fahrenheit451:345

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 of a wider City lit fest.
It would also create some major strategic P.R. media  momentum for the #WakeyLit19 launch later on in September having prepared, at least to some worthwhile degree a wider name recognition and interest in a lit,fest especially linked to promoting local schools and the works of pupils. Win ,win,right?
Here's what actually happened.The idea never left the drawing board.

Not acknowledging receipt of initial,original email correspondence seems to be acceptable, common professional business practice. 

 

I had personally phoned the admin office at each of the seven schools to ascertain that I had the correct email address and contact details for the school and the headteacher.

 

On June 3, I sent the email ,the gist of which contained the  following: 

 

" As Founder of Destiny Poets and Editorial Administrator of http://www.destinypoets.co.uk we can promote your school and your pupils' creativity and work as an integral part of #WakeyLit19 on our established social media platforms to a discerning global online audience.
If you would like to take up our unconditional invitation to participate and be part of the new exciting #WakeyLit19, we can provide,at no charge,two poetry workshop sessions plus all the additional necessary professional technical guidance and assistance to help you post and promote your pupils' work in a fitting and positive manner that promotes not only your school's reputation but that of our city too.
I am available to make preliminary visits to your school and discuss the practicalities of this offer at whichever time and date is most convenient to you."

 

Seven separate headteachers at seven separate local schools within the city of Wakefield were sent this email , none of them even deigned to acknowledge that they had received it and would get back to me in due course- as you might expect from any professional business or individual to do as a matter of common courtesy and good business practice.

 

One week later, I phoned round all the schools and had to re-acquaint the admin staff with the gist of my original email and the date on which I had sent it,They all in turn said they had passed on that email to their Headteacher. They all gave the same basic answer that the reason it hadn't been acknowledged let alone replied to was that the Headteacher would have replied had they been interested in the offer! 

 

I asked how could I possibly judge if they were interested or not,if they didn't acknowledge having read my original email?

All the admin staff suggested I re-send the original email and that they would make sure that the Headteacher would get to see the email.

This I did on June 11- 8 days after my initial offer.

Once again,none of the Headteachers responded in any fashion,let alone with a simple courteous acknowledgement of receipt.

 

So, there you have it ; the response of seven inner city schools charged with the academic welfare of thousands of pupils to the magnanimous offer of  -

Would you like to take up our unconditional invitation to participate and be part of the new exciting #WakeyLit19, we can provide,at no charge,two poetry workshop sessions plus all the additional necessary professional technical guidance and assistance to help you post and promote your pupils' work in a fitting and positive manner that promotes not only your school's reputation but that of our city too...etc etc.

 

is.......Go shove it,we're not talking to you.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Part 2 of  the " Downside" also involves unprofessional, discourteous numpties seemingly incapable of responding to perfectly straightforward questions. In this case a Midlands -based group of performance poets who within the space of a few days went from - "we can bring our show to Wakefield", to " we can't work with you because of your politics".

Mike Took has still yet to enlighten me as to what he thinks my politics are and why he had to withdraw his offer to me because of what he thinks my politics are.

Herewith gleaned from fb Messenger a somewhat desultory conversation.

 

Sounds fab Louis - sorry not to have replied yesterday - the show is only 1 hour long. Could you do 8-9pm?

Louis

No worries.You'll come on at 8.The gig will be suitably warmed up with an open mic session from 7.Feel free to post any relevant links you wish for your show on the #WakeyLit19 page.I'll edit the timetabled events accordingly in due course.

 

Brilliant! I am slammed this week with organising LeamPoFest next weekend but will get straight on this after that. Thanks Louis!

Louis

 

8 JUL 2019, 18:41

 

Hi Louis I am sorry but I am cancelling our involvement with your planned festival. I and my colleagues do not share your politics and, as #FourApocalypsePoets is ostensibly a political show it would clearly be a mis-placed event. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

8 JUL 2019, 20:57

Louis

Sorry to hear that.All I'm doing is putting together a basic week of daytime and evening events as a stop gap kind of week because the official lit fest isn't running. I reaally dont see what my "politics" has anything to do with anything re literature festivals.Its venues and gigs and performers.And I think your show would have been a great addition.Please do let me know where the dots join up.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Part 3 of the "Downside" ought really have been the preamble because it came really early on, so early it can be said that this idea never even made it on to the drawing board let alone any rough draft.

