School reunion time at Troubadour for Faber Academy poets
There were poems about Stanley Spencer and Marc Chagall; poems about Hitler voiceovers, and hating Mozart; poems about primordial molluscs, Boris Johnson, mermaids, and a dodgy travelling fishmonger. What was more difficult to spot at the Coffee-House Poetry reading by 21 Faber Academy poets at London’s famed Troubadour on Monday 3 March was any evidence of the “workshop” poem, that legendary construct said to be fettled and finessed according to certain strict guidelines on creative writing courses up and down the country.
As Forward prizewinner and course tutor Daljit Nagra, pictured, said: “Everyone’s managed to maintain their own style and voice.” He added: “They’ve worked together as groups, looked after each other’s emotional well-being and supported each other critically.”
On its website Faber says that its academy is “the only creative writing school run by a publishing house” and “occupies the gorgeous fourth floor” of the legendary Bloomsbury offices of Faber and Faber. The poets who read were current course members, and others from recent years, and spanned a wide age range. Richard Scott, who contributed a remarkable poem about the inside of a fishmonger’s van, said the evening was “like a school reunion”. Some of the many highlights included Paul Crichton’s denunciation of Mozart’s “mincing minuets” and other failings: Jon Sayers’ description of his agent urging him to make his Hitler voiceover “sound more evil”; Jan Heritage’s mermaid of Zennor; and Sam Peters, inspired by dead people and spectacular hair.
One of the readers, Will Burns, who contributed two poems about his home town, was named earlier in the day as a Faber New Poet, a scheme that offers mentoring, pamphlet publication and financial support.
At the end of the evening Nagra read from a work in progress set in 1950s India, about high and low caste childhood sweethearts. He told the audience he had been working on it for about a year – “I’ll read this section, see what you make of it” – and confided that he was trying to write “a non-exclamatory poem, something of a new departure for me”. He concluded by reading a poem by fellow tutor Jo Shapcott, who was unable to attend the evening after recently undergoing surgery.
The evening was hosted by Coffee-House Poetry’s Anne-Marie Fyfe, and was possibly even more packed out than the ‘Meet The Editors’ session two weeks ago. With its 60s Bob Dylan/ Paul Simon folk heritage, the basement of the Troubadour always has that certain something as a venue, and last night’s entertainment included some captivating Latin American music at the end of the first half from guitarist Fabricio Mattos and flautist Lucas Jordan.
