A Leap of Faith

A Leap in the Dark 48  

Saturday 12th September 2020 

A LEAP OF FAITH 

An evening curated by Marie-Elsa Bragg. Her guests are the distinguished theologian Professor Paul Fiddes, author Gary Lachman, writer, psychotherapist and writer Mark Vernon and the poet Amali Rodrigo. There will be music by Melanie Pappenheim. There's no charge for taking part in A Leap in the Dark, but please make a donation, no matter how large, to The Trussell Trust. And please continue to do so! 

 The Programme 

 1 The Pale Usher welcomes you 

 2 Marie-Elsa Bragg on ‘Process Theology’ 

 3 A conversation with Paul Fiddes 

 4 Poetry from Amali Rodrigo Interval 

 5 Melanie Pappenheim sings ’O Virtus Sapientiae’ by Hildegard von Bingen 

6 The Settee Salon: Marie-Elsa Bragg, Gary Lachman and Paul Vernon 

7 Paul and Amali join the settee 

8 The Pale Usher signs off 

The Company 

 Marie-Elsa Roche Bragg is half French, half Cumbrian and was brought up in London. Her first novel Towards Mellbreak (2017) is about four generations of a Cumbrian hill farming family and her second, Sleeping Letters (2019) is the description of the ritual of the Eucharist alongside a compilation of poetry, memoir and fragments of un-sent letters. Both are published by Chatto & Windus. She writes for Radio 4, Church Times, Tablet and other papers. She is a Priest in the diocese of London. https://marie-elsabragg.com 

Paul S. Fiddes is a British Baptist theologian and novelist. He is Professor of Systematic Theology in the University of Oxford and was formerly Principal of Regent's Park College, Oxford and Chairman of the Theology Faculty. Professor Fiddes has been described as "one of the leading scholars of theology and literature writing today" and "one of the foremost theological thinkers of the modern age". Among 25 authored or edited books, his book The Creative Suffering of God is "considered to be one of the major contributions to theology in the last decades of the 20th century". His first novel, A Unicorn Dies. A Novel of Mystery and Ideas, was published in 2018. 

Garry Lachman is the author of many books on consciousness, culture, and the Western esoteric tradition, including Rudolf Steiner: An Introduction to His Life and Work, A Secret History of Consciousness, and Politics and the Occult. He writes for several journals in the US and UK and lectures on his work in the US and Europe. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and he has appeared in several radio and television documentaries. A founding member of the rock group Blondie, Lachman was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. https://garylachman.co.uk 

Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, and polymath. She wrote theological, botanical, and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs for women choirs to sing and poems. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most-recorded in modern history. She is the patron saint of creativity. Melanie Pappenheim is a singer, composer and performer. 

Amali Rodrigo was born and grew up in Sri Lanka. She has lived in Mozambique, Kenya and India, and is now based in London, researching a PhD while working as an associate lecturer at Lancaster University. She won the Magma judge's prize and second prize in the Poetry London poetry competition, both in 2012, and has been highly commended in numerous others including the Bridport, Ballymalore International and Wasafiri poetry prizes. Her first collection, Lotus Gatherers, was published by Bloodaxe in 2016. https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/category/amali-rodrigo 

Mark Vernon is a writer, broadcaster and journalist. He writes for The Guardian, The Philosophers' Magazine, Financial Times and New Statesman. He has appeared on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time. Vernon was formerly a Church of England priest, but has since become an agnostic Christian, a position about which he now writes and speaks. He has a degree in theology from the University of Oxford and another theology degree and a physics degree from Durham University. He also has a PhD in philosophy from University of Warwick and is an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. https://www.markvernon.com 

The Pale Usher is David Collard, who organises these gatherings. The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality. (from Moby-Dick by Herman Melville) 

 Next Friday’s Leap is dedicated to W. H. Auden and we’ll be reading some of his most celebrated verses as well as some off-trail writing that reflects his tremendous range as a critic, essayist, critic, journalist and all-round literary hack. We’ll have readings from seasoned Leapers Kevin Boniface, Marie-Elsa Bragg, Susanna Crossman, Kevin Davey, Amy McCauley, J O Morgan, Dan O’Brien, Aea Varfis van-Warmelo and others. David Collard will introduce a rare screening of the remarkable and rarely-seen Britten/Auden collaboration The Way to the Sea (1936), and the poet himself will join us in some archive recordings. Stay well! The Pale Usher

