Valerie Laws and Ann Alexander:
Mooning Demons
Friday October 3
Ann Alexander had travelled a long way to be in Clayport Library that night: 500 miles on a Virgin train, she told the audience. And as soon as she returned home, she would set off again to London, where her entry to the BBC's competition to find a new Poem for Britain (no more than 16 lines long, and with the intensity of William Blake's Jerusalem) had been shortlisted: "But remember, you heard it here first!". Check the Poetry Society's website on or after National Poetry Day (Thursday 9th October) 2003 to find out if she won.
This was impressive, but the local team held their own. Valerie Laws gained international notoriety with her Quantum Sheep project, in which she spray painted words onto a flock of sheep, to see what sort of poems would be generated by the random movements of the individual animals. Her contribution to the evening's event included the poem which was most talked about the following day, Thin Air, which charted the course of a romance between two air guitarists.
The contrast between the two is not just a matter of geography. Valerie Laws is a science graduate, as her fusion of quantum physics and poetry might suggest: "I try to make my equations as beautiful as my poetry," she said. Ann Alexander worked for many years as an advertising copywriter, and although she declined to reveal any advertising slogans she had written, she proclaimed her love for the media, and explained "My poems often start from something I have read in the newspaper or seen on TV." In Valerie Laws' poems, the contemporary world is equally likely to be illuminated by classical mythology, so that Persephone complains that her mother, Ceres, far from rescuing her from the gloomy underworld, tries to drag her away from her hot lover, Hades.
Yet the synergy between these two poets was expressed by the title of the evening's event: Mooning Demons combines the titles of each writer's first collection, Ann Alexander's Facing Demons and Valerie Laws' Moonbathing, both published by Peterloo Poets and both available from the Festival bookstall throughout the Festival.
Alistair Robinson, himself both a journalist and a poet - his collection South of Souter has just been published as a Sand chapbook - introduced the poets, and led a lively question and answer session after the readings.
Further reading on the internet:
Writers' Circles publishes two of Ann's poems, including "Didn't Hurt" which she read in Durham.
Valerie Laws has kindly given permission to us to publish her poem Thin Air on the Festival website.
