One in a series on the Lea Valley, by historian Jim Lewis

Idea for a game: cut sheets of paper into small pieces and write a random noun on each, then put the pieces into a hat and tell your guests to pick two each and find a connection between them. One might get, say, “Cheryl Cole” and “The Edmonton Incinerator”, another “Dental floss” and “Phytosemiotics”.

Intellectually speaking, everything is but a few short steps away from every other thing (each individual on Earth is said to be linked via six degrees or less of separation to any other random individual), so a connection can always be unearthed.

The winner is whoever can find the least tenuous link between their two subjects.

Jim Lewis would probably be good at this game. In this illustrated series of books he seems to be picking out nouns from the hat constantly – albeit with “The Lea Valley” always in his other hand.

Apparently obscure topics he explores include “the Lea Valley and the founding of Meteorology” and “the Lea Valley and the State of Israel”.

Barometric pressures noted-down in Tottenham by a landowner in the early 1800s formed the basis of modern weather forecasting, he explains.

East London’s links with the Jewish State, meanwhile, began when Chaim Weizmann, the talented biochemist who went on to become Israel’s first president, set up a lab in Three Mills, Bromley-by-Bow.

Then there is computing, the dying process, broadcasting, aeronautics. The list is endless, as if all modern technology were rooted in the Lea’s marshy banks.

Carved in the ice age (around 1,000,000 years ago), the River Lea and its valley flow from Ware in Hertfordshire to Leamouth at the Thames. Lewis considers this area as a whole, but our borough gets a few noteworthy shout-outs.

Wick, for example, was apparently the birthplace of plastic. During the Crimean War, the Xylotine Factory in Wallis Road produced a forerunner to the packaging which now, unfortunately, sheathes so much supermarket produce (speaking of supermarkets, we learn that Tesco founder Jack Cohen first hawked his wares in Well Street Market, near Victoria Park, and then in Upper Clapton Road in the inter-war years).

Alfred Hitchcock, meanwhile, was starting his career as a title card designer in the 1920s at the confusingly named Islington Studios – a film studio based in Hackney. Lewis summarises the history of the film industry which grew up in nearby Walthamstow, helped in his task by photographs from the time, which are published alongside his text.

Perhaps most interesting are the author’s descriptions of the valley in ancient times.

Artefacts found in the region include a late Saxon log boat (unearthed in Clapton) as well as Neolithic tools and Bronze Age jewellery. After the fall of the Roman Empire, great battles were fought in the valley between Saxons and Danes.

Lewis writes: “Today’s casual visitor to the Lee Valley Regional Park would probably find it difficult to imagine the events that took place in this relatively small area of land adjacent to the capital that helped shape a future British nation. It might also be hard to imagine…that the east bank of the River Lea was once Danish territory while the west bank was Saxon.”

It is a comfort to think of these chthonic remnants – art, skulls, money and weapons – and a reminder that, however different the ancient world was from our world, the two are linked somehow, as if by a winding river.

This comprehensive series, which also includes two other titles (Gunpowder to Guns and Battleships, Buses and Bombers) is a good starting point for anyone wishing to learn more about the region’s history in the run up to the Olympic Games, when the world’s attention will be focussed on this fascinating neck of the woods.

The Lea Valley series by Jim Lewis is published by Libri Publishing.

Stand-up comedian Stewart Lee

On Saturday afternoon, renowned stand-up comic and Stoke Newington resident Stewart Lee read from the work of Arthur Machen, one of the founding fathers of horror fiction, as part of the inaugural Stoke Newington Literary Festival.

The sell-out event saw over a hundred people packed into the appropriately dark and mysterious surroundings of Stoke Newington International Airport.

Stewart Lee discussed his personal fascination with this hugely influential gothic writer and psychogeographer, and recounted his own history of spooky occurrences in N16, such as finding initiation certificates for a Druidic cult in the attic of his new house.

He then read an abridged version of Machen’s spooky tale ‘N’, set in Stoke Newington, to a spellbound audience.

Appropriately, the steaming hot weather broke just as a key moment in the story was reached. As the protagonist sees a beautiful green park where there should be only streets of terraced houses, summer rain suddenly began to hammer on the roof … almost as if Machen were making himself known.

Saturday’s event coincides with the Library of Wales’s publication of new paperback editions of two of Machen’s best-loved works, The Great God Pan and The Hill of Dreams.

