WeBe40: News from Nowhere's Radical Book Fair & Spaces of Dissent

Presented by News from Nowhere, The Bluecoat and Writing On The Wall
Bluecoat Arts Centre
1st June 2014

Reviewed by Joe Coventry

If you are going to take part in a day of dissent then where better to start than in the Bluecoat garden with a mid morning coffee, observing the setting up of the stalls and tents on a lovely summer's day. As the crowd built and interest in the courtyard's Bolshie Bargain Bookstall began to rival that of the inside Hub Bookfair, Stan 'The Man' Ambrose's ubiquitous harp serenaded all above the growing hubbub.

Upstairs the performance space opened at noon to a session entitled Poetry as Dissent and, appropriately, it was dedicated, as was the whole day, to the author, poet and political activist Maya Angelou who died last week. The poems of Clare Shaw and Steph Pike pulled no punches in pushing the causes of women, ethnic, behavioural and cultural choices and causes. This was vitriolic, self expressive and at times poignant or heart-rending in your face stuff, giving space to those unheard or uncared for in the increasingly less tolerant society and environment we live in today.

Outside in the Garden, the Socialist Singers added UKIP to their growing list of pariahs in song, having taken over the performing space from the Subversive Children's Storytelling Tent. Back upstairs a fascinating hour was had with Bob Dent and Ross Bradshaw. The former charted the setting up of News from Nowhere and the influence and resilience over the years of Mandy Vere, the proprietor and custodian of independent thought of the Bookshop on Bold Street.

Forty Years is a long time to remain open when many left-leaning radical shops, periodicals and newspapers have come and gone; only Houseman's, 69 years young, in London's Kings Cross has outlived it. Ross Bradshaw took up the baton in a humorous and explicit history of the sector's rise and fall and it seems rise again, in challenging the censor and the establishment status quo.

Next, a powerful reading of Liverpool's 'lost' blind poet and political activist Edward Rushton's (unanswered) Letter to George Washington. In excoriating detail the polemic lambasts the President, who helped lead a Revolution against the British to free his nation but shamefully continued to be a slave owner on his plantation. The oration from John Graham Davies left the Hub audience in silence with the power of its delivery.

Fiction as Dissent ended an already packed day with Robert Llewellyn of Red Dwarf humanoid 'Crighton' fame and now author, in discussion with young black novelist Desiree Reynolds. Reading from his science fiction based 'protopia', News From Gardenia, Llewellyn's imagined future sees his protagonist coming to terms with a future world where the rapacious destruction of the planet for profit is avoided by a more nuanced use of the environment's resources. Seduce, on the other hand, reflects on the never ending struggle of the young woman of the title to eke out a positive and rewarding existence against all the odds. Both writers read extracts from their books and joined in a lively Q&A session to bring the day to a close.

The overall message of this event was not to kowtow down to the mediocrity and cant that is swilling around in the world about us. The first step to do that? Swill something far better and engage in continued discussion down the pub.

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