Still hot desking but speak to
Becky Shaw who is putting together a desk for myself, and I think other artists in residence. It's at The Riverside Rooms. Fan –freakin–
tastic. I go down to The Riverside Rooms with Becky and meet
The Cape Farewell people based there. They seem cool. The moment I stepped in the place it felt
right – pictures framed upon the walls, slightly
dishevelled, a couple of leather couches. All I need is a desk a computer and a phone.
Any two of those three will work.
I drop down
a floor to Marketing for a discussion. My picture is kinda
inactive in comparison to me and so they’re wondering if there is something
more representative. It’s going into the
next literature brochure which has gone to press today it goes like this
“The overall role of an artist in
residence is to inspire and be inspired then there is no better place to be than
The South Bank. . I’m building a book of Poems From The South Bank. I’ll be curating events, including book
launches. It’s not all about publication
or event. If you would like advice on career development in literature or
on writing then I offer you my time here
at the south bank. That’s an open offer. My email is lemn.sissay@southbankcentre.co.uk.
This should
be better – be more user friendly, less lead by event and I realize how dry the
term “career development” seems – where did that come from? Me. Career development simply means, the writing. I believe that career
develops from the work. I can’t tell you how many people say “how do you get
published” and when asked if they have a manuscript, reply “no”. Nyaaaaaggghhh.
The
conversation about photos in marketing unfolds into a big conversation about image (in publicity pictures) and how the image is
never representative of the person but impressionistic. I chat to Amelia who is sat next to
marketing. She’s stopped smoking. Stopping smoking is such a strong statement
against globalisation! We discuss Naomi
Klein and globalization. Klein is reading at The Queen Elizabeth Hall and
is read by Amelia. Tonight it is Orhan Pamuk the nobel prize winning Turkish
writer. Must remember to ask Martin for a ticket for my Turkish
shopkeeper Abdullah.
Abdullah is
a softly spoken Turkish man who established claptons first ORGANIC shop (E5).
Everybody respects Abdullah. I leave marketing - passionate people, turning it all over and over and over and still have time to suggest that one person gets some new photos. Pretty cool huh. I go cafe with Rishi the technical manager at the south bank who wanted to see me abotu this blog. Rishi has strong ideas about developing the artists in residence pages upon the South Bank Website. He's dynamic and sure adn just got married a short while ago. For their honeymoon they went to Slovenia. It's the only country in the world with Love in its name. How cool is that. Did you know the South Bank centre gets about one million visitors per week. Something like that. BBC online is the biggest growth area of the BBC and more people read The Guardian online than the paper.
I check email and then bike home - stop off at La Bouche in Broadway, for a coffee. Martin has kindly reserved tickets for Abdullah. At La Bouche I talk to a script writer who spends too much time offering me a kind of professional pity because of my unpaid role as a poet – they are scriptwriters. But this is the 21st century and the poets I know are doing well thank you very much. But I couldn’t be bothered going on the defensive – Note to self, do that more often. Shoot. I’ve left my cigarettes on Amelia’s desk.