This Friday's Leap in the Dark

A Leap in the Dark 47 8pm Friday 11th September 2020 [Snappy heading needed here*] We’ll have readings by the poet Sasha Dugdale from her brilliant new collection Deformations; Laura Waddell will join us to mark the launch of her sparkling non-fiction debut exit; Susanna Crossman will deliver a Letter from Dinan; Linda Mannheim will make a close reading of ‘Locksmiths’, a superbly unsettling short story by Wendy Erskine (who will also be with us). The author Kevin Davey will introduce his forthcoming novel Radio Joan and there will be some Very New Poems from Christodoulos Makris. There's no charge for taking part in A Leap in the Dark, so please make a donation, no matter how large, to The Trussell Trust. * This is a deliberate metatextual gesture. The Programme 1 The Pale Usher welcomes you 2 Poems from Deformations read by Sasha Dugdale (published by Carcanet) Deformations includes two large-scale works related in their preoccupation with biographical and mythical narrative. 'Welfare Handbook' explores the life and art of Eric Gill, the well-known English letter cutter, sculptor and cultural figure, who is known to have sexually abused his daughters. The poem draws on material from Gill's letters, diaries, notes and essays as part of a lyrical exploration of the conjunction between aesthetics, subjectivity and violence. 'Pitysad' is a series of simultaneously occurring fragments composed around themes and characters from Homer's Odyssey. It considers how trauma is disguised and deformed through myth and art. Acting as a bridge between these two works is a series of individual poems on the creation and destruction of cultural and mythical conventions. Deformations is published by Carcanet www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781784108984 3 Laura Waddell on her new book exit Exits are all around us. They are the difference between travelling and arriving, being on the inside or outside. Whether signposted or subversive, personal or political, choices or holes we've fallen through, exits determine how we move around our lives, cities, and the world. What does it really mean to 'exit'? In these meditations on exits in architecture, transport, ancestry, language, garbage, death, Sesame Street and Brexit, Laura Waddell follows the neon and the pictograms of exit signs to see what's on the other side. exit is published by Bloomsbury www.bloomsbury.com/uk/exit-9781501358159/ 4 A Letter from Dinan by Susanna Crossman 5 Linda Mannheim undertakes a close reading of ‘Locksmiths’, a short story by Wendy Erskine When we got back to the house all was quiet. She said, ‘So there’s no party?’ She would not have been surprised by a surprise party. ‘No there’s no party,’ I said. 6 Wendy responds to Linda’s close reading. ‘Locksmiths’ appears in Wendy’s debut collection Sweet Home (published by Picador) www.panmacmillan.com/authors/wendy-erskine/sweet-home/9781529017069 Interval 7 Kevin Davey on Radio Joan (published by Aaaargh! Press) www.aaaarghpress.com/books-pamphlets/radio-joan/ 8 Christadoulos Makris: Very New Poems 9 A second reading by Sasha Dugdale 10 The Pale Usher signs off The Company Susanna Crossman is an award-winning Anglo-French fiction writer and essayist. She has recent/upcoming work in Trauma (Dodo Ink, 2020), Neue Rundschau, (S. Fischer, 2019), (translated into German), We’ll Never Have Paris, (Repeater Books, 2019), The Creative Review, 3:AM Journal, The Lonely Crowd, Berfrois and more. Co-author of the French book, L'Hôpital Le Dessous des Cartes (LEH, 2015), she regularly collaborates on international hybrid arts projects. Her debut novel Dark Island will be published in 2021. For more: @crossmansusanna http://susanna-crossman.squarespace.com/ Kevin Davey is the author of Playing Possum and the forthcoming Radio Joan, both published by Aaaargh! Press. His non-fiction work includes the essay collection English Imaginaries (1999). Sasha Dugdale is a British poet, playwright and translator of Russian literature. She has published five poetry collections with Carcanet Press: Notebook (2003), The Estate (2007), Red House (2011), Joy (2017) and Deformations (2020). She won the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Single Poem, Joy in 2016 and a Cholmondeley Award in 2017. Dugdale specialises in translating contemporary Russian women poets and post-Soviet new writing for theatre. She has worked both in the United Kingdom and the United States on a number of productions, translating modern Russian plays. In 2020, she won an English PEN Translate Award for her translation of a collection of poetry by the Russian poet Maria Stepanova. Wendy Erskine works full-time as a secondary school teacher in Belfast. Her debut short story collection, Sweet Home, was published in 2018 by Stinging Fly and in 2019 by Picador. Her work has been published in The Stinging Fly, Stinging Fly Stories and Female Lines: New Writing by Women from Northern Ireland. She also features in Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (Faber and Faber), Winter Papers and on BBC Radio 4 Buy Sweet Home here: https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/wendy-erskine/sweet-home/9781529017069 Christadoulos Makris, described by the RTÉ Poetry Programme as “one of Ireland’s leading contemporary explorers of experimental poetics”, has published three books of poetry, most recently this is no longer entertainment (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2019), as well as several pamphlets, artists’ books and other poetry objects. Recent commissions and residencies include the Irish Museum of Modern Art and Maynooth University. He is the poetry editor at gorse journal. Linda Mannheim is the author of three books of fiction: Risk, Above Sugar Hill, and This Way to Departures. Her short stories have appeared in magazines in the US, UK, South Africa, and Canada. Her broadcast work has appeared on BBC Witness and KCRW Berlin. She is also the cohost of Why Why Why: The Books Podcast. https://www.lindamannheim.com Laura Waddell is a writer of fiction and narrative non-fiction published in 3:AM Magazine, McSweeneys, and Kinfolk and contributor to several books including Nasty Women, Know Your Place, The Digital Critic, We’ll Never Have Paris, We Were Always Here, and others. She writes a weekly column for the Scotsman newspaper, and her debut non-fiction book, Exit, was published this week by Bloomsbury. The Pale Usher is David Collard, who organises these gatherings. The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville Tomorrow’s Leap in the Dark is curated by Marie-Elsa Bragg, and, for one night only, we’ve renamed it A Leap of Faith for reasons that will become clear. Marie-Elsa’s guests include: - theologian Professor Paul Fiddes - author Gary Lachman - psychotherapist and writer Mark Vernon - poet Amali Rodrigo - soprano Melanie Pappenheim Please note that this unique gathering will be recorded. Stay well! The Pale Usher

