Simon Turner - "A Lean Year", or "Why John Burnside's Thoughts on Contemporary Poetry are Almost Irredeemably Beef-Witted & Unwarranted"

Okay, so to give Burnside his due, his old man whingeing about the state of contemporary poetry (which you can read here, three entries down after Nicola Sturgeon and Ed Balls) is at variance with the usual script of "There's far too much poetry being published these days!", which we normally have to put up with from the embattled old guard.  But the sentiment underpinning his intervention - that the gatekeepers have effectively been sleeping on the job, letting the barbarians through - remains the same.  As many have pointed out on the twittersphere - is that the right term now? - 2017 has been something of a bumper year for poetry, particularly from smaller independent presses.  I, for one, have more than enough new poetry on my 'to read' list to last me at least for the next decade, and even then I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of what's been published this year.  To describe it as 'lean' suggests either astonishing ignorance of the plethora that's available or, more likely, it's just the passive-aggressive growling of wounded supremacy.  Either way, it's neither helpful nor required.  Given that there are plenty of other contributors to the Staggers' end of year list who pretty comprehensively undercut Burnside's untenable claim - nice to see Andrew Marr giving Eyewear a heads-up, for example, whilst Neel Mukherjee's given me a good idea for a stocking-filler in the form of Brian Blanchfield's essays (because you can never have too many essays in your house) - I'd recommend you look to the positive in this instance. 

 

Anyway, that's more than enough time spent on a very silly outburst from a very boring poet.  Time to listen to some more Public Enemy and get really stuck into Fiends Fell from Tom Pickard.  TTFN! 

         

Old news: poetry and fisticuffs

So, our re-launch petered out briefly, but once again we start cranking up the engine and setting the hamsters loose in the wheels, out of sheer necessity to continue rolling through dialogues about reading and writing and thinking out loud at "the nothing that is" on the other side of our screens.

This initiating mess of a response, written haphazardly, semi-improvised, is an attempt to show ourselves to have one finger on the pulse, the other one up our nostrils, fishing for lost moments of adolescence. Abnormal service may or may not be resuming shortly, depending on astrological alignments, other workloads and how quickly the government decides to begin regulating internet freedoms and violating our free speech.

A morsel of news, then for our imaginary readership, (mis)represented by George Ttoouli.

*

Rupert Loydell recently reviewed Eyewear's Best New British and Irish Poets 2017 over at Stride. The opening salvo references an ongoing discussion of the use of 'best' to describe poetry--nicely summarised by Peter Riley in one of his Fortnightly Review columns:

"there is always a ready answer enshrined in the little word ‘best’, which is a mighty fortress against all accusations. You can’t complain about narrowness or exclusivity or anything. It is all down to the simple fact that these are the best. And when you’re busy identifying and promoting the best there is no other priority..."

Rupert's review is, well, very Rupert. Idiosyncratic, transparent, it is what it is. He skirts (somewhat lazily) around his poetics--bandying the word 'good' around after laying into superlatives--suggesting he likes surprises, and 'resistance' (borrowing, say, Adorno's term via Perloff) while detesting pedestrian poetry.

Then again, knowing how much poetry Rupert has read suggests he isn't an easy reader to surprise in the first place. Come on Rupe! No need to take their candy and punch their noses at the same time. But yes, I personally share the sentiment about reading: the moment something looks too familiar, my interest wanes. I think the statement warrants further exploration (but not here, not yet).

In turn, editor-in-chief of Eyewear, Todd Swift, has taken to social media to protest the brutality of the review. Todd's postings are, well, very Todd. And they have simultaneously brought the anthology to the attention of several thousand more readers than Stride likely reaches.

Todd is, if nothing else, an entirely effusive human, and he does exactly what a passionate, caring editor should: he defends his list with zealous fire. At my last count, two magazine editors have requested review copies as a result of his outburst.

Since last week, Rupert posted a response, along with a piece by Katrina Fish, in which she unpicks, almost word-by-word, one of Eyewear's tweets. Todd then posted a counter-response, defending his business model. Rupert has riposted again, this time referencing an email message from Eyewear with subject: 'legal warning'. ROFLOL.

Watching from the sidelines with our popcorn and liquorice rat's tails, we can't really confess to taking sides. Loydell and Swift are both admirable in their own ways. What's interesting, however, is how volubly people must shout when they're shouting in opposite directions.

