UEA Literary Festival: Paul Farley

On March 27^th I attended the last event of the UEA Literary Festival before Easter break featuring the poet Paul Farley. He won the Whitbread Poetry Award and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize for his second work titled, The Ice Age. He won the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection and Somerset Maugham Award for his first collection, The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You. Farley recently came out with a work called, The Dark Film.  He currently lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Lancaster.

The event took place in the Lecture Theatre One at the University of East Anglia. The audience was the most empty I had a seen at a literary event, with the room being only one quarter full.  The audience was dressed casually and was mainly middle-aged, with some elderly people as well. There were only one or two people that looked around the age of students. This could be due to the fact that this event took place the week before East break when students may be busy doing work to meet deadlines or revising for exams. I am not sure if workers in the surrounding areas have a substantial amount of time off for East as well, but, if they do, that also may account for the lack of audience members. If that is not the case, then perhaps not many people may know of Paul Farley or have an interest in him and his work. In the crowd, however, I did recognize a few people from the audience at past events. One audience member I recognized was a woman who is in a wheelchair and always sits in the very back, probably because she would not be able to go down the stairs and sit closer to the stage. Another woman I recognized is a poet who read her works at the International Women’s Day event held at the Millennium Library in earlier weeks. I have noticed that she and a man who appears to be her husband have attended many of the literature events, demonstrating that she does indeed have a true and keen interest in literature.

This particular event at the University of East Anglia Literary Festival seemed to be more formal in terms of how it was run than the past events. There were more workers greeting people at the doors of Lecture Theatre One and they were dressed in business-casual wear as opposed to just casual wear. The workers at the door were handing out flyers advertising poetry events to be held in May, most likely to give advance notice to the people who were showing possible interest in poetry by attending events of the Literary Festival.  As is the case at each event, tables were et up near the entrance of Lecture Theatre One with pamphlets of upcoming events and lectures at the University of East Anglia. I believe the reason this particular event of the Literary Festival was more formal and informative about upcoming literary events was because thi was the last event to be held until after the East break in May. Because so much time would be passing, one can assume they wanted to leave a positive impression upon attendees and give them even more information about upcoming events so they could mark them in their calendars so as not forget about them over the Easter holiday. This was further proven by the host reminding the audience about the last three events that were going to be put on in May as part of the Literary Festival.

At the start of the event, the host introduced Farley as normal. Farley began by reading from his new collection, which has yet to be published, giving the audience a nice free preview of his new works. Advance copies were being sold in Waterstone’s after the show, so if audience members liked what they heard, they had the ability to get a copy of it first. After this brief reading, Farley went on to read poems from his older collections, saying he wanted to read his older work to avoid giving a “shameless plug” for his new work. Throughout his readings he made humorous comments about his poems.  He also spoke about poetry in general, saying how poetry has the ability to take one by surprise. He read a good range of poems, from depressing poems to humorous poems about the Queen. I found, though, that Farley spent more time speaking to the audience about his work than he did reading to them, which was not what any other speakers had done.

The reading lasted about a half hour and then went into a conversation with the host. Farley spoke about living in Liverpool and about his transition from being a painter to a poet. Also, I noticed that, unlike past participants, Farley was sipping on a Bulmer’s Cider drink as opposed to a glass of water. I was very surprised that as a participant Farley would choose to drink an alcoholic beverage in front of the audience, as many could take this to be unprofessional. Despite the fact he only had one drink and did not seem to finish it all, there is always the possibility the alcohol could affect his performance to the audience. After the conversation, the audience could ask questions. They mainly asked about Farley’s transition from painting to poetry, which interestingly enough he said he made due to economics.  It was more economical to write than paint. The fact that people asked more about his career choice than his poetry work makes me wonder if they were more interested in learning about the career than his work.