Advance notice: A Leap in the Dark this Saturday

A Leap in the Dark 48 8pm Saturday 12th September 2020 A LEAP OF FAITH An evening curated by Marie-Elsa Bragg. Her guests are the distinguished theologian Professor Paul Fiddes, author Gary Lachman, writer, broadcaster and journalist Paul Vernon and the poet Amali Rodrigo. There will be music by Melanie Pappenheim. There's no charge for taking part in A Leap in the Dark, but please make a donation, no matter how large, to The Trussell Trust. And please continue to do so! The Programme The Pale Usher welcomes you 1 Melanie Pappenheim sings 2 Marie-Elsa Bragg on ‘Process Theology’ 3 A conversation with Paul Fiddes 4 Poetry from Amali Rodrigo Interval 5 Another song from Melanie 6 The Settee Salon: Marie-Elsa Bragg, Gary Lachman and Paul Vernon 7 Paul and Amali join the settee 8 A final song from Melanie The Pale Usher signs off The Company Marie-Elsa Roche Bragg is half French, half Cumbrian and was brought up in London. Her first novel Towards Mellbreak (2017) is about four generations of a Cumbrian hill farming family and her second, Sleeping Letters (2019) is the description of the ritual of the Eucharist alongside a compilation of poetry, memoir and fragments of un-sent letters. Both are published by Chatto & Windus. She writes for Radio 4, Church Times, Tablet and other papers. She is a Priest in the diocese of London. https://marie-elsabragg.com Paul S. Fiddes is a British Baptist theologian and novelist. He is Professor of Systematic Theology in the University of Oxford and was formerly Principal of Regent's Park College, Oxford and Chairman of the Theology Faculty. He has been described as "one of the leading scholars of theology and literature writing today" and "one of the foremost theological thinkers of the modern age". Among 25 authored or edited books, his book The Creative Suffering of God is "considered to be one of the major contributions to theology in the last decades of the 20th century". His first novel, A Unicorn Dies. A Novel of Mystery and Ideas, was published in 2018. Garry Lachman is the author of many books on consciousness, culture, and the Western esoteric tradition, including Rudolf Steiner: An Introduction to His Life and Work, A Secret History of Consciousness, and Politics and the Occult. He writes for several journals in the US and UK and lectures on his work in the US and Europe. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and he has appeared in several radio and television documentaries. A founding member of the rock group Blondie, Lachman was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. https://garylachman.co.uk Melanie Pappenheim is a singer, composer and performer. Amali Rodrigo was born and grew up in Sri Lanka. She has lived in Mozambique, Kenya and India, and is now based in London, researching a PhD while working as an associate lecturer at Lancaster University. She won the Magma judge's prize and second prize in the Poetry London poetry competition, both in 2012, and has been highly commended in numerous others including the Bridport, Ballymalore International and Wasafiri poetry prizes. Her first collection, Lotus Gatherers, was published by Bloodaxe in 2016. https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/category/amali-rodrigo Mark Vernon is a writer, broadcaster and journalist. He writes for The Guardian, The Philosophers' Magazine, Financial Times and New Statesman. He has appeared on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time. Vernon was formerly a Church of England priest, but has since become an agnostic Christian, a position about which he now writes and speaks. He has a degree in theology from the University of Oxford and another theology degree and a physics degree from Durham University. He also has a PhD in philosophy from University of Warwick and is an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. https://www.markvernon.com The Pale Usher is David Collard, who organises these gatherings. The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville Next Friday’s Leap is dedicated to W. H. Auden and we’ll be reading some of his most celebrated verses as well as some off-trail writing that reflects his tremendous range as a critic, essayist, critic, journalist and all-round literary hack. We’ll have readings from seasoned Leapers Kevin Boniface, Season Butler (TBC), Marie-Elsa Bragg, Susanna Crossman, Kevin Davey, Amy McCauley, J O Morgan, Dan O’Brien, Aea Varfis van-Warmelo and others. David Collard will introduce a rare screening of the remarkable and rarely-seen Britten/Auden collaboration The Way to the Sea (1936), and the poet himself will join us in some archive recordings. Stay well! The Pale Usher

