How eight students and one tutor tackled the Ilkley Literature Festival Fringe, by Rachel Kerr
A pot of tea and a cream scone. What better way to celebrate after you’ve just wowed an audience of 32 with your first ever literary reading?
That’s what my group of eight students did immediately after their performance at this year’s Ilkley Literature Festival Fringe. Trooping off to the café round the corner, umbrellas and walking sticks at the ready, may not seem the most glamorous of finales, but if you’d been in that audience of 32, you’d understand why it was the most fitting.
For the last four years, through Queensbury Community Programme, I have spent every Friday morning during term time ‘teaching’ creative writing to this amazing group of ladies and one gentleman. All retired. Some in their 80s. Most beguilingly unaware of how good they are. I say ‘teaching’ – in speech marks – because the word is loaded with connotations, not all of them helpful. But ‘facilitating’ sounds so pompous, don’t you think? And, if truth be told, all I’ve really done is turn up each week, switch the kettle on, and give them permission.
A bond has emerged between us. I knew it was going to be good when, three months in, Norah suddenly announced that, ten years previously, on the death of her husband, and believing her own life to be over, she had burned 50 years’ worth of diaries. She was here to repair the damage, to re-capture her life for her children and grandchildren. I knew it was something special when, four years later – having tried her hand at poetry, science fiction, drama and essay as well as memoir – the same woman announced to the lesson observer from Bradford College “this class keeps me alive, you know.” Well, Norah – ditto.
You wonder how the Fringe element of any arts festival is put together. Are they sought out and approached by some sort of cultural head hunter? Do they rub shoulders with the organisers or the woman in the sash who hands out programmes? Reading at the ILF Fringe myself the previous year, as part of a Poetry School event organised by the Festival poet in residence, left me none the wiser.
In fact, it’s a very straightforward process. You scour the ILF website, discover the application form, and complete and submit it before the May deadline. Of course first you have to convince your group that it’s a good idea (another story). I have no concept of how many people apply, no idea what the sifting process consists of. All I know is that we were welcomed into the fold, given a tea time slot to accommodate our bedtime preferences, and two chairs with arms – essential leverage for the more infirm among us.
What we were also given was validation: an opportunity for Audrey to display her formidable talent for poignant monologue; Michael to share the twists and turns of his fiction; Joy to show the letters from her gran’s handbag which inspired her; Barbara to dance the audience through the shoes of her life; Olive to read her beautifully lyrical poetry; Mary to leave them laughing with her wry and irreverent humour; Betty to remind them of the power and versatility of rhyming verse at its best; and Norah to bring a tear and a twinkle to their eyes with poetry inspired by her late husband.
And applause of course – that was good. And a taste for it – I’m not sure where that will lead, except perhaps the book that people asked for afterwards. Maybe the good Festival will have us back next year? For now, we’ll settle for our Friday mornings, for knuckling down to finish what we’ve started, and for another cup of tea.
Writer and teacher Rachel Kerr runs creative writing groups for Queensbury Community Programme and Cross Gates Good Neighbours Scheme, as well as her own courses.