Stride's position is that of the critic, and associates with the usual lines of debate: freedom of speech, subjectivity, etc. Swift's position is that of a publisher: you hurt my poets, you hurt me, you damage my business and my living, etc.

Some publishers refuse to engage with the critical debate, knowing all publicity is good publicity. Some treat these exercises as PR opportunities, branding their presses by responding accordingly with displays of community. The arguments get interesting when they start negotiating on each other's terms.

Perhaps the more pernicious position on the other side, at least from G&P's perspective, is one which treats reviewing culture as an irrelevance, existing solely to service the wheels of industry.

Lionel Shriver once said, "The only person who's reading the review with any intensity is the author ... and so, you take people's feelings seriously." This sounds very much like the desperate gasps of a culture choked by capitalism.

Virginia Woolf, among others, has linked literary reviewing to healthy culture in general (see, e.g. Hermione Lee's essay in Grub Street and the Ivory Tower). Obviously we have a tendency toward the 'critical reviews support cultural health' side of the divide; which is not to say editors should be discounted, but that they should take such opportunities as they come. That said, if anyone can arrange for a greased up wrestling match between Loydell and Swift, we'd be touting ringside seats and handing out ice creams.

There's a bigger discussion to pursue here, about the state of reviewing culture in the UK. With all the statistics now available through VIDA and the Free Verse reports, as well as the various other issues at stake in free democratic developed nations like... like... Iceland? - it's worth asking how much has changed, and it which direction are we headed? Here at G&P Towers we'll be discussing things further, possibly with a view to conversing publicly and democratically, but also with the intention of drinking ourselves into a stupor on our sofas, then drunk-emailing everyone who ever sent us negative reviews of our work, before spending the rest of the year in hiding.

Comments, suggestions, in the meantime, invited/welcomed, at least, superficially. In private, we'll be reviewing your use of grammar and drawing humiliating stick pictures of what we think of you, to pin on our office dartboard.

A Poetry Bonanza in Kenilworth

A bohemian resident of Mercia, perishing for want of a poetry gig to attend

Poetry readings in the Midlands behave a little like buses anywhere else but the Midlands (we have a pretty good public transport service round these parts, for the majority of the time): you wait forever for one to come along, and then six arrive en masse.  In an act that may signal the beginning of some kind of Bernstein-esque back-alley turf war with Birmingham Literature Festival and Wawick Words, Kenilworth's inaugural Arts Festival kicks off next week on the 12th of September, running until the 18th of the month.  There are some interesting events lined up, including various gigs, workshops and talks, but what stood out for me was the all-star poetry line-up curated by David Morley on Friday 16th September at 7.30 in the Talisman theatre: a versificatory carnival including Sarah Howe, Jo Bell, Claire Trevien, Jonathan Edwards and promising newcomer Lucas Cunard.  Well-worth a handful of your rapidly devaluating pounds, I reckon.              

Simon Turner - Recent Activities

It's been, I'd be the first to admit, rather quiet on the Gists and Piths front of late, but spring is here, fitfully, and that's as good a time as any to get things kickstarted.  At least part of the problem, I'm sure, is that George and I have actually been doing things in the real world, which gets in the way of actually posting.  Writing would be easy if people didn't keep getting in the way. 

Most recently, the Editors were up in Leicester, for States of Independence, a day of small press activity, including readings, talks, and lots and lots of bookstalls.  Highlights included:

Clive (otherwise known as CJ) Allen and Alan Baker, mainstays of the East Midlands poetry scene.  (Clive's published by Leafe, which is run by Alan, and Alan's published by Skysill, also based in Nottingham, and run by Sam Ward.)  I've seen Clive's work described as 'muscular whimsy', and whilst that's accurate, it's only part of the story, as the poems mix a demotic mateyness with what can only be described as a kind of metaphysical consciousness.  How else to explain the last line of 'Poetry is Your Friend': "It [poetry] wants you like a tyrant or the sun"?  Part of the power here is that the line comes almost from nowhere, as what precedes it is disarmingly chatty and offhand, with poetry being compared variously to "a high-sugar drink" or "that special moment, you know / the one" (the mutilated ghosts of adspeak being parodied in this case, I suspect).  His selected poems from Leafe is full of comparably wonderful things.  