 

Mary Creagh MP turned down my invitation for her to be Official Patron of #WakeyLit19. 

 

" I am therefore unable to accept your invitation to be Patron of your project." was as much as can be shared without wading into some pretty deep waters.  Why her as Patron in the first place? well, checkout The Wakefield Poetry Picture Archive at www.destinypoets.co.uk

 

_________________________________________________________________________________And finally ,Part 4 of the  "Downside" ,which I include in this portmanteau of documented history of #WakeyLit19 simply to illustrate that the anti-Christian bigotry together with an ideological sectarian hatred directed at me kept rearing its ugly head even during #WakeyLit19 .

What had first seemed like a bit of an organisational tragedy before September had lapsed ineluctably into outright farce from this eejit on September 19th. Plastered all across social media.Nice.

I've excluded the slander and vilification preceding these comments.

 

William Anderson Gaskill Joe Williams Because Louis Kasatkin has contacts with the Wakefield Express and certain other organisations that I don't have, but today demonstrates that he cannot generate an event from the bottom, up, which is what I am trying to do. As regards, 2020, Louis Kasatkin is now another unknown quantity that I will have to deal with.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

So, onward to #WakeyLit2020 !!!

fahrenheit451:344

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 strategy 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 Of Wakefield, Cllr. Charlie Keith.

The undoubted jewel in the crown of the week long, unfunded grassroots organised #WakeyLit19 was the series of Writers’ Showcases events hosted at the Mocca Moocho cafe  which featured a strong line-up of locally connected Authors from a broad range of literary genres:-

Joanne Brandon, Sarah Connell, Sue Featherstone, Dale Brendan Hyde, Barbara Phipps, Stephen Place and Neil White.

None of whom had ever been invited to take part in the now,moribund and defunct predecessor Wakefield Literature Festival.

#WakeyLit19 received practical support and expressions of solidarity from many well-wishers.And despite some relatively minor hiccups in the week,#WakeyLit19 most definitely “flew”, on schedule and to budget; which of course was £0.00.

fahrenheit451:343

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 now more than a decade of indolence and indifference exhibited by elected political representatives toward advocating / campaigning for anything other than the prestige projects favoured by the local coterie of metropolitan cultural elitist toadies?

Back in March 29 ,2014 I posted the following in this here And So It Goes  Blog #452.

Here’s something I’ve WikiLeaked from my very own archives :- This validates my assertion,long held,that Wakefield would be better off being obliterated by a meteorite than what it has endured from its own City leaders over the years.

Public Correspondence : ARCHIVE MATERIAL : 18 / 04 / 2005 : Yorkshire Evening Post

New schools’ venture for city is well-versed

Updated on the18April 2005 10:44

Published 18/04/2005 09:21

By ALAN YORK

A NEW joint venture aimed at bringing poetry into schools across the Wakefield diocese was being launched today.

Poetry Wakefield is the idea of Cathedral poet-in-residence Louis Kasatkin, the Cathedral Poets and the Black Horse Poets, and is sponsored by Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency.

It takes the form of a quarterly booklet of poems and information about poetry and has won the full support of the Bishop of Wakefield, the Right Rev Stephen Platten, who has even written a verse which is included in the first issue. It goes:

There was a young man of Cleckheaton

Whose verses were not worth repeating

For first he would swear

Then fly into the air

With rhymes that were no’but expleting.

He said: “This is the sort of writing that Poetry Wakefield: City and Diocese will not encourage! But my doggerel limerick does draw attention to the need to encourage young poets in schools throughout the Diocese of Wakefield.

