“This is as legitimate a form of poetry publishing as any other,” insisted compere and founder Julian Jordon, towards the end of Write Out Loud’s fifth annual poetry jam, a popular, regular fixture at Marsden jazz festival, when the West Yorkshire town is thronged all weekend with music lovers.

I counted 23 performers at the Railway Inn, including those who had come from across the Pennines, from down south, and from Perth in Scotland (rather than from Perth in Australia, a regular event on the Write Out Loud gig guide). The man from Scotland, Shaun Bartlett, from Perth Scribblers, was cycling back home afterwards.

Moments to treasure included Freda Davis, pictured, dissolving into laughter at being disrupted by her own mobile phone – “I’m interrupting myself!” -  and Cate Greenlees resplendent in a Wigan rugby shirt on the day her home town team’s no-nonsense methods of dealing with the opposition were blazened all over the Sunday papers.

Cate and her sister Isobel Malinowski sang, with clog-dancing accompaniment, about crossing from Lancashire to Yorkshire, “to Marsden we will go, to the dark side we will go”. Marsden, the dark side? What a cheek!

Julian Jordon, who runs the monthly Marsden Write Out Loud sessions at Marsden library, organises two extra sessions in the runup to the poetry jam, with this year’s theme being the jazz festival itself. So on Sunday he opened with a poem, 'Marsden Jazz', that had been partly put together with his workshop members: "Jazz in the hills, jazz in the valley ..." Ann Broadbent said her poem about the festival had enabled her to learn more about jazz. Diane Green, of Kirklees Libraries, which facilitates and supports Marsden Write Out Loud, said she produces “an annual poem” as a result of the workshops:  “Soaking up the big beat sound, on Peel Street, on Peel Street” (‘The Jazz Parade’). There were also poems about the notorious rail ale trail (Marsden is a popular stop), growing old disgracefully, the natural delights of the nearby canal and hillside around Marsden, and popular repeats, such as Felix Owusu-Kwarteng’s fear-inducing ‘Barrie the Bacteria’.   

It’s impossible to list all the poets who read in this report, although you should be able to find all their pictures, bar one, on our Galleries page. However, mention must be made of newcomers such as Dorinda MacDowell, who had come over from Write Out Loud Stockport, and was making her debut at the open mic. She was so assured, you wouldn’t have guessed. Thanks, Dorinda, for saying how much you enjoyed it afterwards.

Dot Foster produced two marvellous poems, one about a brass bandsman whose devotion to his music and refreshment afterwards drives his wife to join the Salvation Army, and another about the health and safety issues involved in being a “vulnerable adult” -  “I mustn’t clap my hands in case I sprain my wrists … I mustn’t speak to strangers in case I make a friend / Saying hello to someone could mean the bitter end.”

Jean Bennett’s ‘The Ale Train’ recounted the gentlemanly aid that some “very merry fellows” in the next carriage gave her to help her off the train, with her walker, suitcase, stick and umbrella: “They were perfect gents, and I couldn’t take offence”, as they had a little fun with her walker, up and down the carriage aisle.

There was some non-nonsense stuff from Paul Broadhurst, with a tribute to his late friend, the TV steeplejack Fred Dibnah, and ‘A Study of Wind’: “It’s a bit cheeky, this, but it should be all right, hopefully.”

Terence Cavanagh’s poem, ‘Remembered Places’, listed a mellifluous clutch of place names in and around the Oldham area. David Coldwell’s atmospheric poem about a mountain that overlooked a village chimed with Tony Hargreaves’s prose-poetry about the Pennine area, thistles and brambles being Nature’s “barbed wire defence”.

Proud mum Lorna Brookes read out two poems by her son Theo Ayres, a member of Marsden Write Out Loud, but also a Foyle Young Poet and member of the north’s Writing Squad, a development programme for writers aged 16-21 living, working or studying in the north of England.

Award-winning performance poet Joy France had a poem about a beloved teacher, linked to the controversial fracking at Barton Moss: “We were her saplings … stretching to our sunshine source … we learned that water was our most precious resource … her ghost walks across the moss”. And compere Julian rounded up proceedings with his saucy, lip-smacking memories of a French girl with “ruby lips and swaying hips  … most of all, the thing I loved was the way she rolled her rs.”

Another year, another poetry jam. But jaded? Not a bit of it. This is a remarkable poetry event that spectators who have no intention of reading themselves nevertheless return to, year after year. Great credit to Julian for continuing to infuse it with his energy and enthusiasm, and for putting on an event where the wit and wisdom of poets empowered to make their voices heard never fails to lift the spirits.

Greg Freeman 

 

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