Alan Baker's reading, too, was great.  His work is more obviously a part of the avant garde line than Clive's, though equally approachable.  A number of linguistically and structurally innovative techniques - found text, collage, repetitive combinatorial compositions - sit alongside a quiet, you might even say delicate lyricism, to create a beguiling mixture of elements.  Though influenced by the more meliorative elements of the British Poetry Revival - John James and Lee Harwood more explicitly - Alan's voice is very much his own.  Skysill have recently published a big collection, Variations on Painting a Room (Alan quipping that it represented a sort of collected pamphlets, as much of his work has previously appeared in that form over the years), and it's great to see his work gathered together in one place at last.

It was also good to see Matt Merritt give a reading as part of a talk by Nine Arches Press' co-editors, Jane Commane and Matt Nunn.  Editorial bias alert: Nine Arches published my second collection, so obviously I'm going to say good things about them, but I do genuinely think they're one of the most interesting small presses currently working: their pamphlets, in particular, are things of beauty, and represent a united front in terms of quality and design which harks back to the best of small press publishing in the 70s and 80s.  (The first two volumes of Chris Torrance's The Magic Door, from Albion Village Press, are my benchmark in matters of poetry pamphlet design.)  Matt's new book, his second, has the distinction of having one of the most difficult collection title's in recent memory: Hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica, though it becomes less difficult if you break it down into its component elements.  I'm increasingly drawn to Matt's work: it's decidely unshowy but musically alive lyricism is something genuinely unique in contemporary poetry, and time and time again in both his collections, I've stumbled across moments that have made me green with envy, which is the highest praise, really.  

What else?  New Walk, a publication whose first issue came out late last year, looks like an interesting and eclectic addition to the world of little magazines: their roster includes Peter Larkin, Alison Brackenbury, and Andrew Motion (I never thought a magazine would exist where those names would be included alongside one another, unless it were in the context of the following sentence: "I never thought a magazine would exist where Peter Larkin, Alison Brackenbury and Andrew Motion would be included alongside one another"); Five Leaves Press, another East Midlands mainstay, whose current specialism is reprints of lost masterpieces of London fiction, including Scamp by Roland Camberton, which I've just started reading, and it's fantastic; Flarestack, whose new pamhlet imprint is a model of editorial acumen and bold design; and, I'm sure, others I've missed, or whose tables I didn't make it to because I was too busy drooling over the poetry.

In other news: Sunday saw the broadcast of Make Perhaps This Out Sense of Can You, a documentary on Bob Cobbing, high priest of sound and concrete poetry in the UK, and one of the key players in the 'Poetry Wars' of the 1970s.  I've not listened to it yet, but the fact that this exists at all is remarkable, and the names involved - including Iain Sinclair and Peter Finch - are noteworthy in themselves.  The programme's up at BBC iPlayer until Sunday 27th of March.  I suggest you make good with your ears and brain, and fill your head up with it forthwith.          

Nine Arches News

Tom Chivers, in his pre-award nomination days.  Wall provided by Ducat & Legbrace of Evesham. 

The next Nine Arches Shindig! is happening this Sunday, May 16th, at Wilde’s in Leamington Spa. Guest readers include Lydia Towsey and Bob Mee (co-editor of Ragged Raven Press), and there's cracking musical support from Matt Campbell.  Doors open at 6.30 and the whole shebang kicks off at 7.30. The Editors hope to see you there: we'll certainly see ourselves.

In other news - this is the really exciting bit - two of Nine Arches Press’s beautiful pamphlets, Tom Chivers’ The Terrors and David Hart’s The Titanic Cafe closes its doors and hits the rocks have been nominated for the Michael Marks Poetry Award.  You can read more about this nomination here. The Editors would like to be among the first to offer Jane Commane and Matt Nunn, the head honchos at NAP, a hearty congratulations. The awards ceremony takes place at the British Library on Wednesday 16th of June at 6.30. Further information and tickets for the event are available here. Spread the word, my lovelies.

One More News Item: PalFest 2

With thanks to Gloria Dawson for sending this through:

The 2nd Palestine Literary Festival launches in Jerusalem on 23rd May. The website went live on Wednesday. Founded by Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif, this year the festival will be held in 5 cities and towns in Israel and Palestine, no small feat considering the difficulty of movement caused by Israeli walls and checkpoints. At a pretty dark time for the 'peace process', it's incredibly important to sustain a good cultural life for those who have suffered many years of occupation and exclusion.