Gwilym Games, Editor of the Friends of Arthur Machen’s magazine Machenalia said, “The new Library of Wales paperbacks make some of Machen’s best work easily accessible again in Britain. As a key London writer lauded by Peter Ackroyd and Iain Sinclair, anyone interested in the real mysteries behind everyday London life should read Machen’s work. Equally, Machen is part of a long tradition in Wales where his stories can be seen as part of a fantastic legacy stretching back to the tales of Arthurian legend.”

Born and brought up in the late 19th century in the Black Mountains of Monmouthshire, Machen’s tales of bohemian fin-de-siécle London were coloured by the dark and mysterious landscapes of his childhood.

The Great God Pan, his most famous story, was condemned on its first publication in 1894 as decadent and nightmarish. But its mixture of chilling horror and pagan sexuality with contemporary Victorian London, plus Machen’s distinctive and haunting writing style, soon brought him cult status.

H.P. Lovecraft was an early fan, while Stephen King recently described it as “one of the best horror stories ever written”.

Jessica Mordsley, the Library of Wales representative in London, said, “Saturday’s event was really memorable and atmospheric. It was the perfect place to introduce Machen to a new generation of readers.”

Pages of Hackney bookshop in Lower Clapton

Local independent bookseller Pages of Hackney is celebrating its regional shortlist nomination as best all-round independent bookshop in Britain.

“Pages is thrilled to be shortlisted for this award in its first full year of trading, as well as being listed alongside shops we looked to for inspiration before opening,” said owner Eleanor Lowenthal.

“I think that our focus on events and community spirit is what makes the shop stands out and we will continue with these efforts,” she said.

The winner of the award will be announced at a glittering awards ceremony at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on 17 May.

As well as being crowned Britain’s best independent bookseller, the winner will receive a £5,000 cash prize from award sponsors Gardners Books to promote and market their store.

The entries have been divided into four regions across the UK – the North and Scotland; the Midlands and Wales; the South West; and London and the South East.

The Independent Bookseller of the Year Award forms part of the new Bookseller Industry Awards which span retail and publishing, recognising excellence and achievement within the industry.

The judging criteria covers a whole range of bookselling disciplines including operational excellence – from the range of stock available, helpfulness and knowledge of staff, web innovation and premises, to promotions and opening hours;

It also covers customer service – evidence of ‘going the extra mile’ for customers, and community – how the bookshops fit in to the local area, from the range of events programmed to working with local libraries and colleges.

The judging panel is widely drawn, with expertise from inside the book trade and beyond.

Judges for 2010 are Ottakar’s founder James Heneage; Jo Howard with experience from WH Smiths; bestselling author Kate Mosse; Paul Smiddy, a noted city analyst, most recently for HSBC; marketing expert Damian Horner; Peter Williams, former boss of Selfridges and Robert Clark, one of the UK’s best informed observers of retail.

The South East and London shortlist:

The Village Bookshop, Woodford Green, Essex
Kemp Town Bookshop, Brighton, Sussex
Barton’s Bookshop, Leatherhead, Surrey
RD Franks, London, W1
Maher the Bookseller, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire
Pages of Hackney, London

More about books.

Baby X: Harry Keeble with Kris Hollington

With prose similar in places to  that of a Sunday tabloid exclusive, there are plenty of fascinating stories in this behind-the-scenes account of Hackney’s Child Protection Team to keep readers interested.

Author Harry Keeble portrays himself as ‘a super- tough cop’ working in Hackney’s Child Protection Team, battling against not only abusive carers but also lack of resources and bureaucracy.

At the beginning of the book, Harry Keeble comes across as a real-life Gene Hunt from Life on Mars as he deals with all manner of subjects such as witchcraft, paedophilia, lynch mobs and hostage situations.

Over the course of later chapters, however, the author begins to see things in a more considered way and becomes ‘the new, improved Harry’.

It is during one of these more considered moments, which he calls his ‘soapbox moment’ that he begins to offer the solutions to the problems he has seen.

At the root of his complaint is the lack of funding from the Government meaning that children “are not provided with a five-star service to protect them when things go wrong.”

Even though the horrific stories of the author are at the forefront of this book, he does manage to leave a note of optimism, as he also offers solutions to the problems he has seen at first hand and highlights the good work being done for children by charities and public bodies, such as the remarkable work of Kid’s Company.

