Festival of words aims to reach out to world

IT’S perhaps a sad state of affairs but poetry readings in this country often don’t get beyond double figures ­­– sometimes they struggle to even muster that.

Last year, though, Jackie Kay had an audience of 18,000, something that even the greatest poets in history could only dream of. She had been commissioned to write a poem for the anti-racism Kick it Out campaign and she read her finished piece, Here’s My Pitch, celebrating the first black professional football player, Arthur Wharton, at Sheffield United’s Bramall Lane stadium just before kick-off.

“I’ve never been so scared in my life. It’s the biggest audience I’ve ever had, you go from playing in front of 12 people at Milton Keynes Central Library to a huge crowd at a football match,” she says, laughing.

“I kept the poem short because I thought I’d get booed off the pitch or get things thrown at me, but the crowd cheered. It was amazing.”

The poem, which is now on display at Bramall Lane, was unveiled at last year’s Off The Shelf Festival of Words and now, 12 months on, Kay is the festival’s guest curator.

She’s following in the footsteps of Benjamin Zephaniah who took on the role last year. “They’re nice footsteps to follow and I’ve tried to come up with something that is interesting and brings different people together,” she says.

Kay has programmed a day of events tomorrow based around the theme of the “outsider” which is explored through writing, art, photography and film. “I like literature to reach out to the world and the concerns of our time and that’s why I choose this theme.”

The Glaswegian-born writer recently read poems to the Scottish Parliament about refugee women and as the daughter of a Scottish woman and a Nigerian father it’s an issue close to her heart. It’s one she address through Crossing Borders which brings together six refugee women from Scotland and Sheffield.

They will be reading from the book Different Cultures, One World; Women’s Voices from South Yorkshire, produced by the DEWA Project (Development and Empowerment for Women’s Advancement). “It’s a very pertinent theme at the moment with so many people in the world being forced to flee their countries and become a new person in another country,” she says.

The idea of the outsider is also explored through the work of photographer Ingrid Pollard whose series Pastoral Interlude is based around portraits of black people in the English countryside and was exhibited at the V&A.

Author Bernardine Evaristo is appearing along with Yorkshire-based poet Zaffar Kunial and so, too, is documentary film-maker Matthew Kay who is showing his film Hair and Now, which came second in the Guardian Young Filmmaker’s competition.

“Sheffield has a great literary tradition and also a great socialist tradition and it’s always been good at finding ways of involving the local community,” says curator, Kay. “Off The Shelf feels very different from some other festivals which can feel a bit esoteric, whereas this attracts ordinary people which, for me, is very important.

“There’s a deep loneliness in society and literature festivals in some small way offers an answer to this. They take people away from their iPads and computers and it gives them a shared experience. At a time when theatre is really struggling in some places to get people in, literary festivals seem to be thriving,” she says.

“Reading should be for everyone and Off The Shelf are pioneers in attracting a diverse audience and they showed last year with the reading at Sheffield United that they can think outside the box.”

Kay says there’s no reason why poetry and football shouldn’t mix. “I like the idea of football fans going to watch a match and getting tuned in to a single poem because it means they might go and read some more poetry.

“We tend to over categorise people whereas I find the link between say poetry and football, or poetry and maths, really interesting and exciting.”

This idea of linking poetry with art and photography is something she hopes the audiences will embrace. “I’m really excited by it, they’re like pearls on a necklace, a linked chain of events and even if just a few people came to every single event then that would be fantastic.”

Jackie Kay is in conversation at the Crucible Studio Theatre, Sheffield, tomorrow at 8pm. Off The Shelf Festival runs until November 2. 0114 273 4716 www.offtheshelf.org.uk

Jackie Kay: A writer’s life

Kay was born in Edinburgh to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father. She was adopted by a white 
couple at birth and raised in Glasgow, studying at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and Stirling University.

A poet, novelist and writer of short stories, Kay has produced work for both children and adults and her novel Trumpet won the Guardian Fiction Prize.

She lives in Manchester and is professor of creative writing at Newcastle University.

In 2006, she was awarded an MBE for services to literature.