Recent News...

This is almost in danger of becoming a regular feature, but here are some recent new items floating about the web...

- Coach House Books (who published Christian Bok's Eunoia) have had one of their stable shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize - Jeramy Dodds' Crabwise to the Hounds. The two audio poems by Dodds on their site are great: The Epileptic Acupuncturist and The Gift.

- David Hart's new pamphlet (Nine Arches) launches in Birmingham in a couple of weeks. It's a square book, which makes me happy anyway, but G&P's sneak preview of the long poem, with photographs, has left us with our jaws on the floor. (Well, mine anyway. Simon had to sell his lower jaw on the black market when his first collection failed to keep him supplied with lentils.) Review pending, methinks. (Of the book, not Simon's jaw, or lentils.)

- An inexplicable email arrived via my other blog, advertising a short short story competition run by the Tehran Art & Cultural Complex. The website is helps not a lot in elucidating of the problems of the competition meaning.

Sample: "This competition features in the genre of short-short stories, is a common language of all the people in regard of admiring the literature, because the story in any culture and geographic could reveal the tangible image of life, reflection, and dreams of an individual. By intellectual world in this contest, means all internal and spiritual perception of a human being, therefore for those which is conceivable, could be the subject of short-short stories in this competition. Participating in this contest or helping to the intelligence is an assistant to the literature."

Clearly fans of machine-translation tools.

- Meanwhile, Andrew Bailey sends over a wonderful little link - The Eater of Meaning. I wholeheartedly recommend using this tool to create short short stories to enter into the above competition. (Click the picture to see the chaos in action.)

- Baroness played in Birmingham last week and made the Editors extremely happy.

- And Max Cannon at Red Meat has put out a notice about the Alternative Comics Apocalypse. Here are two reasons why you should support him: bug-eyed earl and milkman dan.

- Link to Avaaz added in the sidebar.

George Ttoouli - The Death of Poetry (Magazine Funding): A Polemic

[This was written about a month ago and sat on hold while I left the country, but seems timely now given a recent post by Roddy Lumsden about small poetry magazines at the Poets on Fire forums (to which it is, now I think about it, only indirectly linked). --GT]

'If you sit down, unimpassioned and uninspired, and tell yourself to write for so many hours, you will merely produce... some of that article which fills, so far as I can judge, two-thirds of most magazines - most easy to write, most weary to read - men call it "padding", and it is, to my mind, one of the most detestable things in modern literature.' -- Lewis Carroll

I'm on too many mailing lists, so my life has been perhaps more inordinately filled up with the floundering death wails of most ex-Arts Council funded magazines than your average poetry enthusiast's inbox (note I don't say lover here - lately, I've had a sneaking suspicion that my love of poetry has been seriously tempered over the years by a need for tolerance towards shoddy event management, partial clique-bathering and inconsistent editorial trends - and yes I know that makes me sound terribly ungenerous, but the clue is in the title of this article), but - if you'll permit the Carroll-inspired convoluted first sentence - really, who fucking cares anyway?

Yes, yes. I know, the old argument: poetry deserves to be supported by the state because most poets are socialists and they are good at heart, kind of like Big Issue sellers. OK, maybe I'm confused about the old argument, but I'm sure there are some commonly trotted out arguments that try to justify public spending on poetry, which tend to revolve almost entirely around the poets and the poetry.

Whatever those arguments are (please, this isn't a fascist blog, do feel free to trot out the arguments in comments), I'd like to sweep them aside because, frankly, all the arguments I've ever heard and forgotten or misremembered about why poetry magazines deserve support beyond their subscribers boil down to sidestepping the main point of magazine publishing. It's not about the content; it's about the production and the aesthetic approach to serialised publication.

Magazines are an outlet for particular tastes - editors saying, All youse guys' poetry tastes suck. I'm going to show youse guys what good poetry tastes smell like. I like poetry that mixes metaphors! Yeah! This is what makes a magazine like Magma successful. The editor changes every issue, so you can tell yourself, One day this might get better, one day, someone I like might edit an issue I don't have to burn in the back garden with all the rest. It is also what kept the completely subscriber-funded Bound Spiral going: the editor would only publish an issue when there was enough content of a sufficiently high standard to fill an issue. As a result, issues were sometimes years apart; at others, it was quarterly. The 'who' of the content didn't matter: it was the magazine's commitment to quality over time, not the editor's commitment to publishing mates.