It reaches over 14,000 children across the capital, giving hope to young victims of abuse such as those that we read of in this book.
Potential readers will be reassured to   hear that despite the horrific stories, it’s not just 274 pages of bleakness.

Writer Bonnie Greer

Earlier this week, Hackney author Iain Sinclair talked identity politics with fellow writers Bonnie Greer and Yang Lian at the Round Chapel in Clapton.

The big questions of the evening were: ‘Is London British? How does your environment shape the way you think and who you are?’

Greer had taken part in a similar discussion on the BBC’s Question Time in October – alongside the British National Party leader, Nick Griffin, and the show put under severe scrutiny Griffin’s fundamental beliefs on what it means to be British.

Born and raised in the USA, Greer emigrated to London in the ‘80s – chasing a dream of “incredible diversity, a myriad of accents”; whilst Lian is a Chinese poet who now lives in London and has recently published Lee Valley, a book of poems documenting his walks through the marshland.

The discussion ranged from an analysis of the Britishness of London to an examination of the idea of Britishness itself.

“No-one here can say ‘I am a classical, typical English person’. It’s the same in China. We are all a mixture – it depends on your understanding – how do you understand your mixture?”, asked Lian.

Responding to Greer on how, as a society, we regard the ‘other’, Lian briefly outlined the predicament regarding identity: “White, Chinese, Black – are all notions given by other people,” whilst Greer suggested the notion or construction of ‘white’ itself needs to be investigated: in a multicultural community, there is no space for pigeonholing people, “London mutates, it changes”. Lian agreed. “We have to discover ‘the other’ inside ourselves.”

“Our leaders are in the Victorian or the Edwardian Ages, they are trying to put us in little boxes, categories – but the spirit of London can’t do that, it’s bursting out of the box,” said Greer.

“Diversity is too weak a word to describe London. Definition, change, movements – that’s what this town is about – that’s why I love London.”

Carolyn Clark and Linda Wilkinson's new book

Not the kind you’d take to bed for a night of passion and excitement; but if you’re looking for some laughs and a couple of genuinely interesting hours, this one’s for you.

No, I’m not talking of the new friend you made in the pub last week, but of Carolyn Clark’s and Linda Wilkinson’s new book The Shoreditch Tales.

At 172 pages, most of which have illustrations of one size or another, the book’s written content is easy to get through in a few hours. It consists mainly of testimonies provided by Shoreditch locals (some of whom are real crackers) of their memories of the place, often in their own words.

Mark Brooks, the florist, recalls the regulars at the King’s Arms pub, which his grandfather owned: ‘one chap I remember had elephantiasis bollocks and he had to wear a skirt. Couldn’t get trousers over them, no way poor sod.’

A group of women at St Mary’s remember the ‘Hokey Pokey’ man selling ‘penny licks’ of ice-cream. They argue about the etymology of the name: a derivation of Hocus Pocus, perhaps, or a corruption of 19th century Italian gelato sellers’ cries of ‘O che poco!’ (Oh, how little!), referring to their prices.

The book is bejewelled with anecdotal gems such as these.

The ten chapters, which deal primarily with the themes of work, leisure and community, have a rather clunky chronology. However, this does not stop the reader from gaining a feeling for how Shoreditch has evolved over the years.

We read about Shoreditch’s early days as an area for grazing oxen and ploughing fields and its medieval development into a town. Theatres, marketplaces and tea gardens sprung up as wealthy folk flocked to the area.

Soon Shoreditch became a suburb proper, complete with Georgian houses and terraces. Then came the alms houses and asylums; then industrialisation and the sardine-tin working class houses it made necessary.

Around this time, Shoreditch took on the working-class connotations that it was to keep for quite some time, and which The Shoreditch Tales explores.

The carefully chosen photographs and illustrations add to the sense of ‘being there’ as the clock hands roll and roll, and the vivid first-hand descriptions of toy-stores and pawn shops and markets and milk men are excellently transcribed onto the page.

The book has a sentimentality that can at times make you cringe, and it does not have the eloquence of, say, Ian Sinclair’s Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire, or the breadth and depth of Peter Ackroyd’s London: A Biography. But to be fair, these qualities are not what the authors seek.

Their work is an honest, unpretentious folk history crammed with local voices and faces and products. After reading the book, you might sniff your clothes to see if the smells of cigarettes, ale, coal, hay, and market flowers have seeped out of the pages and stuck to you. Shoreditch bookworms will feel very much at home.

