Henry, Leanne and Flynn at the showcase.
Two local young writers, Henry Lambert and Flynn Ledger, were invited to complete a one-week residency earlier this year, mentored by Nottingham-based poet Leanne Moden, in order to create poetry in response to the library’s Alan Sillitoe collection. Donated by his widow, Ruth Fainlight, in 2010, the collection contains every book the Nottingham literary legend had on his shelves before his death that year. It is incredibly varied, featuring everything from poetry to maps and cookbooks. Several of the books were owned by others years before Sillitoe’s time, many of whom wrote notes and messages in the margins. The collection provided a plethora of material to inspire Henry and Flynn in their writing process.
Henry’s collage.
Henry’s poem, entitled ‘The Ghost Library’, focused on the marginalia written in Sillitoe’s collection and the lives of those unknown except by their name written briefly on a page, which he chose to aesthetically represent in a collage of different handwriting. Flynn’s poem, ‘Shelf AS-D and Those Yet to be Classified’, took a different approach; he wrote stanzas in varying fonts and styles, each on a new page, in order to create a sense of flicking through a shelf in a library. The writers were very pleased seeing their physical outputs in front of them, showing them how their hard work had truly materialised.
The first page of Flynn’s poem.
Following the residency, Bromley House and the City of Literature collaborated to hold a celebratory showcase for Henry and Flynn, in which they could share their poems and answer questions from Leanne and the audience.
The two responses to the library’s Sillitoe collection were met with strong excitement from attendees, which included friends and family, members of the City of Literature and Bromley House teams and Bromley House Trustee, Catharine Arnold. Guests were also invited to browse the Sillitoe collection on the night of the event, and enjoyed leafing through all the books that inspired Henry and Flynn’s poetry.
At the end of their performance and Q&A, the writers were gifted a year’s membership to the library, and Leanne was given flowers in thanks for her wonderful mentoring. The experience has been truly enriching for both young writers, with Flynn describing it as “something I’m going to cherish and take with me into every creative project going forward.” Nottingham City of Literature hopes that this will be the first of many young writers’ residences to come.
Read Flynn and Henry’s poems and find out more about the Bromley House Young Writers’ residency here.