts me in mind of the time I was running a fell race at Chatsworth, Derbyshire. Jogging round the course, I passed an old farmer leaning on a fence. Knowing that he lived nearby, I stopped to ask him what the course was like. He turned to look me slowly in the eye:

"There's some cow shit, some dog shit and a rate big hill."

All of which brings me to this poem from the show:

A pint for the true shepherds

Now the chance has gone, I wish
I’d bought that man a pint:
the farmer who sat silent next to me
through Midnight Mass, and raised
his eyebrows as the well-fed vicar
revelled in the story of the gentle shepherds
(friends, how like The Lord’s own servants
are the men round here who still
keep animals today). And as the organist
received the nod to play, the man
who hadn’t spoken took his cue at last,
rose to his feet, said: Reverend,
tha knows nowt about sheep.

Hold the date!

The first full performance of 'A Pint For The Ghost' is going to be on Saturday June 27th at 9pm at The Junction in Cambridge. Put it in your diaries (if you dare).

I'll be performing as part of the Hotbed drama festival, organised by the brilliant Menagerie theatre company. More details to follow soon; the Hotbed festival website should feature more info about the festival performances soon...

A sneak preview

It's less than a week until the Norfolk & Norwich festival and the first performance of material from 'A Pint For the Ghost': the showcase is happening this Friday, May 8th. So if you want to find out what this peculiar photo on the left is all about, you'll have to come to Norwich and see for yourself!

There's now a facebook event set up for the performance, which you can access here and find out more about the other artists involved with Escalator.

A poem for Justin

A very, very sad occasion on Thursday: I went to read a poem for a friend who was killed in an accident on April 9th. One of the most wonderful poets and people I have met in Cambridge, Justin Wand is greatly missed and the event was a fitting tribute to a wonderful man.

Here's the poem I wrote for Justin. The ghosts of absent friends are always with us, it seems.

Justin

I’m sure we must have said goodbye outside a pub one night
or by the traffic lights on Norfolk Street, though now I try
to think of it, I can’t recall a single time. And if I’m asked

to name the evening when I saw you last, I’d say
that you were laughing at my three unshaven mates,
dressed in drag, acting up in a bar too good for us.

Or I’d say you were wearing a slim top hat - the kind
magicians save for disappearing acts - and knocking back a beer,
checking your watch, the time much later than you’d thought.

Or else you were sitting in a worn red seat in the back row
of the 1960s theatre, long after the play had finished,
thinking of Chaucer, the words still forming in your mouth.

Or I’d remember none of this at all, just you: the cautious writer
who I didn’t know enough, black-jacketed
and climbing on your motorbike,

pulling the visor of your helmet down,
lifting a hand to us as you revved the engine, accelerated hard
towards wherever it was you knew you were going.

A College Mystery

'Peter - this is a rather sad mystery, but it is about Christ's...'

So reads the scrawled note in the front of the leather-bound copy of 'A College Mystery' that arrived in the post for me at work last week. The 'mystery', by A.P. Barker, was sent to me by an alumnus of the College I work for in Cambridge, Christ's, because he thought some of the fellows might be interested. Preoccupied by ghosts as I am, I've intercepted it before they could get a look in!

The tale concerns an apparition in the Fellows' Garden, where I've often sat to read at lunchtime, or stood beneath the famous Milton Mulberry tree (fancifully claimed to be the spot where he wrote 'Paradise Lost'). Apparently, a number of former students of Christ's with rooms overlooking the gardens have 'observed the figure of a man emerge on the lawn under the great chestnuts, on the left, and walk slowly and deliberately, with bent head, as far as the great yew and the weeping ash. There he invariably stopped suddenly and turned towards the may tree, and then faced the garden again, on the right, and either disappeared by the green beech, or came out on the lawn past the great copper beech, skirted the border of that bed, and then faded from view by an old elm near where the sun dial now stands. They described the figure of that of a tall, heavy, elderly man, dressed in black, with a swallow-tailed coat and high collar and stock. He sometimes raised his face; but the sudden halt at the great yew was invariable.'

Imagine my mounting sense of foreboding when the ghost in question turned out to come from Derbyshire! One of the sections in 'A Pint For The Ghost' deals with unfinished business, and the business that preoccupies this particular spirit is a terrible crime that he committed for love, a sense of guilt he needs to assuage... It was a great read, though I spoke to a historian at the College who takes a dim view of the saga.

The tale ends with a rather profound reflection on the nature of guilt and absolution:

'Is it that, in the regions of spirit, intention, or even desire, brings the same responsibility as accomplished fact?'

Who you gonna call...?

Now then. My excitement about the May 8th showcase is mounting. Why? Because I'm anticipating the bright lights? The giddy heights of the stage? The terrified audience? Nah, that's all well and good, but what I'm excited about surpasses it. Yesterday, a friend revealed that he will be coming to the showcase in a Ghostbusters t-shirt... It doesn't get much better than that. Apologies for embarrassing said friend, who will now be obvious to all and sundry. If you see him, give him the thumbs up. Or buy him a pint for his ghost.

