Book Cultures

The end of a very long but fascinating day of the ‘Book Cultures, Book Events’ conference. I’ve just returned extremely replete from the first of our conference dinners, which comprised three courses and a finale of ‘coffee and tablet’ – a description which caused much amusement among our table, but of course the ‘tablet’ in this context wasn’t a nurofen but a Scottish speciality which seemed to be mainly sugar with perhaps a malty sort of butter holding it all together.

I’m in a hotel a little walk away from the conference; a location I quite like as I can sometimes find such gatherings a little claustrophobic. Having said that, everyone has been very friendly – especially one of the organisers who helped me out enormously when I arrived early desperate to find a pc with powerpoint and an internet connection. The campus of Stirling reminded me of UEA – lots of green, a beautiful looking lake, bunnies (!) and buildings with all the usual campus services within walking distances from each other.

The conference itself has been interesting and thought provoking so far, in equal measure: how do book events reflect the anxieties and expectations of social groups and regional communities; how does a book become a symbolic token of belonging; how does a book spoken aloud forge connections between strangers; how does a book event look and act when removed from institutional location and tied in instead to mass media and celebrity culture? More on individual papers and thoughts in due course – suffice it to say I took plenty of notes – in a rather nice Paperchase A5 notebook complete with dividers and plastic pockets, which I now feel a need to fill.

I gave my own presentation today; the last of the final session before drinks reception and dinner. I hope it went ok: sometimes it’s hard to tell when you’re standing at the lectern and feeling that odd time-delay from the sound and gestures of your own performance. Anyway I talked about locations of encounter with the poetic text, the challenges and aims of The Facility (London Met’s Centre for Creative Practice as Research) and the example of our Human Folly event, which allowed us to juxtapose the wonderfully crafted and culturally engaged collection from guest speaker Andy Brown, The Fool and The Physician, with the raw, recursive loophole of a documentary about Leah Thorn’s prison inmate beginner poets. I talked about both poetic ‘texts’ being in the public domain (one as a book, the other as performed fragments of Susan’s documentary) and both being examples of work from a ‘restricted field’ (Andy Brown’s in the sense of Bourdieu’s restricted field principally of highly educated and creative peers, Leah’s prison poets literally restricted as to their whereabouts yet holding each group member in peer esteem) and celebrated the fact that at least for this one night of Human Folly, Leah’s prison inmates could enter the Academy with their work, courtesy of Susan’s film. 

So tempting to have a drink after all this – wine flowing freely at the reception, just as it was freely on offer during my indulgently first-class London-Stirling train journey yesterday. Still, I have managed to resist. I browsed all the campus shops earlier on and treated myself to some new multivitamins with Q10 and ginseng – would my twenty-year old self even want to recognise me? Browsing in the book shop I spotted a new book ‘why we run’ which explores the psychological aspects of extreme running – and I mean extreme – the author regularly runs ultras (double the length of a ‘normal’ marathon) and more. Now I am not that extreme, nor am I ever likely to be. Yet, I did find myself calculating whether I could possibly get a run in tomorrow, and whether there was a runnable path round the campus loch which might be worth an early morning circuit...  ‘Hmmm... You’ve changed,’ commented long term friend A, also presenting here, when I voiced this idea.

Well, if not running, then perhaps skating. Not in the sense of the weather taking a freezing turn for the worse; far from it, temperatures are moderate and the air is light and bright. But looking through my copy of Andy’s book I came across the wonderful unrhyming sonnet, ‘Clown School’ in which one of the lessons to learn is ‘to think of yourself as something you could skate on’. This is just a marvellous line – like a zen koan, I almost grasp its meaning and then it slides away again. Perhaps not to be too precious over oneself and one’s aims; to be unafraid to improvise, to skid, to skim, to be dizzy, to get into flow. But is the presumably frozen surface of the self indicative of a fragile state of the self? At any rate, one is still encouraged to launch out and skate. Good advice for creative thinkers, writers, conference goers, and those about to sleep after long packed days, and dream.