Cosmopolis: what a day that was

I've only just noticed that the Think Something Different site has posted up a pretty thorough record of proceedings at the Cosmopolis events at UEA campus on a blazing Saturday back in early June. There are transcripts, videos and photos of pretty much everything that went on. 'The Politics of Storytelling' session I did with Giles Foden and Oscar Guardiola Rivera is logged here, and the 'How To Pitch Your Film' dialogue with producer Judy Counihan is here. The transcripts are especially useful, as I would otherwise find my memory fighting a losing battle against all the beer I thirstily consumed (well, it was really hot...) at several pleasant hostelries during the conference period - one such joint being the reassuringly synthetic student bar close to where all the panellists had their lodgings, in clean-swept Novotel-like student digs.

Cosmopolis (UEA): In academe's grey groves...

Good sport at the UEA Cosmopolis events last Saturday. I enjoyed my platform on fiction and politics with the eminent Giles Foden, chaired with some panache by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, author of What If Latin America Ruled the World? Giles said some especially intriguing things about thinking his way into Idi Amin's head for The Last King of Scotland. At Giles' prompting Oscar tasked both Giles and I to propose how we might fictionalise a) the Israeli Gaza flotilla debacle, and b) the BP oil-spill debacle. (My responses were, a) in the voice of a ghost, or else an IDF soldier slipping down a rope, and b) in the voice of a seagull...) Otherwise, I enjoyed expounding as always, on such beloved subjects as Mailer (his 'left conservatism'), George Steiner (poetry after Auschwitz, and Hitler depicted in his Portage to San Christobal of A.H.), and Brecht (the idea of pageant as 'illuminated history', offering a take on 'the truth behind it all.')
I also ended up chairing a fun session with the film/TV producer Judy Counihan, on the subject of how to pitch one's film script/idea to market, a concern on which I personally have begun to feel the pressing need for advice from someone of Judy's calibre...
Norwich itself struck me as a nice spot on my first visit. UEA is a campus college, and funnily enough I'd never been to a real campus before. But it was all very familiar. As the literary agent and novelist Derek Johns remarked to me and others in surveying its brute-concrete/dry-grassland aspect - 'Y'know, James Lasdun's dad did all of this...'

Cosmopolis: UEA, June 5 2010

In a month's time the University of East Anglia will play host to Cosmopolis: The International Gathering of Storymakers (first annual...), billed as 'a festival of words, images and sounds to celebrate and explore the universal human practice of making stories.' Well, I'm up for that. In fact, I'm booked as a speaker. The event in which I'm participating is billed like so:

"The Politics of Storymaking (Lecture Theatre 2, 11:10): With electioneering voices now hoarse and politicians dizzy from spin, the novelists Giles Foden (The Last King of Scotland, Turbulence), Richard T Kelly (Crusaders, Sean Penn: His Life and Times), and the editor of New Statesman magazine, Jason Cowley along with a special guest, will discuss how stories and successful politics are inextricably linked."

Of course, stories and unsuccessful politics are pretty solidly linked too (I write as a Labour voter...), so I expect that side of the coin will also get an airing in what I hope will be a lively discussion. Pleased to see the Norwich Evening News have picked it up too...