Preparations for what I'm calling 'An Aperitif for the Ghost' are going pretty well, and I'm spending this week concentrating on set design. Conscientious as I am, I've been particularly distracted by the tricky dilemma of drinking on stage. Having spent a fruitless afternoon pondering what liquid I might pour into tankards to imitate beer, it took a swift half at my local to supply the necessary, obvious solution.

Don Paterson quotes this snippet from a book on theatre sound effects at the start of his collection, 'Nil Nil':

"A real door slammed offstage gives the best effect."

'Nuff said. I won't, however, be using real whisky, much as a dram might help to steady my nerves. Apple juice seems to be the best. I remember seeing a brilliant production of Pinter's 'No Man's Land' in London before Christmas - in the first scene, the characters had quaffed so many drams the actors would have been comatose if it were real... But, of course, I'll need to do some serious whisky drinking in the week running up to the showcase, just to get myself into character, of course. I'm also in search of beer mats, tankards, beer towels and other pub regalia, so I might be propping up the bar, pestering local landlords for a few charitable donations before May 8th. It's a hard life, but someone has to do it.

Joseph Braddock's Haunted Pubs

Skulking round a bookshop in rainy Fort William the other week, muttering about not being able to climb any hills because of the weather, I found a brilliant guide to Britain's haunted houses in a tiny, secondhand bookshop, which redeemed the day for me. The author is Joseph Braddock who, by coincidence, 'regards himself primarily as a poet', if the dust jacket is to be believed. You have to love an author who dedicates his ghostly musings to: 'my wife, who has walked with me round the edge of the unknown'.

The book contains a fantastic chapter on haunted pubs, intriguingly titled: 'Haunted Pubs and the Runcorn Poltergeist'. My favourite pub ghost is Charlie, resident of a small whitewashed country inn near Taunton. Apparently, one of Charlie's tricks was to magic beer from thin air:

"On entering the bar one morning Mr. Phillips the landlord found that a seven pint enamel jug was full to the brim with beer, although he was positive it had been empty when the household went to bed the previous night."

I've often found the opposite problem with my pint... I could have sworn that glass was full five minutes ago.

When I worked in the Red Lion (on the way to Matlock from Chesterfield), we were supposed to have a cellar ghost who rattled the bottles in the fridges late at night, or moved the barrels around. I never saw her - it was a lady, dressed in grey, according to my boss - but I did always find the cellar unnaturally cold, as if a breeze was blowing through it, and I never lingered too long when I was bottling up.

An aperitif for the ghost

The time is drawing near... on May 8th, I'll be performing a short extract from 'A Pint For The Ghost' (a shot? An aperitif?) at the wonderful Norfolk and Norwich Arts festival, alongside the other Escalator winners. For a measly fiver (that won't even buy you two pints round Cambridge way) you can have a taster of the ghosts show and watch four other great performers. I've finally managed to isolate 20 minutes of the show and I'm starting to learn my lines, so come along to watch and be afraid! The theatre at Norwich Arts Centre is really dark and sinister, so it's the ideal venue for the purpose. Who knows what kind of ghouls might join the audience...

Then, on May 9th, I'll be trying out some of the ghost poems in front of a different crowd at Poetry-next-the-Sea, a brilliant festival by the seaside in Wells, Norfolk. I'm expecting cider, fish and chips, tacky rock and maybe the odd poem. I'm looking forward to meeting the ghosts of Norfolk along the way.

Bandages, scissors and light shows

Now that the script for the show is finished, I've been spending a bit more time working with Issam on the design for the (very minimalist) set. As ever, he's had some brilliant ideas, but I can't give too much away at present. So, if you want to know why I spent some of yesterday struggling with an enormous bandage and a pair of scissors, you'll have to come and see the finished show in July, or the 20 minute taster on May 8th in Norwich! It's not what it sounds like, honest...!

Issam does a lot of work with camera obscura (see above), and there's something very ghostly to me about images of ordinary places, taken upside down. You can see some of his camera obscura images of Cambridge here.

Curious Warnings in Cambridge

I recently discovered that we have our very own M.R. James expert and lookalike here in Cambridge. What could be better than that!? Robert Lloyd Parry is a performer who re-tells some of James' classics, performing them in strange locations around the city and beyond.

It was Tim Wells who first introduced me to the delights of M.R. James, over a mug of the finest coffee in England (well, definitely the finest in East London, and I'm pretty confident about England too), and 'Oh Whistle...' makes an appearence in one of the poems in the show. I was reminded of the fate of Professor Parkins in the tale on a recent trip to Bruisyard Hall in Suffolk for the Jerwood-Aldeburgh seminar. My room had two single beds in it, and bore an uncanny resemblance to the one in the film version of the story. Worse still, on the first morning, I was convinced it looked as if someone had been sleeping in the spare bed the night before... I didn't sleep with the light on. Much!

