HARBINGER

And so it goes...this is my final blog of 2019. A year of consistent achievement,innovation and progress seen on my many fronts -some personal,some of wider significance.And at the centre of them all,Wakefield. Google #WakeyLit19 ,checkout all 3 of the articles published by Wakefield Express , go to the #WakeyLit19 facebook page. As a pioneering project on its first test run, it succeeded in proving that its underlying ethos and theory works. Mary Creagh back in May 2019 however wanted nothing to with it.This from her email to me :- "I must admit I felt some surprise when I received your email, given you have made several negative comments about me on Twitter and Facebook. I attach a couple of these but, as we know, there are many more. I hope you understand my apprehension about your request following your comments on social media. Using language like ‘traitor’ ‘shill’ and ‘paranoid delusions’ to attack me on a personal level makes it difficult for us to work together co...

And this is the  " Downside " to the proceedings of #WakeyLit19 aka the putative,  ersatz   Wakefield Literature Festival 2019 conceived, planned ,organised and curated by Destiny Poets  ( www.destinypoets.co.uk ). Even more than a decade ago ,when I visited schools on a fairly regular basis to do my poetry masterclass workshops, a common complaint from the teaching staff was that "creativity" was getting squeezed out of the curriculum and that pupils weren't simply getting opportunities such as my rather modest poetry workshop sessions to explore and enjoy culture. June / July with the school year drawing down to a close and all the exams out of the way ,was always the optimum point in the calendar to approach schools with the lure of poetry workshops. I had some reasonably confident expectations that some local inner city schools would jump at the chance of, (a) free poetry workshops and (b) the chance to showcase their star pupils and their school as part ...

The explicit stated aim of  # WakeyLit19  is to put locally based authors and poets at the centre of the litfest. And that the primary aim and purpose of a lit. fest bearing the name of the city,is to firstly promote wider public awareness of locally based authors and poets. Unless someone,somewhere knows any different,clearly Wakefield -its elected representatives and relevant Council departments and officials ought to adopt a positive,pro-active stra tegy of an on-going,enhanced promotion of local authors and poets across its libraries ,schools and the city’s leading cultural venues. This is the third of four blog posts on the topic of Wakefield LitFest. This one is  “The Upside” ,yet to come ,”The Downside”, be warned names shall be named.There will be payback.  The putative Wakefield Literature Festival aka Wakefield LitFest 2019 rebranded as #WakeyLit19 held its media launch on September 2nd. at Destiny Christian Church, with guest of honour, the Mayor ...

It’s Monday 16th. September 2019 and #WakeyLit19 the  ersatz   litfest is getting underway. No funding, no charges ,no fees ,no tickets ,next to no admin. A radical, quasi-improvised grassroots alternative to absolutely no litfest whatsoever following the demise back in 2017 of what was the  ” official ” Wakefield Literature festival. The Merrie City’s version of the some 400 off – the  -shelf lookalike characterless litfest templates where only the geographically specific prefix is all that’s locally authentic and distinctive about them. Being the UK’s 11th.largest city by population – @330k.- counts for diddly squat in Wakefield’s  case when it comes to the pecking order of venues queueing up to get their snouts in the trough of Publicly funded Arts Council monies. That said, for every £8 per head of Arts Council funding that Greater London alone gets ; the entire rest of the UK gets £1 per head!! Still, what can the city expect when you’ve had n...