Category Archives: Events

Stoke Literary Festival

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Here are Catherine Burgass and Ray Johnson presenting their talk on ‘Arthur Berry – People’s Poet’ at the second Hot Air Literary Festival (13th June):
Ray and Catherine discussed Berry’s painting, poetry and plays, all of which articulate strongly a sense of regional idenitity, via images, film clips and dramatic readings.  They also launched a new edition of Berry’s poetry collection Dandelions: http://www.filmarchive.org.uk/products/dandelions
Catherine was particularly excited to meet Margaret Drabble – taught on this year’s feminism module From Rage to Page.  Interviewed by Sathnam Sanghera about her most recent novel The Pure Gold Baby, Drabble clearly believed that conditions for women had improved significantly since the 1960s.  Catherine was able to get her mother’s original 1960s paperbacks signed and let Dame Margaret know that the political issues dramatised in these second-wave feminist fictions still speak to women of today, if student response is anything to go by!

Postgrad trip to the galleries (and pubs) of Liverpool

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Postgraduate students from Staffordshire University were treated to a day away, to sample the cultural delights and watering holes of Liverpool. It proved to be an ideal opportunity to get everyone together, and the focus of the day was Leonora Carrington’s extraordinary exhibition at the Liverpool Tate (just before the show closed at the end of May). Carrington was an all-out surrealist and magical realist – and a highly accomplished writer of short stories and novels – as well as a stunning visual artist, whose work encompasses paintings large and small, prints, sculpture, tapestries, theatre design and – impossible hats.

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Lear at the New Vic

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Staff and students enjoyed Northern Broadside’s production of King Lear at the New Vic theatre last night. Barry Rutter, the company’s actor-manager and driving creative force, took the title role. The production was directed by Jonathan Miller.

The Guardian gave it 5 stars, which I thought a little generous (http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/mar/08/king-lear-northern-broadsides-review-jonathan-miller). In comparison with the energy and dynamism of other Broadside’s productions, this one felt static; but perhaps this reflected the sense of transition from the old order, by way of tragic hubris, to the new. Rutter brought touching moments to Lear’s downfall, but lacked the authority of a flawed tyrant at the beginning to give the necessary scale to his descent.

The fantastic story, of familial and political loyalty and conflict, carried the production to its famous conclusion (yes, if you don’t know it, you’ll have to read it or see it).

Stoke Literary Festival

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Catherine Burgass is presenting an event with Professor Ray Johnson on local poet Arthur Berry at the second Stoke Literary Festival (13th June).  For details go to:
 ARTHUR - PORTRAIT PHOTO 0
The Festival event sold out early on, but tickets to other events may still be available and Ray and Catherine will also be talking about Berry at a forthcoming major exhibition: ‘Lowry and Berry – Observers of Urban Life’ at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery (details to follow).
      Catherine and Ray have been working on a reprint of Berry’s book of poems, Dandelions, which should be published in time for the Festival.  Catherine was introduced to the work of Arthur Berry by one of our final-year students, Sarah Probyn – thank you Sarah!
      On Saturday 6th Catherine is also delivering a paper at the annual Arnold Bennett Conference – Bennett Abroad.  Taking liberties with the conference theme, the paper considers Bennett’s representation of the Potteries as a ‘foreign’ country, with reference to Freud’s theory of the uncanny.  For details go to:  http://www.arnoldbennettsociety.org.uk/?page_id=5
 
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Dracula at the Vic

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Review from 1st Year student, Danny Collard

Theresa Heskins’ production of Bram Stoker’s Dracula was, undoubtedly, one of the more inventive adaptations of this well told tale. Performed at the New Vic Theatre in Stoke ‘in the round’, each audience member left with plenty to discuss on the journey home, regardless of their enjoyment of the show.
The performance stayed remarkably true to the original plot, and it may be said that many of the issues taken (for those that took them) came from its adherence to Stoker’s work, which, especially with age, Continue reading →

Public lecture: Food in Arnold Bennett’s Fiction

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Catherine Burgass gave a talk for the Arnold Bennett Society to a capacity crowd at the Quaker Meeting House in Newcastle.  Unlike a Quaker meeting, which is based on shared silence, Catherine spoke for the best part of an hour.  She argued that, while one might expect descriptions of food as background detail in Bennett’s realist fiction, food is in fact integral to the construction of character and even plot.  Bacon, eggs, beef stew and chocolate (the latter explicitly associated with the Quaker tradition in comic novel, The Card) operate as symbolic sites of dramatic antagonism, crisis and resolution.  The audience was highly appreciative and ready with further examples from the life and works, including Bennett’s practice of getting Staffordshire oatcakes sent up to him in London by train from the Potteries.

London literati come to Stoke

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Two novelists from the Big Smoke have recently given readings in Staffordshire. On 24th November Lottie Moggach read from Kiss Me First at the Keele Writing group. Moggach’s novel, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Guardian First Book Award, has been dubbed ‘a Facebook thriller’ and centers around a case of online identity assumed by a high-functioning autistic heroine. On 3rd December, Sathnam Sanghera discussed his novel, Marriage Material, as guest of honour at the Arnold Bennett Society annual Literary Luncheon held in Hartshill.   Marriage Material, also published 2013 and shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, is set the Sikh community of Wolverhampton and is based loosely on one of Bennett’s best-known works, The Old Wives Tale. Apparently Moggach, fellow journalist and friend, was responsible for introducing Sanghera to Bennett’s novel – it’s a small world!

For more on the writers see their websites: http://www.sathnam.com/ http://www.lottiemoggach.com/

 

Can Stoke-on-Trent make you happy?

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Matthew Rice gave a very entertaining public lecture entitled ‘Can Stoke-on-Trent make you happy?’ on Tuesday 11th, part of the University’s Centenary series.  Matthew pointed to some other European cities which have pulled themselves out of the post-industrial doldrums, discussed Stoke’s industrial and domestic architectural heritage in terms of its emotional significance for the local population, and suggested that artists could act as the “stormtroopers of regeneration”!  The next lecture in this series is by TV historian Professor Michael Wood and is entitled ‘Does History Matter?’  For further details go to: http://www.staffs.ac.uk/news/heritageinspired-public-lectures-designed-to-get-you-thinking-tcm4280835.jsp

Grasmere Trip

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Staff and 1st year students had a great weekend in the Lake District. We visited Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth museum, eat and drank handsomely, communed with nature, and a few hardy students accompanied us to Easedale Tarn where we read Coleridge and Wordsworth. Magnificent.

More to follow from the students who were there.grasmere walk