The Hackney Society's new book

Hackney’s heritage organisation, the Hackney Society, marks 40 years with ‘Modern, Restored, Forgotten, Ignored’ – a book celebrating 40 of Hackney’s loved, lost, and saved buildings.

Founded in 1967, the Society was set up by a group of residents concerned about the Borough’s tower block culture, which became a quick solution to the post-war housing crisis.

As East London fell under the grip of industrial decline, many of the Hackney’s Victorian two up two down houses, warehouses and factories were left derelict, or demolished to make way for the great concrete tower blocks, which are still a key feature of the local skyline.

The remaining warehouses and depots quickly became spaces for musicians, artists and filmmakers during the 70s and 80s, adding to Hackney’s already established textile industry. The creative legacy lives on today, but as areas like Shoreditch become more desirable places to live –local creative industries are being priced out of the market.

From modern design to Hackney’s most loved, ‘Modern, Restored, Forgotten, Ignored’ is told through the eyes of local people as a collection of voluntary written contributions and photographs.

Each chapter profiles ten buildings working around four themes – ‘modern’ being the best of modern design; ‘restored’ – buildings that have been saved; ‘forgotten’ – buildings that have been lost; and ‘ignored’ – buildings in need of attention.

The New Lansdowne Club on Mare Street is probably the most desperately in need of attention. Donated to a charity commemorating the work of prison reformer Elizabeth Fry in 1845, the house was used as a refuge for women who had completed prison sentences.

At the time, many women and children were sent to prison without trial, living in appalling conditions. Fry was active in improving prison conditions and abolishing capital punishment. Since 2002, she has been depicted on Bank of England £5 notes.  The Club is now stands derelict, and the Hackney Society are campaigning for it to be restored to its former glory.

Matt Payne’s chapter on Hackney Stadium is a welcome break from the otherwise quite dense history, showing off Hackney’s fun side. A night out at the dogs was a break from daily grind of the factories and warehouses in the 1930’s – even though the stadium was nothing more than a grass track and two stands.

The land was bought by the London Development Agency to make way for the Olympics and Hackney Stadium was eventually demolished in 2003 to be replaced by offices as part of the legacy proposals.

The photographs from the Hackney Archives bring home how much Hackney has changed over the years – from images of wartime evacuees to demolition shots of the tower blocks on the Trowbridge estate in 1985.

Placed against the colourful shots of Mossbourne Community Academy and Adelaide Wharf, it is clear how dramatically social and industrial life has changed in the last two decades, and the rich layers of social history that can be seen through local architecture.

The book is available to buy at Broadway Bookshop, Pages of Hackney and Stoke Newington Bookshop.

To order directly from the Hackney Society email: booksorders@hackneysociety.org

Cheques made payable to the Hackney Society for £14.95 plus £4 p&p (add £1.60 for each additional book).

We have ten books to give away in answer to the following question:What year was the Hackney Society founded?

Please send your answer to editor@hackneycitizen.co.uk

or

The Editor
(Hackney Society Competition)
The Hackney Citizen Ltd
9 Perseverance Works
38 Kingsland Road
London E2 8DD

Though Worpole is primarily concerned with just one facet of the palliative care experience, it is an important one.

Research has repeatedly shown how powerful an influence the environment can have upon the happiness of both patients and staff. Indeed, many of us have felt the sense of gloom attached to hospitals, and must admit that we implicitly link quality of care with external appearances.

Foucault spoke of the institutionalisation of the infirm as ‘the great confinement’. This confinement in many ways represents the marginalised role of the elderly and terminally ill in today’s society. ‘The appalling treatment of too many elderly people is the best kept secret in Britain’  we have been told, but it isn’t really a secret, but rather a fact that we turn a blind eye to.

The modern hospice movement’s great demand is for a re-evaluation of the way we view the end of life. Most of the developed world faces, if not a crisis, then serious concerns posed by ageing populations, yet as a culture we still find it as difficult as ever to speak objectively of death.

Yet the ‘right to a good death’ is becoming ever more an assumption of modern life, though it is a concept that may conflict with the raison d’etre – to prolong life – of the hospital, in which the vast majority of us now die.
Over 50 per cent of all NHS complaints concern care for a dying patient, and leave no doubt as to the hospice’s station in modern medical care.