Advance notice: A Leap in the Dark 47

A Leap in the Dark 47 8pm Friday 11th September 2020 [Snappy heading needed here] We’ll have readings by the poet Sasha Dugdale from her brilliant new collection Deformations; Laura Waddell will join us to mark the launch of her sparkling non-fiction debut exit; Susanna Crossman will deliver a Letter from Dinan; Linda Mannheim will make a close reading of ‘Locksmiths’, a superbly unsettling short story by Wendy Erskine (who will also be with us). The author Kevin Davey will introduce his forthcoming novel Radio Joan and there will be new work from poet Christodoulos Makris. There's no charge for taking part in A Leap in the Dark, so please make a donation, no matter how large, to The Trussell Trust. The Programme 1 The Pale Usher welcomes you 2 Poems from Deformations read by Sasha Dugdale (published by Carcanet) Deformations includes two large-scale works related in their preoccupation with biographical and mythical narrative. 'Welfare Handbook' explores the life and art of Eric Gill, the well-known English letter cutter, sculptor and cultural figure, who is known to have sexually abused his daughters. The poem draws on material from Gill's letters, diaries, notes and essays as part of a lyrical exploration of the conjunction between aesthetics, subjectivity and violence. 'Pitysad' is a series of simultaneously occurring fragments composed around themes and characters from Homer's Odyssey. It considers how trauma is disguised and deformed through myth and art. Acting as a bridge between these two works is a series of individual poems on the creation and destruction of cultural and mythical conventions. 3 Laura Waddell on her new book exit (published by Bloomsbury) Exits are all around us. They are the difference between travelling and arriving, being on the inside or outside. Whether signposted or subversive, personal or political, choices or holes we've fallen through, exits determine how we move around our lives, cities, and the world. What does it really mean to 'exit'? In these meditations on exits in architecture, transport, ancestry, language, garbage, death, Sesame Street and Brexit, Laura Waddell follows the neon and the pictograms of exit signs to see what's on the other side. 4 A Letter from Dinan by Susanna Crossman 5 Linda Mannheim undertakes a close reading of ‘Locksmiths’, a short story by Wendy Erskine When we got back to the house all was quiet. She said, ‘So there’s no party?’ She would not have been surprised by a surprise party. ‘No there’s no party,’ I said 6 Wendy responds to Linda’s close reading. ‘Locksmiths’ appears in Wendy’s debut collection Sweet Home (published by Picador) Interval 7 Kevin Davey on Radio Joan (published by Aaargh! Press) 8 Christadoulos Makris: new work 9 A second reading by Sasha Dugdale 10 The Pale Usher signs off The Company Susanna Crossman is an award-winning Anglo-French fiction writer and essayist. She has recent/upcoming work in Trauma (Dodo Ink, 2020), Neue Rundschau, (S. Fischer, 2019), (translated into German), We’ll Never Have Paris, (Repeater Books, 2019), The Creative Review, 3:AM Journal, The Lonely Crowd, Berfrois and more. Co-author of the French book, L'Hôpital Le Dessous des Cartes (LEH, 2015), she regularly collaborates on international hybrid arts projects. Her debut novel Dark Island will be published in 2021. For more: @crossmansusanna http://susanna-crossman.squarespace.com/ Kevin Davey is the author of Playing Possum and the forthcoming Radio Joan, both published by Aaargh! Press. His non-fiction work includes English Imaginaries (1999). Sasha Dugdale is a British poet, playwright and translator of Russian literature. She has published five poetry collections with Carcanet Press: Notebook (2003), The Estate (2007), Red House (2011), Joy (2017) and Deformations (2020). She won the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Single Poem, Joy in 2016 and a Cholmondeley Award in 2017. [2] Dugdale specialises in translating contemporary Russian women poets and post-Soviet new writing for theatre. She has worked both in the United Kingdom and the United States on a number of productions, translating modern Russian plays. In 2020, she won an English PEN Translate Award for her translation of a collection of poetry by the Russian poet Maria Stepanova. Wendy Erskine works full-time as a secondary school teacher in Belfast. Her debut short story collection, Sweet Home, was published in 2018 by Stinging Fly and in 2019 by Picador. Her work has been published in The Stinging Fly, Stinging Fly Stories and Female Lines: New Writing by Women from Northern Ireland. She also features in Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (Faber and Faber), Winter Papers and on BBC Radio 4 Buy Sweet Home here: https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/wendy-erskine/sweet-home/9781529017069 Christadoulos Makris described by the RTÉ Poetry Programme as “one of Ireland’s leading contemporary explorers of experimental poetics”, has published three books of poetry, most recently this is no longer entertainment (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2019), as well as several pamphlets, artists’ books and other poetry objects. Recent commissions and residencies include the Irish Museum of Modern Art and Maynooth University. He is the poetry editor at gorse journal. Linda Mannheim is the author of three books of fiction: Risk, Above Sugar Hill, and This Way to Departures. Her short stories have appeared in magazines in the US, UK, South Africa, and Canada. Her broadcast work has appeared on BBC Witness and KCRW Berlin. She is also the cohost of Why Why Why: The Books Podcast. https://www.lindamannheim.com Laura Waddell is a writer of fiction and narrative non-fiction published in 3:AM Magazine, McSweeneys, and Kinfolk and contributor to several books including Nasty Women, Know Your Place, The Digital Critic, We’ll Never Have Paris, We Were Always Here, and others. She writes a weekly column for the Scotsman newspaper, and her debut non-fiction book, Exit, will be published by Bloomsbury later this year. The Pale Usher is David Collard, who organises these gatherings. The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville Tomorrow’s Leap in the Dark is curated by Marie-Elsa Bragg, and, for one night only, we’ve renamed it A Leap of Faith for reasons that will become clear. Marie-Elsa’s guests include: - theologian Professor Paul Fiddes - author Gary Lachman - writer, broadcaster and journalist Paul Vernon - poetry from Asmali Rodrigo - music by Melanie Pappenheim Stay well! The Pale Usher

'You Have to Laugh' by David Holzer

As 'Guru Dave', David Holzer is A Leap in the Dark's resident yoga teacher. Over the past six months he has patiently tutored a lock-down audience in the rudiments of this practice and it's fair to say he's something of a cult. He has a following. The Pale usher looks on, warily. He's also a writer with many books to his name. On Saturday night he shared the following very short story with our Leap audience and has kindly allowed me to share it with you today. What you don't get, alas, is his deapan delivery of the hah-hah-hahs. You Have to Laugh by David Holzer ‘Who wants to go next?’ A girl stepped into the circle. We had to say the worst thing that had happened to us that year and everyone had to laugh. ‘Last year my ex-boyfriend died,’ she said. We laughed. ‘He asked me to be with him at the end.’ Some of us laughed. ‘I didn’t do it.’ A few laughed. ‘I feel so guilty.’ I was the only one who laughed. I whooped. I snorted. I shrieked. ‘Would you like to go next?’ the laughter yoga teacher said when I stopped. ‘No thanks.’ * * * The next day I was sitting at a table under a tree in what was called the Western Café getting ready to eat a vegan burrito followed by a gluten-free brownie with whipped soya cream and a green smoothie when a bird shit on me. There was shit on the table, all over my food, on my purple robe, in my hair and in my mouth. I had to go back to the room I shared with a Mother Amma devotee who was a Swiss banker, an Indian lad who’d been sent to the ashram from Singapore in the hope he’d stop thieving and a Russian with acne vulgaris, shower and change my robe for another. When I got back to the Western Café I ordered the same again but I didn’t sit under a tree. The Laughter Teacher appeared out of the shadows of the main hall where Amma hugged people and her devotees meditated upon her godliness. I waved to her. She came over. She had very white teeth. Her blue eyes were desperate. ‘This will make you laugh,’ I said. I told her the story of the bird shitting on me and my food. ‘Hah-hah-hah,’ she said. That was how she laughed, like she was speaking. A robot speaking. ‘Hah-hah-hah. Hah-hah-hah.’ Her trapped eyes. ‘I’ll tell you what happened to me,’ she said. ‘I was meditating this morning in front of the stage, where Mother usually sits and does her work. I was in child’s pose on my prayer mat, eyes closed, when I felt this weight on my head and neck.’ I laughed. ‘Hah-hah-hah,’ she said. ‘This huge woman had prostrated herself on the mat in front of me and she was too close to me. She sat down on my head.’ I laughed. ‘Hah-hah-hah,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. It was scared.’ I laughed. ‘Hah-hah-hah, she said. ‘She did something to my neck. It really hurts.’ I whooped. I snorted. I shrieked. ‘Hah-hah-hah,’ she said. ‘Hah-hah-hah.’ I took a deep breath, said ‘You have to laugh, don’t you?’ ‘Hah-hah-hah,’ she said. ‘Hah-hah-hah.’

