In the past for my annual evening of Valentine-inspired readings, I’ve featured Anti-Valentines (enjoyably bilious) and Legendary Lovers (Abelard and Heloise, Ovid, Elizabeth and Leicester). But if I was pushed to explain the theme this year, perhaps I’d have to call it ‘It’s complicated…’ All the speakers showcased work expressing the pains, paradoxes, problems and precarious joys of emotional life.
I began by reading a story, ‘Survivors of Ben’ about a disparate group of women who get together to plot revenge on a perfidious ex. A couple of people said afterwards, ‘That would be a great premise for a film.’ I said before beginning that I hoped nobody would identify too much, either with the shamelessly manipulative ex or the various girlfriends, stuck fast in rage and hurt. But it seemed to strike a chord with some listeners…
Next I invited poet Hannah Stone to read from her first collection lodestone and to preview her follow-up, Missing Miles, out later this year. Her poems match emotional weight with intellectual poise and a certain critical distance; they are finely crafted and nuanced, yet always accessible. She also talked a little about the lively-sounding Leeds poetry scene, and her academic work in the field of eastern Christian spirituality, which informs some of her poetry.
The wonderful Paul Burston was next, reading from his latest novel The Black Path, a crime novel with a female protagonist and thus something of a departure from previous novels such as Shameless and The Gay Divorcee. He spoke about his research about life in the military (part of the novel is set in Camp Bastion), which ended up profoundly shaping the plot. We had a bit of a laugh at the irony of him being nominated for Welsh Book of the Month, given the irreverent treatment of his hometown Bridgend. And the reading, from a section where a married, straight soldier finds a younger squaddie catching his eye… well, let’s just say it’s complicated.
After the break we were lucky to have a brace of Feinsteins; first Adam Feinstein, talking about his recently updated and reissued biography of that most romantic of poets, Pablo Neruda. We like to think we’ve had a few colourful characters in the club over the years, as related in Writers, Lovers, Soldiers, Spies, our recently published ‘History of the Authors Club of London, 1891-2016’. But we have nothing on Neruda, friend of Picasso and Lorca, diplomat, poet, ardent but not always successful lover, man of action and even fugitive, once escaping over the Andes on horseback. Wow! Adam gave a terrific introduction to the man and his work, and read, thrillingly, a poem in the original Spanish.
And on to our headliner, the legendary poet, translator, biographer and novelist Elaine Feinstein, reading from her new book The Clinic, Memory: New and Selected Poems (Carcanet). Had she ever written a true Valentine’s poem, she mused? Her elegant pieces ranged over love, marriage, resignation, wry acceptance and heartbreaking loss, with a lovely poem looking back at her time as an undergraduate in Cambridge with its fondly remembered (raise of the eyebrow) extra-curricular activities. It’s a rarity for this mother and son to read at the same event, so it was a delight to have them both on the bill, reminding us – she a Russian specialist, he a noted Hispanist – how much our literature feeds off other cultures and how diminished we all are when international doors begin to close one by one.