Writing the North: Transports of Delight?

Kieren King, Slamchester. Image Credit: Garry Cook.

Each month Keith Fenton, a Leeds-based performance poet, broadcaster and host of Poets Talking Bollocks podcast, explores the events, people and debates shaping literary culture in the North. This month, he turns his attention to the gulf between Leeds’ creative energy and the infrastructure that contains it, exploring how a city overflowing with talent risks stifling its own brilliance when late-night buses, social spaces and community connection are missing links.

It’s just after midsummer, and I am at the brilliant Kieren King’s first Slamchester event. There are 8 poets competing, 4 of whom I already know, including the eventual winner Biz Bond, who had performed at our Poets Talking Bollocks Presents. I know that 4 of them will be brilliant and edgy, and I’m about to discover that the other 4 are too. There’s also an open mic, and I discovered that these performers are also brilliant and edgy.

On the way back to Leeds, I find myself wondering if we could have put a night of that standard on in Leeds, and the answer is “not easily”. It’s not that we don’t have the talent. Our young slammers more than hold their own, often placing, and sometimes winning, competitions nationally. Our spoken word circuit is vibrant and varied, and some of the best page poets in the country call this their home.

Biz Bond, Slamchester. Image Credit: Garry Cook.

But something is missing. Despite the vast array of events in and around Leeds, we just don’t seem to have the same edge. When I really started to become active on the poetry scene, I found too many places had the same faces each time – I’d go out one night and find no-one under 50 in the room, then the next night there’d be no-one over 30 in the room (apart from me). My mission has always been to get as many people as possible going to each others’ events, and for new ones to spring up, so that we can mix things up as much as possible. However brilliant the poets in a room are, if they are the same people every month, things are liable to stagnate.

It’s getting on for 11pm at Hyde Park Book Club, about a year ago. I am leaving an event through the main bar and some friends, who have not been at the event, call my name. I go over and say hello, they invite me to stop for a pint and I have to say no, sorry, I’m heading down into Woodhouse to get the last bus. I would have loved to have stayed. I get down to the bus stop and the bus does not arrive on time. Or 10 minutes after time. Or 15 minutes after. The bus drops off the display board. Cancelled. These cancellations are a regular occurrence. On top of that, even if the last buses do turn up, they are generally no later than 11/11.30. I call a cab and go home. If I’d known this would have happened, I’d have just stayed with my pals.

Hyde Park Book Club. Image Credit: Hannah Guy.

I’m lucky. Although I’m not made of money, I can afford a cab home once in a while. Also, I’m a big burly bloke, with perhaps less reason to worry about being stranded at night. But it could have been someone vulnerable who also couldn’t afford the cab fare home. And I have a car, so next time I can make a decision to drive. But for so many on our circuit, that is not an option.

It is Friday 21 November. I am at Social Refuge in Manchester’s Northern Quarter for a Love Poetry Hate Racism event. My digs for the night are in Longsight, a few miles away. The event ends at 11pm, but many of us stay in the bar afterwards and socialise. A few of these are people I know from having gone to other Manchester events and it’s great to catch up with those and meet new people. The bar shuts at midnight, and some of us go on to Northern Monk to catch up some more. The bar shuts at 1am and we are allowed to keep chatting till 1.20. I am ready to call it a night and so are a lot of the others, but a few will go on to other venues and the night will continue for them. I say goodbye to everyone and walk round the corner to a bus-stop. A bus arrives 10 minutes later and 15 minutes after that, I am dropped off 5 minutes’ walk from where I’m staying. 

The Manchester poetry crowd have these options all the time. They can get home all through the night without a car and without shelling out for a cab, meaning that they can cross-pollinate more, go to each others’ events and make them more diverse – in terms of humanity and creativity – and vibrant. They get to know each other beyond snatching a few words between sets at events they have to rush home from so they aren’t stranded, like we have to do. I am very proud to be part of the Leeds scene, but we are being let down by a public transport system which would not be fit for purpose even if it worked as advertised. It means we hardly ever get to socialise after events, certainly not without worrying about the clock, and a lot of events are simply impossible for many people to get to.

At Poets Talking Bollocks Presents, we don’t always get the diversity and vibrancy I’m looking for in a room, but we often do. However, this is not because we are doing anything better than anyone else, in my view. Our advantage is that we are on a Sunday afternoon, so people have a better chance of getting to us from across town or from out of town, knowing that they will have time to get home. Also, we can have more breaks for socialising. But this advantage should apply at all times of the day and night. Big improvements are planned for the transport in Leeds in the next decade, but we are a long way away from actually seeing this, and although I have high hopes in what Tracy Brabin and her team might achieve, there is time for the political landscape to shift and for the political will to dissipate. However, they could take smaller measures more quickly, like opening up night-routes and ensuring that cancellations are no longer acceptable. They have the power now to make our streets safer, our communities and businesses better connected, Leeds the 24-hour city it has long claimed to be, and to elevate the extraordinary creativity which already exists here and give it the tools it deserves to thrive even more. 

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