The championing of taste and content is the death of interest in most poetry magazines; the magazine itself needs to be of interest, not the people it publishes. So when magazines profess a loyalty to particular authors, or styles, they deserve to be shot. When they trot out the same set of completely established, or completley unheard of names, they make an assumption that somebody, somewhere actually cares. And then the cheek of them to presume that, because it's poetry, they deserve to be state funded.

Style, production, quality! The reputation sells more than the content; the content barely defines the reputation. All style, all judging of the magazine by its cover. Why else do Golfer's Weekly, Car Monthly and Plumbers Annual all feature skimpily clad women on their covers? (Note, this is a made up fact containing guessed-at publication titles which may or may not exist, but this should in no way detract from the principle of the argument. Just look at Staying Alive's cover and then eat your words.)

I'm not really asking for the death of all poetry magazines; just those that are started by someone who thinks knowing how to use the photocopier at work and a stapler gives license to running 20+ issues of their mates gibbering in iambics about how much they love their pets. (Hopefully that isn't specific enough to constitute libel. Again, the sentiment is important, not the accuracy of the description of a magazine I received at work a few months ago.)

So we should applaud the collapse of poetry magazines run by people who know nothing about how to create a magazine - an original magazine. And we should applaud the magazines that survive the Arts Council's culling of magazine funding because that is a sign of their innovation as well as, no doubt, because we like to have our ideas affirmed, the innovation of their editorial tastes (though this is, naturally, a secondary byproduct which makes us very happy and keeps us loyal subscribers). Vive The Believer! Long live McSweeneys! Where are the British equivalents?

Nevermind that the recent cutbacks will consolidate the UK's reputation for being a poetry-dead climate, one in which poetry is not allowed to thrive in government-funded streams such as education or the arts. Nevermind that the Arts Council's justification for the culling of UK poetry magazines was based on research conducted in Scotland; nevermind this research ignores the differences between the poetry-reading cultures in Scotland and England and Wales and Northern Ireland. Nevermind that the Arts Council is making dramatic cutbacks across the arts despite receiving a budgetary increase of 3% in 2008 and this despite the budgetary freeze in 2005. Nevermind the major structural changes in the Arts Council's head office, including a change in the head of literature and the departure of a number of key executives, after the round of dismissals and after some late, potentially unpopular, appointments were made. (Oh wait, thinks the reader, you mean the statements in this paragraph aren't concocted on the spot in an imaginative fashion? This blogzine is sounding more and more conventional by the second. That's it. I'm cancelling my subscription to the newsfeed.)

Vend Vend Vend - Simon Turner

Stumbled across this article on the novel idea of a poetry vending machine. That article's critical, but I quite like the idea. The next steps: advertising hoardings serialising Briggflatts, or recordings of Ted Hughes and Susan Howe piped in to multiplex cinemas before the trailers, instead of the awful aural pap that movei-goers normally have to endure. It could be the beginnings of a trend, just wait...

Babylon Burning: Poems in Aid of the Red Cross

Here is yet another nice thing by that very nice man, Todd Swift. His Oxfam Great Britain Residency led to that very nice project, Life Lines which features an astounding 69 poets. But I've said 'nice' too many times and I don't want you to think I'm being disingenuous.

Babylon Burning, from nthposition (which Todd edits), is subtitled '9/11 five years on' and has a cartoon on the cover of the Towers as underground offices embedded in the rock strata beneath Ground Zero. I don't know how I feel about all that. But the book is a nice project, as the proceeds go to the Red Cross. And it contains loads of poets, including:

Ros Barber, Charles Bernstein, Tom Chivers, Elaine Feinstein, Peter Finch, [the wonderfully named] Wednesday Kennedy, Sonnet L'Abbé, David Morley, Ruth Padel, Myra Schneider, Penelope Shuttle, John Siddique, Todd Swift [mais oui! he's done it for free, it's only fair] John Tranter and many many more [a limp ending, but there are loads of poets in there, yes loads.]