Encourage

“This, Louis Kastakin, the Cathedral Poets and others intend to encourage. Yorkshire Forward has given us financial support and so we hope to be given further support by other bodies too.

“The production of a quarterly periodical will allow us to bring together the poetic talents of West Yorkshire and to encourage others to write. Who knows – even I may improve my versing if I become a regular reader.”

The launch was being carried out at Treacy Hall at the Cathedral.

Mr Kastakin, who has been poet-in-residence at the Cathedral since 2001, said: “This is another very real and tangible step in awakening the sleeping giant of poetry within schools and the local community.”

The two poets’ groups have set a goal of establishing an annual ‘Gissing Prize for Schools’ named after Wakefield-born George Gissing, one of England’s leading 19th century writers.

He was born in 1857 in Wakefield city centre in Thompson’s Yard, off Westgate.

He died in 1904 having written 23 novels, one of which, A Life’s Morning, is set in a thinly-disguised Wakefield and was re-published in a limited edition by the Gissing Trust last yea r to mark the 100th anniversary of his death.

In his hey day, Gissing was a literary superstar and his work still attracts devoted attention from academics, writers and readers around the world.

Galleries

Letters supporting a bid by the poets for Arts Council funding have been sent by Bishop Platten, former Wakefield MP David Hinchliffe, Wakefield Local Education Authority and the Wakefield Diocesan Board of Education.

Local museums, galleries, libraries, the Cathedral and Ottakar’s bookstore will all stock the quarterly.

Addendum : and of course the funding ran out.

fahrenheit451:342

Just for the record.

There are around 400 so-called “Lit.Fests” staged annually throughout the UK. 400.That’s one per day and some to spare.

Apart from a very few well known internationally ranked events such as those staged at Cheltenham and Cardiff and Ilkley, most of the rest vary in popularity and standing.

Most of the 400 follow a general template that basically is off- the -shelf and with only the prefix of the geographic location to distinguish and differentiate one litfest from any other litfest.

Their programme of events, the Arts Council funding,the roster of invited named performers et al are pretty much bog standard.

Locally based authors and poets as a rule get the crumbs left over once the named names -the culturally elite privileged performers -have pocketed the bulk of the arts council funding which the Anonymous litfest had applied for.

And so once the central funding gets cut, once the metropolitan cultural elitist establishment cronies fail to schmooze with their old university pals ,the local organisers abandon their culturally misappropriated fiefdom as if it had suddenly contracted bubonic plague, and they leave it to die.

Which is just about what happened here in Wakefield. And what is Wakefield ? the historic Merrie City ,the 11th.largest city in the UK , a population of around 300k. that is numerically comparable to Salzburg,Austria for example and double in size to Bruges,Belgium.

Except, of course, everyone’s heard of Salzburg and Bruges. Which happen to be my favourite two cities.

Abandoned,dead and buried these last two years, 2017 and 18, I searched the internet for signs of anything that might’ve indicated some attempt to do something along the lines of a lit type fest and surprisingly found nothing; nada,zilch.

What do people call it when  something that was dead and buried is brought back to full life ? (No,they DO NOT call it  a frikkin zombie..wrong genre entirely)

checkout https://www.facebook.com/groups/WakefieldLiteratureFestival2019/

All the details, all the background , all the articles.

And this time we have a LitFest , a literature festival, conceived, organised and promoted by actual Writers and Poets who really do know what they’re doing.

fahrenheit451:341

October 31st. had better eventuate. We had better Leave the EU on that date.

Just when you thought the interminably egregious, otiose cant and vacuous moralistic slogans of the EU funded seditionist Remain aka Peoples Vote campaign couldn’t delve any further into uncharted depths of paranoid delusion…

Corporate MSM and other platforms announce that, ” A judge sitting in Scotland’s highest civil court has rejected an interim interdict (injunction) to prevent to the suspension of parliament. Lord Doherty said he believed the full hearing set down for next Friday should be moved forward to Tuesday or Wednesday.”

The judicial foray in Edinburgh is contemporaneous with virtually similar legalistic manoeuvres in London and Belfast.