Robert is currently working on another of my favourites, 'A Warning To The Curious' which will be touring from October 2009 to March 2010, looking forward to that one already. Oh, and uncanny resemblance or what??

A Light Death?

Strange though it might seem, I hadn’t considered the relevance of my, um,‘grave’ surname to the ghost project until Roger Robinson pointed it out to me at a workshop in Norwich this afternoon. According to that source of great wit and wisdom ‘ancestry.com’, the name Mort is associated with the following:

“English (Lancashire): of uncertain origin. The most plausible suggestion is that it is a Norman nickname from Old French mort ‘dead’ (Latin mortuus), presumably referring to a person of deathly pallor or unnaturally still countenance, or possibly to someone who played the part of death in a pageant.”

Coupled with my first name, Helen, which has Greek origins and means ‘light’, that gives you ‘A Light Death’. How charming.

I’ll ignore the other possible definition of Mort: “it could also be the result of survival into the Middle English period of an Old English personal name, Morta, or an Old English vocabulary word mort ‘young salmon or trout’”.

I’d rather be dead than a young trout, on balance.

Here’s a poem about my deadly name, which first appeared in 'Acumen'.

The French for Death

I trampled ants for kicks on the quay at Dieppe, dawdling
by the desk where they wouldn’t take yes for an answer;
yes, it was our name and spelled just so –
we shook our heads at Moor and Maud and Morden,
dad repeated it in Oldham’s finest guttural.

Rope swung from the captain’s fist
and flayed the water. I saw him shudder, troubled
by a shift of air or a vision of our crossing: glower of thunder,
the lurch and buckle of the ferry, a thick Alsatian
with a face like Cerberus ushering us in to port

and I looked him in the eye, popped my bubblegum,
a child from the underworld in red sandals
and a t-shirt made by Disney, not yet ashamed
by that curt syllable, locked, cold to the tongue,
its hush of the morgue, not yet the girl

who takes the worst route home
pauses at the splayed mouths of alleyways
and looks straight past you as we kiss, as if to pick out
small behind your left shoulder, the spindle of a shipwreck,
prow to a far country.

Graveyard photos

Last weekend in Norwich, photographer Katie Utting had me wandering round a graveyard for some publicity shots for the show....and here are a few of them. No ghosts developed on the film, as far as I can tell!

Tell me a tale

One of the things I'm interested in as part of 'A Pint For The Ghost' project is hearing and collecting other people's ghost stories which might become part of a bigger project. I'm hoping to set up a kind of ghost booth at the performances where people can come to have a pint and tell me a scary story after the show, but I'm also interested in collecting them in writing, so if you have a story to tell, post it on the blog or send it to me by e-mail and I'll look forward to being terrified...

What's this ghost malarkey all about then?

'The ghosts I never saw
and don't believe in
won't go away.

Should I be rural
and put out food for them?
- I'm not Homeric enough
to leave on the table
a bowl of blood.

And there's no need for that -
they drink mine.'

- Norman MacCaig, December 1975

Whenever I think about poetry, or the act of writing itself, I've always found myself coming back to the idea of ghosts: people and places we once knew, characters we've never met, stories we overhear and wish were ours. I'm fascinated by those ghosts and how a poem reinvents them, encounters them in unlikely places; the way you can slip into a bar in strange town and think you see an ex in the corner, nursing a whisky.

Growing up in Derbyshire, I was always aware of what a singularly ghostly place it is, how many stories are attached to the landscape. In particular, I was interested in the ghosts of the former industrial areas; miners and steelworkers who haven't given up. Ghosts have business to finish, and there's no place better for them than the pits and the old foundries of South Yorkshire. Sheffield is rife with ghosts, from the ancient sailors in 'The Ship' inn, to the Hillsborough spirit who pinches the black pool ball from all the pool tables in the pubs...

'A Pint For the Ghost' developed from a desire to re-tell some of these local legends, and introduce a few ghosts of my own. It's a series of haunted poems and stories I've been working on over the past six months for a one-hour poetry show, set in a shabby pub, after closing time, where spirits abound and anything might happen... As well as the show, which I want to put on in unusual locations around and about the country, the poems will be published as a pamphlet by the wonderful tall-lighthouse press later in 2009.

This all came about because of the Escalator regional talent scheme who are supporting me through the development of the show, and an Arts Council grant, as well as a lot of help from friends who have provided me with endless inspiration and pub wisdom throughout the research!

Who else has been roped in?

The show isn't just about the poems. I'm working with excellent director Patrick Morris, distinguished artist and theatre designer Issam Kourbaj and brilliant musician Sam Genders, of 'Tunng' fame. The finished act will be a mixture of spooky effects, haunting music, stories and poems. Oh, and there might even be the odd magic trick. I'm hoping to eventually put it on in former warehouses, old pubs and other unexpected locations, as well as in theatres.