The Last Four Leaps

The Pale Usher is about to retire to his three-story modernist bungalow in Pinner, where he will keep wasps and spend his twilight years contemplating the quattuor novissima, or Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. Serendipitously there are now just four more Leaps to go. Whether or not they could be said to align with the quattuor novissima is a three-pipe problem for any theologist. Friday 11th September Two readings by the poet Sasha Dugdale from her brilliant new collection Deformations; Laura Waddell joins us to mark the launch of her sparkling non-fiction debut exit; Susanna Crossman delivers a Letter from Dinan; Linda Mannheim scrutinises a short story by Wendy Erskine (who responds to said scrutiny); author Kevin Davey on his forthcoming novel Radio Joan and new work from Christodoulos Makris. Saturday 12th September Leap of Faith: an evening curated by Marie-Elsa Bragg Friday 18th September Auden and Company. From the firebrand voice of a generation in the 1930s to the serene and crankily devout Anglican of the post-war years. We’ll be navigating some off-trail writing that gives an idea of his tremendous range as a poet, dramatist, essayist, critic and film maker. Saturday 19th September Planning this last Leap I looked back to the very first, held in a dilapidated former Conservative Club in Paddington on 29th February. I wrote about it here: https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/3am-in-lockdown-15-david-collard/ I’m delighted to say that everyone who took part in that first Leap will join us fora final Leap in the Dark.

This new blogger format is absolutely terrible - I can't produce anything beyond plain text (no font options apart from this one, which appears to be the same fish hook serif that Auden insisted on using for his notorious Collected - the one in whic the peoms are organised alphabetically by title). And all my past blogs - nearly 900 of them - seem to have lost their original rormatting and look like a dog's breakfast. Very dispiriting. So it looks like my blogging days, which date back to 2013, are drawing quietly to a close. I'll post details of Leaps in the Dark and the forthcoming carthorse orchestra (but can't put that in red Courier bold) but will otherwise keep schtum. A LEAP IN THE DARK. Saturday 5th September An eclectic mix of poetry, prose, performance and yoga with first-time Leapers Ruby Cowling and Ben Pester, representing Boiler House Press; the latest instalment of ’24/7 Brexitland’ performed by the magnificent Malady Nelson (by arrangement with Amy McCauley), a visit to the studios of Henningham Family Press with David and Ping Henningham, the poet J O Morgan reading from his epic At Maldon and The Pale Usher on Billericay’s Grey Walls Press (held over from last Saturday’s works outing to Essex). The Programme 1 The Pale Usher welcomes you 2 Ruby Cowling on This Paradise 3 Yoga with Guru Dave 4 Ben Pester on Am I in the Right Place? 5 Amy McCauley (as Malady Nelson) performs 24/7 Brexitland part 4 Interval 6 David Holzer story 7 At Home with Henningham Family Press 8 J O Morgan reads from At Maldon 9 Grey Walls Press - 1940s Billericay and the avant-garde 10 The Pale Usher signs off The Company Ruby Cowling grew up in Bradford and lives in London. Her short fiction has won awards including The White Review Short Story Prize and the London Short Story Prize, and her publication credits include Lighthouse, The Lonely Crowd and Wasafiri. Her collection This Paradise (Boiler House Press) was longlisted for the 2020 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and is also longlisted for this year’s Edge Hill Prize. David and Ping Henningham are co-founders of Henningham Family Press, a microbrewery for books since 2006. They publish fiction and poetry. Their handmade editions can be found in the V&A, Tate, National Galleries Scotland and Stanford University. Their Performance Publishing shows compress the creation of printed matter into hectic live events. David Holzer is a dedicated yogi, author, blogger and journalist. He founded YogaWriters and has taught workshops in yoga for writers in Mallorca, where he lives. Hundreds of people have taken his Yoga for Writers course on the DailyOm platform (www.yogawriters.org). His writing appears regularly in Om yoga and lifestyle magazine. David will be explaining why yoga is so beneficial for writers and taking us through a simple yoga sequence that can be done by anyone of any age in the comfort of a favourite chair. Disclaimer Please take care when practicing yoga. Should a pose feel that it could be harmful to you, do not attempt it or come gently out of the pose. Breathing is a key part of yoga. Please breathe comfortably and naturally through your nose at all times. If your breath becomes forced, slow down the speed of your practice. If you feel any kind of sharp, sudden pain anywhere in your body stop practicing right away. Be especially aware of your joints, particularly your knees. Amy McCauley is a poet and freelance writer. She is the author of OEDIPA (Guillemot Press, 2018) and 24/7 Brexitland (No Matter Press, 2020). Amy’s first full-length collection of poetry will be published by Henningham Family Press in 2021. J O Morgan lives on a small farm in the Scottish Borders. His first book, Natural Mechanical (CB Editions, 2009), won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward First Collection Prize; its sequel, Long Cuts (CB Editions, 2011), was shortlisted for a Scottish Book Award. His third book, At Maldon (CB Editions, 2013), takes its bearings from the Old English poem ‘The Battle of Maldon’. It re-imagines the short-lived battle that took place on the Essex coast in 991AD, when a ragtag army of Anglo-Saxons was mustered to defend their land from Viking raiders. In 2015, Morgan published In Casting Off (HappenStance Press), a poem-novella that tells a love story that is set within a remote fishing community. Interference Pattern, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, appeared from Cape Poetry in 2016, and Assurances in 2018. Morgan's most recent work, The Martian's Regress (published by Cape in 2020) is set in the far future. Ben Pester lives in North London. His work has appeared in Granta, Hotel, Five Dials and other places. When not writing fiction, he is a technical author in the technology industry. His debut collection of short stories Am I in the Right Place? will be published by Boiler House Press. Aea Varfis-van Warmelo is a trilingual actor and writer. The Pale Usher is David Collard, who organises these gatherings. The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville The next Leap will be on Friday 11th September and will feature: - The poet Sasha Dugdale reading from her latest collection Deformations - Laura Waddell on the launch of her debut non-fiction book exit - A Letter from Dinan by Susanna Crossman - Linda Mannheim undertakes a close reading of a short story by Wendy Erskine - Wendy Erskine responds to Linda Mannheim’s close reading - Kevin Davey discusses his forthcoming novel Radio Joan - New work by poet Christodoulos Makris Stay well! The Pale Usher Posted by David J Collard at 08:43 No comments:

Tonight's Leap in the Dark

So here's the new-look blog format and no, me neither. A Leap in the Dark 45 8pm Friday 4th September 2020 An evening about/without David Rudkin “I am afflicted by images, by things that are seen, pictures of things. They are extraordinary, momentary, but they stay with me.” — David Rudkin, 1964 Following last Friday’s memorable reading of the complete Spring Journal, Jonathan Gibbs and Paula Cunningham discuss the legacy of Louis MacNeice, with readings from the poet’s work by Michael Hughes. Then we’ll have the first of two readings by the poet Julian Stannard from his forthcoming collection Heat Wave, followed by some thoughts from Sam Jordison of Galley Beggar Press about challenges facing small presses in 2021. After a short break we’ll celebrate the life and work of the dramatist and screenwriter David Rudkin (born 1936), among the finest writers of his generation - “a cussed, confrontational, highly original voice”. With thoughts from Ross McFarlane, Kevin Davey and The Pale Usher. There's no charge for taking part in A Leap in the Dark, but please make a donation, no matter how large, to The Trussell Trust. The Programme 1 The Pale Usher welcomes you 2 On Louis MacNeice: Jonathan Gibbs and Paula Cunningham in conversation with readings by Michael Hughes 3 Julian Stannard reads from his new collection Heat Wave 4 Reflections on this week’s bookalanche with Sam Jordison of Galley Beggar Press 5 Julian Stannard - a second reading from Heat Wave Interval 6 David Rudkin - a celebration 7 Ross McFarlane on David Rudkin’s Penda’s Fen The summer of 1973: Stephen Franklin, played by Spencer Banks, is an awkward, priggish 17-year-old, a vicar’s son, in love with an antiquated, delusory Englishness and its symbols – Elgar, the Church, the school cadet force. Over the course of a few weeks he discovers a new identity, new desires; his pomposity and prejudice are stripped away and he becomes maturer, gentler, more open to the world’s possibilities. ‘My race is mixed, my sex is mixed, I am woman and man ... I am mud and flame!’ 8 Kevin Davey on David Rudkin’s impact and cultural legacy 9 The Pale Usher remembers the first and only screening of Rudkin's controversial magnum opus From Radio Times (Tuesday 29 December 1981) Artemis 81 A film by DAVID RUDKIN with Hywel Bennett, Dinah Stabb, Dan O'Herlihy featuring Sting and Anthony Steel, Margaret Whiting, Roland Curram, Ingrid Pitt. A Danish museum case shattered, the pieces of a pagan statue hidden in cars on a North Sea ferry, the subsequent deaths of ferry passengers, an old musician terrified that a curse upon him will cause the devastation of the Earth. Gideon Harlax, a successful young novelist of ‘the paranormal and unexplained', thinks he has found the material for a new book. But as Gideon coldly exploits human tragedies, angry powers from Man's ancient past are gathering. Original music by DAVE GREENSLADE Passacaglia by GORDON CROSSE Film cameraman DAVID JACKSON Film editor MIKE HALL Designer GAVIN DAVIES Script editor ROGER GREGORY Producer DAVID ROSE Director ALASTAIR REID 10 The Pale Usher signs off The Company Paula Cunningham’s Heimlich's Manoeuvre, from smithdoorstop, was shortlisted for the Fenton-Aldeburgh, Seamus Heaney Centre, & Strong Shine 1st Collection Prizes. Poems have appeared in ‘Best British Poetry’ 2016, & have won national & international prizes. She has also written short fiction and placed 2nd in the 2014 Costa short story award. She is very slowly working on her second collection and attempting the odd essay. Kevin Davey is the author of Playing Possum and the forthcoming Radio Joan, both published by Aaargh! Press. His non-fiction work includes English Imaginaries (1999). Jonathan Gibbs is a writer and critic. His first novel, Randall, was published in 2014 by Galley Beggar Press and his second, The Large Door, by Boiler House Press in 2019. He has written on books for various publications including the TLS, Brixton Review of Books and The Guardian. He curates the online short story project A Personal Anthology, in which writers, critics and others are invited to 'dream-edit' an anthology of their favourite short fiction. His poem in 24 cantos Spring Journal is a response to the current coronavirus pandemic taking its cue very directly from Louis MacNeice's Autumn Journal. Michael Hughes is the author of two novels: Countenance Divine (2016) and Country (2018) both published by John Murray, the latter winning the 2018 Hellenic Prize. Under his stage name Michael Colgan he recently appeared in the acclaimed HBO television drama Chernobyl. Sam Jordison co-founded Galley Beggar Press. He writes for the Guardian, has written several works of non-fiction the best-selling Crap Towns series and Enemies Of The People, a book that was tragically right about everything and the awful people who have been wrecking our lives since 2016. Ross McFarlane is the Research Engagement Officer at the Wellcome Library in London. Julian Stannard lived and taught for many years in Genoa. His most recent poetry book – with artwork by Roma Tearne – is Average is the New Fantastico (Green Bottle Press). CBe publishes his What Were You Thinking? He co-edited a CBe book about Michael Hofmann, The Palm Beach Effect. A film of his poem ‘Sottoripa’ (about a district of Genoa) is on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/81617966 The Pale Usher is David Collard, who organises these gatherings. The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville Tomorrow’s Leap in the Dark (September 5th) is a fragrant potpourri - author Ruby Cowling on her short story collection This Paradise - Yoga with our resident mystic Guru Dave - Ben Pester on his forthcoming book Am I in the Right Place? - at home with Henningham Family Press - Amy McCauley (as Malady Nelson) performs 24/7 Brexitland (part 4) - a short story by David Holzer Stay well! The Pale Usher

