Cultural Dessert

Amp Literary

29 April 2022

On Saturday we made the short journey to the Parkside Community Hall in Ampthill to attend ‘Amp Literary’ - the Ampthill Literary Festival - an event postponed from 2020. The journalist and Sunday Times bestseller Erin Kelly spoke about her ‘psychological gothic’ novels and explained the process of writing her latest book ‘Watch Her Fall’ during lockdown. ‘Watch Her Fall’ is a thriller about a dancer, which uses ‘Swan Lake’ as its inspiration and structure. It was fascinating to hear how she had used the ballet to develop the novel. Erin Kelly was one of the most engaging, articulate and well-prepared authors I have seen at a book festival: we really enjoyed her session. It was also wonderful to rediscover the poet/comedian Henry Normal who I first saw live at a comedy club in Peterborough nearly 30 years ago. Henry Normal disappeared from view as a performer when he set up Baby Cow Productions with Steve Coogan and spent 17 years as its Managing Director. During this time he focussed on writing (he co-wrote ‘The Mrs Merton Show’ and ‘The Royle Family’) and producing shows including ‘Gavin and Stacey’, ‘Red Dwarf’, ‘The Mighty Boosh’, ‘Nighty Night’ and ‘Alan Partridge’. Since retiring from Baby Cow in 2016, Henry Normal has written and performed a lovely occasional series of BBC Radio 4 shows (all still available on BBC Sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b09rwvwt) which showcase his brilliant poetry. His poems are alternately childishly silly, beautiful, hilarious and breathtakingly poignant. The Scotsman newspaper called him "The Alan Bennett of poetry". I still treasure my copy of ‘Nude Modelling for the Afterlife’ - Henry Normal’s 1993 collection which I bought after seeing him at the Edinburgh Book Festival. It was very exciting to see him again after so long, in the intimate setting of the Ampthill festival. He is a brilliant performer and had the audience in the palm of his hand. He was there to promote his new book ‘The Escape Plan’  which includes all of the poems from his Radio 4 shows, together with the most popular poems from each of his previous collections. I’m looking forward to reading my signed copy! We finished our visit to Amp Literary with a very enjoyable performance from The Antipoet - an anarchic duo with their own unique blend of poetry, comedy and music.

Labels: Books, Comedy, Festivals, Radio

posted by Robin Simpson @ 9:55 am