Despite his seemingly narrow focus, Mr Worpole shows a great interest in the philosophy of dying, He is deeply concerned by the tendency in modern medicine for the prolongation of life to take precedence over its quality.

In his closing words, he recalls Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern hospice movement, who wrote of the ideal hospice as a place where the sorrow of parting is ‘constantly overcome’; borrowing from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets: “not fare well, But fare forward, voyagers.”

Hackney writer Ken Worpole

Ken Worpole, one of Hackney’s most respected and prolific writers, is helping to re-launch Alexander Baron’s classic Bethnal Green novel King Dido. Nikk Quentin Woolf of Xstream East Radio gets the low-down.

Could you tell me something about the King Dido project?

It has its origin in the 1970s. I was involved in an oral history project interviewing people about growing up in the east end of London, and one of the people I interviewed was the writer Alexander Baron, who, certainly after the war, was regarded as one of Britain’s greatest novelists.

He was born and grew up in Stoke Newington. His reputation sort of went quiet in the 1980s, he turned to television writing, but in 1983 I made a very long interview with him, which I used at the time for a book I was writing.

In the last few years Baron has become quite a cult figure amongst those who are fond of writings about London. When I was asked by a friend, who runs Five Leaves Press, whether I would be interested in helping republish some of Baron’s novels, I was very keen.

We chose King Dido because it is a very fast-paced, gripping novel set in Bethnal Green just before the First World War. And although it’s all ostensibly about gang fights and street fights and the underworld and police versus thieves and so on, it’s got quite a lot of social content; you really get a feeling for the area in that time. That is coming out at the end of the month.

How typical is it of Baron’s writing?

Well,  he was a very varied writer across a large range of themes. He had fought both on D-day and in Monte Cassino, two of the most horrific hand-to-hand battles in the war.

He was a very political man. His first (and best) novel was about the build up to D-Day and was called From The City From the Plough. Published in 1948, it sold half a million copies and is still regarded I think as the best novel of the Second World War. He did several novels about that war and the Spanish Civil War.

He had volunteered to fight in Spain, but was called back because he was regarded as more politically valuable in London working for the cause.

He did a couple of novels about Spain and a couple of historical novels about ancient Egypt and several novels set in London after the second world war, one of which was Rosie Hogarth, another one we are thinking of republishing.

None of this material sounds uninteresting; to what do you attribute his decades of invisibility?

He wasn’t an officer. The view of the war from below was kind of submerged in the 1950s with a view of the war which was all about the heroic acts of the few – fighter pilots and submarine commanders and so on.

I’m not suggesting a conspiracy but nevertheless that quiet novel of the everyday misery of war was pushed aside by the heroic stuff. It was all part of post-war nation-building.

You’re a writer on architecture, first and foremost, but you have written on subjects as diverse as cemeteries, children’s play spaces, and so forth. How do you select your subjects?

Well, it’s a bit old fashioned: I just follow my nose. I’ve been lucky enough to earn a (fairly modest) living as a freelance writer. And I occasionally get some part-time work researching social policy issues.

While I am travelling I might come across, say, an unusual building in Denmark, and this will set me thinking about why the Scandinavian design of the 1930s became so popular in the UK in the 1960s for libraries and schools and so forth. So half of me earns a living and the other half of me pursues my own interests.

What are the hot issues in London architecture right now?

So-called iconic buildings. Why is so much architectural attention paid to the very big projects, whether they are Olympic buildings or skyscrapers, when the architecture that is of most importance is the architecture of the everyday: of the house, the school, the day-care nursery? Britain is famous for its big-name architects, and we are regarded as pioneers on a world stage, people like Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, etc.

I am very taken with the disjunction between the razzamatazz of the big glamorous projects and the paucity of the architectural thinking of the everyday – particularly both public and private family housing.

And do you actively try to take a part in correcting that?

Yes, the books I’ve written are very much about everyday architecture. I did a book called Here Comes the Sun, which my wife, a photographer, we travelled a lot in Europe, looking at things like libraries and playgrounds.

At the beginning of the twentieth century Britons were known throughout the world for our progressive attitude towards children – we had more progressive schools, we pioneered nursery education, our primary schools were very highly regarded. But then after the war we kind of lost interest in children, it seems to me.

If you go to Amsterdam or Copenhagen, you’ll find in the big cities more or less on every corner a playground that is publicly accessible, well-maintained. But we don’t have that here, we have ghastly bits of metal equipment stuck in a corner, vandalised, surrounded by broken glass.