A Leap in the Dark 46

A Leap in the Dark 46   8pm  Saturday 5th September 2020

An eclectic mix of poetry, prose, performance and yoga with first-time Leapers Ruby Cowling and Ben Pester, representing Boiler House Press; the latest instalment of ’24/7 Brexitland’ performed by the magnificent Malady Nelson (by arrangement with Amy McCauley), a visit to the studios of Henningham Family Press with David and Ping, the poet J O Morgan reading from his epic At Maldon and The Pale Usher on Billericay’s Grey Walls Press (held over from last Saturday’s works outing to Essex). Unable to come up with an over-arching title for this Leap, the Pale Usher has opted for a weak alcohol-related pun: 

Liquorish allsorts

An eclectic mix of poetry, prose, performance and yoga with first-time Leapers Ruby Cowling and Ben Pester, representing Boiler House Press; the latest instalment of ’24/7 Brexitland’ performed by the magnificent Malady Nelson (by arrangement with Amy McCauley), a visit to the studios of Henningham Family Press with David and Ping Henningham, the poet J O Morgan reading from his epic At Maldon and The Pale Usher on Billericay’s Grey Walls Press (held over from last Saturday’s works outing to Essex). 

The Programme

1 The Pale Usher welcomes you

2 Ruby Cowling on This Paradise

3 Yoga with Guru Dave

4 Ben Pester on Am I in the Right Place?

5 Amy McCauley (as Malady Nelson) performs 24/7 Brexitland part 4

Interval 

6 David Holzer story

7 At Home with Henningham Family Press

8 J O Morgan reads from At Maldon

9 Grey Walls Press - 1940s Billericay and the avant-garde

10 The Pale Usher signs off

The Company

Ruby Cowling grew up in Bradford and lives in London. Her short fiction has won awards including The White Review Short Story Prize and the London Short Story Prize, and her publication credits include Lighthouse, The Lonely Crowd and Wasafiri. Her collection This Paradise (Boiler House Press) was longlisted for the 2020 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and is also longlisted for this year’s Edge Hill Prize.

David and Ping Henningham are co-founders of Henningham Family Press, a microbrewery for books since 2006. They publish fiction and poetry. Their handmade editions can be found in the V&A, Tate, National Galleries Scotland and Stanford University. Their Performance Publishing shows compress the creation of printed matter into hectic live events.

David Holzer is a dedicated yogi, author, blogger and journalist. He founded YogaWriters and has taught workshops in yoga for writers in Mallorca, where he lives. Hundreds of people have taken his Yoga for Writers course on the DailyOm platform (www.yogawriters.org). His writing appears regularly in Om yoga and lifestyle magazine. David will be explaining why yoga is so beneficial for writers and taking us through a simple yoga sequence that can be done by anyone of any age in the comfort of a favourite chair.

Disclaimer

Please take care when practicing yoga. Should a pose feel that it could be harmful to you, do not attempt it or come gently out of the pose.

Breathing is a key part of yoga. Please breathe comfortably and naturally through your nose at all times. If your breath becomes forced, slow down the speed of your practice.

If you feel any kind of sharp, sudden pain anywhere in your body stop practicing right away. Be especially aware of your joints, particularly your knees.

Amy McCauley is a poet and freelance writer. She is the author of OEDIPA (Guillemot Press, 2018) and 24/7 Brexitland (No Matter Press, 2020). Amy’s first full-length collection of poetry will be published by Henningham Family Press in 2021.

J O Morgan  lives on a small farm in the Scottish Borders. His first book, Natural Mechanical (CB Editions, 2009), won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward First Collection Prize; its sequel, Long Cuts (CB Editions, 2011), was shortlisted for a Scottish Book Award. His third book, At Maldon (CB Editions, 2013), takes its bearings from the Old English poem ‘The Battle of Maldon’. It re-imagines the short-lived battle that took place on the Essex coast in 991AD, when a ragtag army of Anglo-Saxons was mustered to defend their land from Viking raiders.