And all this, for free as a PDF download, from nthposition. The catch? "If you enjoy these poems, please make a donation to the Red Cross." That's not too much to ask, is it?

I haven't reviewed the collection here, but if someone wants to send one in, please do.

National Poetry Competition Winners

Simon Turner surveys the carnage

This year's three winners of the National Poetry Competition are an interesting bunch, perhaps reflecting the fact that the judging panel was a little more idiosyncratic than normal (expect Jeremy Prynne, Attila the Stockbroker and Charles Kennedy next year...). So, what were they like? Mike Barlow, the winner, gave us 'The Third Wife', a well-executed though recognisable type of poem in a narrative style hovering between dramatic monologue and surreal exposition. Some excellent moments here - I liked the lines "No matter how I pumped, the organ of her heart played flat, / her painted smile as wooden as a figurehead’s" especially - and the overall effect was both funny and creepy, like the early moments in a David Lynch movie when you're not quite sure if you're meant to laugh or have a stroke. However, it's use of persona, and the rather stilted language - like it had been translated from Swedish - screamed 'workshop', at least to this reader. I don't want to come across as unrelentingly negative, though; there was a great deal to like here.

John Latham, placed second for his poem 'From Professor Nobu Kitagawa’s Notebooks On Effects of Lightning on the Human Body' (Tr. from the Japanese by N. Kitagawa), has produced a far more interesting beast, which troubles ideas of language, translation, the poem itself (perhaps explaining why it didn't win). It works with a kind of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E-lite conceit of a fake (and not quite 'correct' translation [see also Jonathan Safron Foer's Everything is Illuminated]), and the poem is full of fresh and imaginative linguistic shards as a result. In the first half of the poem, detailing a couple who are struck by lightning on the Horiko Coast, 'Dr Kitagawa' gives us this 'translation' of his own 'text':

Man felt no perverse effects,
seven heart-flowers uncorrupted in his hand,
though since he suffers rapture of tympanum -

which is lovely. There is much throughout the poem along these lines, which might get tiresome if the poem were to outstay its welcome (see also Everything is Illuminated) but which works because of its brevity. Of the three poems, I would most likely have given this one the top spot, but then I'm cussed and biased towards the extremes of language, so what do I know?

(One thing, though: is it just me, or is there a ghost of racism in using a fictional 'foreigner' to create interesting effects in the English language? How far removed are fake poetic translations (and I think they are prevalent enough to call them a form) from, say, Peter Sellers' infamous portrayal of a 'goodness-gracious-me' Indian stereotype in The Party? Certainly, the 'translation' form is not usually designed to produce comic effects, but isn't the mindset both impulses devolve from exactly the same? I wonder if there's a tradition of Japanese fake translations from the English? Just a thought...)

And finally, David Grubb, who came third with his poem 'Bud Fields and His World'. I feel like I'm going to have to live with this poem a little longer than the others to get a full handle on it; its intentions and effects are less easily pigeon-holed, its qualities much more a component of the overall package (sign of a good poem). The poem feels very American (this is aside from its subject matter, being as it is a tribute to James Agee, the author of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a deeply poetic study of the rural poor in the Depression-era US), though I can't really clarify this with any degree of accuracy or authority, so you'll just have to take my word for it. In short, though, what I detect in American poetry generally (or rather, the American poetry which appeals to me most) is an openness of form and content (and, secondary to this, meaning: in much English poetry, the meaning is set almost from the get-go, which makes reading a poem akin to an experience of deja vu), a free-form approach to language where the energy of the poem is closely tied to what it says. All of these qualities are present in David Grubb's poem. Interesting. I'm going to endeavour to read more of his work, I think.

New Poetry Titles 2007

Shearsman's publishing schedule for 2007 can be viewed here. The Michael Haslam and Colin Simms collections are particularly exciting, but there's a lot to look forward to.

Carcanet's new and forthcoming poetry titles can be viewed through this page.

Look out too for Zoe Brigley's first collection The Secret from Bloodaxe, due in August 2007.

Forthcoming and new collections from Salt.

Live poetry event!

I've heard on the grapevine that the good people behind Matchbox magazine, based at the University of Warwick, are running a poetry event on Monday the 12th of March at the Lounge in Leamington Spa. It starts at 8pm and runs till midnight. Free entry.