Parliament is being prorogued.Only this time, for the first time since Oliver Cromwell ,significant and influential sections of our metropolitan domiciled liberal europhile elite are keen to bring the uneducated masses into the polemical fray by dispensing their very own bowdlerised explanation of what is a pretty arcane, customary and heretofore uneventful parliamentary / constitutional mechanism.

Having insidiously slandered, defamed and demonised the 17.4 million, with a pathological intensity not heard since Josef Goebbels apogee ,the EU funded seditionist cabal are finding themselves desperately short of any appropriately nuanced denunciations of Prime Minister Johnson and his government. 

Even the customary bulk Remaoner hashtags have lapsed into quasi-comedic parody, simply through lack of editorial oversight;

#NoDealBrexit is trending as #NoDealBreixt and #StopTheCoup went sideways twice as #StopTheCoupe and #StopTheCoop .

The already lamentably procrastinating parliamentary persiflage lapsed quickly into the piteous ,uni-student common room agitator-manque speak ,best embodied by that fat stupid Scots twerp Ian Blackford whose record is stuck on calling our Prime Minister as a dictator.

And way too many Labour /other left commentators and academics self identifying as “marxist” have established now beyond reasonable dialectical doubt that they in fact have never been or are even remotely now, Marxist.

fahrenheit451:340

Brexit having sucked virtually all the political debating oxygen out of the UK polity these last few years, has as I’ve posted before, curbed my penchant and enthusiasm for blogging from a previous average of 8 or 9 blog posts per month down to a bare average of 5 such posts per month.

And even that has me rummaging around , often in previous years for the really substantive posts on Brexit.

Even the predominant themes and issues currently holding sway in the West has been reduced to some kind of near-paranoia concerning The Peoples’ Republic of China and its economic prowess.

The imbroglio in Syria gets little coverage across the corporate MSM in comparison to what it once did 4 or 5 years ago.Mainly because the Syrian government forces with Russian and Iranian assistance have in large part prevailed.The US and its deluded EUNATO satrapies have neither the will,appetite or logistics any more to seriously alter the ,now seemingly ineluctable outcome.Only quasi-bankrupt Turkey under the egotistical maniacal leadership of Erdogan is still in position to perpetuate the looming folly of a third world war by accident or miscalculation.

Trump meanwhile causes barely concealed sniggering in enquring after the availability of Greenland for purchase by the USA.

Yes, it was ,as it turns out being serious. Snark turned to faux- outrage,compounded by his unilateral cancelling of a state visit to Denmark after their Premier stated the blindingly obvious that its territory of Greenland was not up for sale.

And in conclusion, even the last chance saloon ,eleventh hour desperate gamble against overwhelming diplomatic odds to force through Brexit by Premier Johnson seems to be to enamoured of caution and overshadowed by the ghost of premiers past such as May rather than the putative future seemingly vouchedsafe to the Leave voters.

Postscript – The Amazon Rainforest is burning. Quite a lot it seems.Cue Saint Greta and more eco-millenarian hysteria from leading western politicians.

fahrenheit451:339

If muskets and halberds were to hand,then all sides in the Brexit debate would by now have resorted to using them.

The current version of Leave / Remain -whatever happens next ,has the UK bidding the 27 adieu on October 31st.

And,of course the interminable exchange of invective and partisan ideological opinion,half-truth  and intemperate persiflage continues unabated; only the hashtags have changed and continue to do so over time.

#Yellowhammer refers to the cache of civil service documents exploring  possible scenarios of economic difficulties the UK might encounter following our actual departure from the EU,were it to go ahead,on October 31.

#RecallParliament is the cri de coeur of disparate forces under the Remain banner who are convinced that Prime Minister Johnson will in effect force the UK into what they feel is a wholly precipitous departure from the EU on October 31 via potential machinations involving what might be considered violations of acceptable parliamentary procedure.