I know you write for a cycling magazine as well, you’re a keen cyclist, Boris’ ambitions to turn London in to a cycling city – how successful is he being?

I think he is continuing a trend that had already started. London has for at least the last fifteen years dominated the cycling statistics of Britain, and Hackney has dominated the London cycling statistics.

So he can’t resist something that was already a massive trend, but I think he can be awkward and not really help it gain even greater importance. I used to enjoy cycling in London. Now, most of the time on weekends, you’ll find me cycling around the back lanes of Essex.

Ken Worpole and Nick Baron re-launch Alexander Baron’s King Dido at Bethnal Green Library on 23 October. More info here.

Write to Ignite festival producer, Christopher Preston

The biannual Write To Ignite festival, all about words and wordcraft, is taking over fourteen venues in Hackney throughout this September.

I gather the theme of the festival this time is Human Writes.

That’s right. We have an exhibition of Kurdish writing, for example. One of the problems that the Kurds have is that their language is under threat so they need to preserve that. We’ve got an exhibition of Kurdish books at Stoke Newington Library; we’re also having a Kurdish Book fair.

Then we’ve got events around prisons. Then there’s a play written by Dean Stalham, who’s an ex-prisoner. He learned to write in prison so a good example of writing helping somebody to pull out of whatever they’re in.

And of course there are some quite big names on the bill, too.

Yes, ex-Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen appeared on Friday at the Stoke Newington Gallery. He’s a Hackney man. He’s going to be doing some of his poems for adults.

As with, say, Roald Dahl, some people might not realise that he does adult stuff.

Two years ago he wrote a piece called ‘Hackney Streets’, celebrating the literature and literary history of Hackney. He has a great poem ‘On The Bus’: it’s a bus journey through Hackney and it’s absolutely fantastic.

That’s interesting, so almost a poetic equivalent of Ian Sinclair?

Yes, they do work very much in the same area and Michael knows everything that there is to know about East London. He’s a great observer. He’s got a poem about going to a Turkish barber which is hysterically funny. Speaking of humour, John Hegley did a show on the 12th at the Mildmay Club on Newington Green. He brought his new ‘The Adventures of Monsieur Robinet’.

I know you’re very keen to promote Shane Solanki, who’s a big up-and-coming performer.

Yes, a great performance artist. He’s a poet, musician, artist – he works in mixed media. He’s bringing a great show called The Girl Who Learned To Beatbox Out Of Her Arse. He’s working with his team: Sapro Jade, who’s a fabulous Jazz singer and Arthur Lee. Bellatrix is the beatboxer. She’s fabulous.

There are some hands-on elements too, right?

Yes, people can come along and actually get writing. We’ve got poets, we’ve got Baden Prince who is a great poet and he’s doing workshops, so is Neil Zetter. Baden’s re-launching his Speak Easy (his monthly poetry event at the Hackney Empire). There’s also a family workshop with Ngoma Bishop and Oma-Ra for families to come along and share stories, listen to other people’s stories, and explore how parents and children can swap stories – something we often don’t get round to doing if we’re stuck in front of screens all the time.

Often when you think about the parent/child relationship you think of the parent telling the child stories, but it’s a crucial skill for children too.

Absolutely. I mean your kids come home from school and they tell you what happened. That’s story-telling.

I hear ‘guerrilla poets’ are going to be operating in the area.

They are. They’re led by Baden Prince and will be zapping various places around Hackney, and I think we’re going to invade Tower Hamlets briefly too. On Sunday 13th if you’re walking through Abney Park Cemetery you may very well come across a poet.

How did you find yourself in the position of organising this wonderful thing?

Well by accident really! I run a theatre company; when the Hackney Council’s creative development organisation set up all these creative clusters around Hackney we found ourselves in the literature group. There was some money available from Europe at the time (2005). They said ‘what would you like to do?’, and we told them we wanted to do a festival. Then the regeneration money stopped, but we carried on thanks to The Arts Council.

Is there a particular message that you’d like people to come away from the festival with?

Well I think one of the things that we do want to encourage is for people to read more, join the libraries and write more. Just to get enjoyment from expressing yourself either verbally or on the page.

Write to Ignite runs right through the month until 2 October.

For information and to book tickets go to Write to Ignite or call 07923 474 196 – and don’t forget to keep your eyes peeled for guerrilla poets!