Josh: The Past two days and a poem about a shelf.

WEDNESDAY

So we started on a wednesday...

Me and Ray, we're poets in residence at the free word festival. Freewha? Click here...course you haven't heard of it, you're not important enough. I wish I could say it any clearer. That isn't true. Actually it was meant as a joke. I'll move on now.

Me and Ray, we're going to be blogging and twittering about this event and going to as many gigs at it we get can to, and all the lovely people in it, but you already know this, because I said so in my first post. Go read it, see if I'm lying. We'll also be writing poetry. That's what we're here for! (Jazz hands!)

FreeWord isn't a field festival, it's brick and mortar, as in it's happening inside a building. The Freeword Centre, right opposite Betsy Trotwood up in soulless grey Farringdon (it's not as soulless or as grey as Bank, mind, but it ain't Brick Lane). You'd never find if you were not looking for it in the first place. Sometimes even if you were. It took me forever to find it. Forever and its mother. My iPhone GPS told me FreeWord was in a post office up on Chancery Lane. I believed my GPS. Why would my GPS lie? I mean, poetry in residence Post Office... IT KIND OF MADE SENSE. Considering the places I gigged this year. I'll move on now.

On my way there I passed this



I'm an eighties child. This looks like an omen, feels like an omen (it was a chilly wednesday), probably is an omen. A superstitous fella would turn a-one-eighter and run hella.

Good thing I'm not superstitous, then, eh? (Plus I need the money)

I get to the FreeWord Centre. It's a new place. The walls have no graffitti. The ground directly underneath the glass doors haven't even gathered grime yet. Give it time, yeh.

This is the poster heralding my welcome.



You can sort of make out my name if you squint really hard and imagine limejuice squirting in the eye of Tim Westwood.

I'm greeted by the lovely Sarah Ellis and the unbelievably helpful Geraldine Collinge, both of Apples And Snakes. They explained everything: Someone had the bright idea of placing a branch of as many literary organisations in a single nest. A nest of words. A wordnest. A wordynest. A nest made of (I'llstopnow). Avron to BookTrust to Index to Literary Consultancy To The Reading Agency To The English Pen To Darlkey Archive Press To Article 19. No I don't really know who they are, I only found out about them yesterday, but a brief summary: People who create/manage writing/writers (Apples and Snakes, Avron) People who promote reading (Book Trust, Dalkey,The Reading Agency), People who think reading/writing is a right (write?) worth protecting (English Pen, Article 19, Index on Censorship), and the Literary Consultancy, who will tell you when your writing is rubbish. And then take your money.

And to commemorate the whole shebag, they're doing a festival.

How they gonna get people into these gigs, I wonder? Where are the front page ads? There's no viral campaign. Not that I saw. How's Arvon (the company hosting the inaugural event, a performance of writers and poets) going to get people down if they told no one. That's not very good business!

The inaugural event is sold out.

That'll tell me.

They take us on a quick tour of the place. We say hello to a lot of people, many whose names I do not remember. This is the way of the big hello days. Of all the agencies, Article 19 had the biggest room. What does that mean? more to me than you, clearly. I had asked if they had killed Articles 1-18. They didn't laugh. We walked out, quickly.

Apples and Snakes don't have a room, which makes sense in a kind of we're spectres who tour the areassss way

We go to the cafe. i miss out on the Last Lemon Cake. Pity me. :-(

And then there was this bookshelf.




Yes, bloody high, innit? Talk about later.


Me and Ray, we are 'managed' into the sold out wednesday event, 'Arvon showcase,' is much, much better than I expected. Julia Bell reads an extract from her novel, some blah about writer's block/stalking some woman. Whatever; it was really an excuse to talk about west Central London. I know it, she won't admit it. We'll leave it at that. It's the most mesmerising discussion of a section of London I have worked/travelled in/hated for the best part of seven years. Example line? 'London is never clean, all the technological advances can't stop us living in our own filth.' See? Godlike Goodness.

I like Rick Gekoski's biblo-memoirs (or something to that effect) Somewhere in his extract he lists some of his faults and it sounded like he was describing me, or at least my ego. It was a piece about overcoming writer's block, and discovering your inner child, and Matilda by Ronald Dahl. I think, man who love the Dahl, issa good, good man.. During the break me and Ray decided to go over to the fellow and say hello/hi/who are you? And he turned out to be really cool, and friendly and easy to talk to about writerly issues like HOW THE HELL DO YOU KEEP ON WRITING EVEN THOUGH YOU KNOW IT'S SHIT, EH???. He didn't have no one-size-fits-all that I always imagine published writers to have, which made him all the more cooler. Later on we took this pic. I asked him to smile like he just won the Booker Prize. He laughed. When I googled him it turned out we'd been a judge on the Booker Prize in 2005.

Most Definitely my 'Tool' moment of 09.

This is Rick, and Ray, who is definintely not looking like a tool.

Kate Pullinger's did a multimedia event made up of flash enabled fragments of the same tale. It's amazing. www.flightpaths.net go check out I insist. It's interactive. I won't ruin it for you. Okay, just a little bit: It's about a man falling out of the sky...