However the  “Public Law for Everyone ” site sheds some considerable insight and understanding on the entire constitutional imbroglio. Herewith gleaned in full…

• POSTED ONAUGUST 18, 2019

The Brexit Secretary says he has “set in stone” the repeal of the European Communities Act 1972 — but the legal significance of this misleading claim is very limited

Earlier today, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, Stephen Barclay MP, posted a tweet saying that he had “signed the legislation setting in stone the repeal” of the European Communities Act 1972 (ECA). (The ECA is the UK statute that gives effect to EU law in the UK’s domestic legal system.) He went on to assert that this is a “landmark moment” because it “underlines that we are leaving the EU on 31 October”.

Steve Barclay MP

@SteveBarclay

I have signed the legislation setting in stone the repeal of the European Communities Act 1972. This is a landmark moment in taking back control of our law. It underlines that we are leaving the EU on October 31.

At best, this is misleading. All that Barclay has done is to bring into force section 1 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (EUWA). It says that: “The European Communities Act 1972 is repealed on exit day.” However, the effect of bringing section 1 into effect is decidedly modest. Most importantly — and, given the wording of the section, obviously — bringing that provision into force does not immediately repeal the ECA: rather, it only repeals it on “exit day”. “Exit day” is currently defined by section 20(1) of the Act as 31 October. But other provisions in section 20 enable the definition of “exit day” to be amended if the date of the UK’s departure from the EU changes under EU Law. Indeed, this is precisely what happened when extensions to the Article 50 period were agreed between the UK and the European Council in the spring.

There is no legal reason why this could not happen again — and, crucially, bringing section 1 of the EUWA into force makes absolutely no difference to this point. Whether section 1 is in force or not, it only produces legal effects from “exit day”. It follows that if, for example, Parliament were to require the Government to seek, and if the European Council were to grant, a further Article 50 extension, the definition of “exit day” could be further amended in order to ensure that the ECA was repealed only with effect from the new, later date of the UK’s departure from the EU.  This, in turn, means that — contrary to his claim — the Brexit Secretary has not “set in stone” the repeal of the ECA. The EUWA explicitly contemplates that “exit day” can be changed in order to enable it to be aligned with the actual date of the UK’s departure from the EU.

This leads on to a further, and critical, point. “Exit day” is a concept whose relevance liis wholly in domestic law. It is the date on which various provisions of the EUWA swing into action, in order to ensure that the domestic legal consequences of leaving the EU are appropriately managed — including by converting vast swathes of EU law into domestic law. However, the domestic definition of “exit day” has no bearing whatever on when and whether the UK leaves the EU. That is a matter that is governed exclusively by EU law. Similarly, whether the ECA is in force or not has no bearing on whether or when the UK leaves the EU — although if the UK were to repeal the ECA before leaving the EU, it would immediately be in breach of EU law. From this, it follows that whether the ECA is repealed or not is neither here nor there when it comes to whether or when the UK leaves the EU. All it is relevant to is whether, for as long as it remains a member, the UK does or does not comply with the legal obligations under the EU Treaties that are binding on it in international law.

All of this demonstrates that the legal significance of bringing section 1 of the EUWA into force is extremely limited. It does not “set in stone” the repeal of the ECA, because the legal meaning of “exit day” can be changed and the date of the ECA’s repeal deferred. It does not prevent the UK Government from seeking an Article 50 extension. It does not prevent Parliament from legislating to require the UK Government to seek an Article 50 extension. It does not prevent the European Council from granting an extension if the UK Government asks for one, whether of its own volition or at Parliament’s insistence. And it does not prevent Parliament, if it so wishes, from legislating to revoke the UK’s notification under Article 50, thereby stopping the Brexit process in its tracks. The politics, of course, are another thing. But any suggestion that ECA repeal has been “set in stone”, or that this somehow locks in 31 October as the inevitable date of the UK’s departure from the EU, is wrong as a matter of law. ECA repeal, and Brexit itself, are no more “set in stone” today than they were in the spring, when “exit day” was twice redefined in domestic law and the Article 50 period was twice extended as a matter of EU law.

And so it goes…