In 2015, Morgan published In Casting Off (HappenStance Press), a poem-novella that tells a love story that is set within a remote fishing community. Interference Pattern, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, appeared from Cape Poetry in 2016, and Assurances in 2018. Morgan's most recent work, The Martian's Regress (published by Cape in 2020) is set in the far future.

Ben Pester lives in North London. His work has appeared in Granta, Hotel, Five Dials and other places. When not writing fiction, he is a technical author in the technology industry. His debut collection of short stories Am I in the Right Place? will be published by Boiler House Press.  

Aea Varfis-van Warmelo is a trilingual actor and writer. 

The Pale Usher is David Collard, who organises these gatherings.

The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.

  Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

The next Leap will be on Friday 11th September and will feature:

- The poet Sasha Dugdale reading from her latest collection Deformations

- Laura Waddell on the launch of her debut non-fiction book exit

- A Letter from Dinan by Susanna Crossman

- Linda Mannheim undertakes a close reading of a short story by Wendy 

  Erskine

- Wendy Erskine responds to Linda Mannheim’s close reading

- Kevin Davey discusses his forthcoming novel Radio Joan

- New work by poet Christodoulos Makris

Stay well!

The Pale Usher

A Leap in the Dark 45

This Friday's Leap is another veritable smorgasbord, not that there's any other kind of smorgasbord . . . 

A Leap in the Dark 45   8pm  Friday 4th September 2020

An evening about/without David Rudkin

Following last Friday’s memorable reading of the complete Spring Journal, Jonathan Gibbs and Paula Cunningham discuss the legacy of Louis MacNeice,  with readings from the poet’s work by Michael Hughes. Then we’ll have the first of two readings by the poet Julian Stannard from his forthcoming collection Heat Wave, followed by some thoughts from Sam Jordison of Galley Beggar Press about challenges facing small presses in 2021.

After a short break a group of admirers will celebrate the life and work of the dramatist and screenwriter David Rudkin (born 1936), among the finest writers of his generation -  “a cussed, confrontational, highly original voice”. With music from our composer-in-residence Helen Ottaway and thoughts from Ross McFarlane, Kevin Davey and The Pale Usher. 

There's no charge for taking part in A Leap in the Dark, but please make a donation, no matter how large, to The Trussell Trust.

The Programme

1 The Pale Usher welcomes you

2 On Louis MacNeice: Jonathan Gibbs and Paula Cunningham in conversation  

  with readings by Michael Hughes

3 Julian Stannard reads from his new collection Heat Wave

4 Reflections on this week’s bookalanche with Sam Jordison of Galley Beggar Press

5 Julian Stannard - a second reading 

Interval

6 David Rudkin - a celebration

7 Ross McFarlane on David Rudkin’s Penda’s Fen

  “What made these films so powerful to me as teenager was that you didn’t 

  know anything about them. They weren’t repeated. There was no internet 

  to help you crack them. They kept their mystery.”  - Jim Jump

8 Music by Helen Ottaway

9 Kevin Davey on David Rudkin’s impact and cultural legacy

10 Artemis 81 - The Pale Usher remembers the first and only screening of 

   Rudkin's controversial magnum opus

11 The Pale Usher signs off

The Company

Paula Cunningham’s Heimlich's Manoeuvre, from smithdoorstop, was shortlisted for the Fenton-Aldeburgh, Seamus Heaney Centre, & Strong Shine 1st Collection Prizes.  Poems have appeared in ‘Best British Poetry’ 2016, & have won national & international prizes. She has also written short fiction and placed 2nd in the 2014 Costa short story award. She is very slowly working on her second collection and attempting the odd essay.

Kevin Davey is the author of Playing Possum and the forthcoming Radio Joan, both published by Aaargh! Press. His non-fiction work includes English Imaginaries (1999).

Sam Jordison co-founded Galley Beggar Press. He writes for the Guardian, has written several works of non-fiction  the best-selling Crap Towns series and Enemies Of The People, a book that was tragically right about everything and the awful people who have been wrecking our lives since 2016. 

Ross McFarlane is the Research Engagement Officer at the Wellcome Library in London.

Helen Ottaway is a composer and sound artist. She is lead artist with Artmusic, creating and producing collaborative, site-specific art work. She has written for many forces from string quartet to choir and orchestra and recently has started to include found sound in her work. Her writing for hand-punched and hand-wound musical box began during an artist’s residency in Sri Lanka in 2017. Back in the UK she continues to compose for and perform on the instrument.  

www.artmusic.org.uk 

https://helenottaway.bandcamp.com/

Julian Stannard lived and taught for many years in Genoa. His most recent poetry book – with artwork by Roma Tearne – is Average is the New Fantastico (Green Bottle Press). CBe publishes his What Were You Thinking? He co-edited a CBe book about Michael Hofmann, The Palm Beach Effect. A film of his poem ‘Sottoripa’ (about a district of Genoa) is on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/81617966

The Pale Usher is David Collard, who organises these gatherings.

The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.

         Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Saturday’s Leap in the Dark (September 5th) is a fragrant potpourri

- author Ruby Cowling on her short story collection This Paradise

- Yoga with our resident mystic Guru Dave

- Ben Pester on his forthcoming book

- At home with Henningham Family Press

- Amy McCauley (as Malady Nelson) performs 24/7 Brexitland (part 4)

- a short story by David Holzer 

Stay well!

The Pale Usher