TICKETS: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/voce-books-58878000033
Voce Books & Influx Press are thrilled to host this special day-long event celebrating the life & work of one of Birmingham’s most daring & distinct writers:
Joel Lane.
Bringing the ‘witnesses’ from Joel’s lifetime – those who knew, loved & revered him – together alongside a brand-new new readership arriving at his uniquely unusual & unsettling body of work for the first time, we’ll be taking a kaleidoscopic trip into the dark, weird, queer, punk & poetic world of this remarkable chronicler of the West Midlands.
Hosted to coincide with the republication of Joel’s extraordinary books The Blue Mask & Where Furnaces Burn, ‘The Witnesses Are Here’ will feature talks, panels, music, readings, screenings, live art & more, brought to our Birmingham home by a roster of writers, poets & artists all inspired by the work of Joel Lane.
‘Witnesses’ taking part in the event include:
Tristam Vivian Adams – Gaynor Arnold – Alan Beard – Simon Bestwick – Steve Bishop – Gary Budden – Anthony Cartwright – Jane Commane – Wayne Dean-Richards – Paul Farrell – Flatpack Festival – Ian Francis – R.M. Francis – Kerry Hadley-Pryce – Andy Howlett – Infinity Brewing Company – Influx Press – Mat Joiner – Clive Judd – Tom Maguire (TMZ) – Nine Arches Press – Nicholas Royle – Mick Scully – The Tindal Street Fiction Group – Voce Books – Walkspace – Patrick Wray
PART ONE
11am
The Witnesses Are Here: The Life & Legacy of Joel Lane
Nicholas Royle, writer, editor, publisher & long-term friend of Joel Lane opens the day with his personal reflections on the importance of Joel’s work to the Birmingham literary scene & beyond, & the coming together of friends new & old in a day of celebration to mark ten years since Joel’s untimely passing.
11:45am
Arthouse Birmingham & the Quest for Lost Films with Ian Francis
Joel Lane’s work is full of cinema. Not just movie references, but specific local venues: the Arts Lab, the Triangle, the Electric. In this short talk, Flatpack Festival’s Ian Francis will speculate on how the city's film landscape might have shaped his books and – to very different effect – the work of another cinephile author, Jonathan Coe. Can a healthy independent film culture help to nourish good writing? And what is it about a place like Birmingham that feeds an obsession with lost films?
Ian Francis is a writer, curator and founder of Flatpack Festival. Flatpack are engaged in an ongoing effort to map Birmingham’s cinema stories through Wonderland.
12:30pm:
Trouble in the Heartlands: The Poetry & Poetics of Joel Lane
Join poet and editor Jane Commane of Nine Arches Press for a talk about the influence of Joel Lane's writing on her own work, & to explore & celebrate Joel Lane’s poetry. His collections The Edge of the Screen, The Autumn Myth & Trouble in The Heartland (Arc Publications) brought together politics, music, loneliness & desire, the urban landscapes of Birmingham – & were ahead of their time in addressing climate change. Hear a selection of poems by Joel alongside a wide-ranging discussion of his work.
Jane Commane is a poet, writer and editor based in the Midlands, UK. Her debut collection of poems, Assembly Lines, was published by Bloodaxe Books in February 2018 & she was a Jerwood Compton Fellow in 2017-18. Jane is the editor of Nine Arches Press.
2pm:
Where Furnaces Burn: Joel Lane, then & now
Nicholas Royle & Gary Budden in conversation with Clive Judd
Track the length & breadth of Joel Lane’s career, with two publishers who have played an integral part in bringing his work to a wider audience – Nicholas Royle & Gary Budden. From Joel’s early stories to his mature later work, from his selfless championing of other writer’s work to the re-emergence of his own writing today, taking his rightful place amongst the legends of contemporary fiction, this wide-ranging conversation will examine the importance of publishing Joel Lane across the timeline, & the impact of doing so on the Birmingham literary scene & beyond.
Nicholas Royle has written seven novels: Counterparts, Saxophone Dreams, The Matter of the Heart, The Director’s Cut, Antwerp, Regicide & First Novel. He has also written the short-story collections: Mortality, Ornithology, London Gothic & Manchester Uncanny. He is the editor of Nightjar Press.
Gary Budden is a writer, editor and co-founder of award-winning independent publisher, Influx Press. He is the author of London Incognita (Dead Ink, 2020), Hollow Shores (Dead Ink, 2017), the Shirley Jackson Award-Shortlisted Judderman (Eden Book Society, 2018), & The White Heron Beneath the Reactor (2019) & These Towers Will One Day Slip Into the Sea (2021) with artist Maxim Griffin. He lives in Enfield, north London.
Clive Judd is an award-winning writer, director & bookseller from the West Midlands. His debut play Here won the Papatango Prize in 2022 from a record 1553 scripts & was staged at the Southwark Playhouse in November 2022. He co-runs the Birmingham-based independent bookshop Voce Books with his wife Maria.
PART TWO
4pm
Joel Lane & the Tindal Street Fiction Group
Hear from members of the Tindal Street Fiction Group read work in tribute & share personal reflections on the life & work of their friend & peer Joel Lane.
5:15pm:
Scar City: Queer Horror & the Urban Weird
Simon Bestwick & Mat Joiner in conversation with Gary Budden
Horror authors Simon Bestwick & Mat Joiner chip away at the concrete landscapes that provided Joel Lane with the stage on which to set his uniquely queer spins on the horror genre & discuss the mutual interests they shared with Joel as his peers & close friends.
Simon Bestwick is the author of eight novels, five novellas & four full-length short story collections. His short fiction has appeared in Shakespeare Unleashed & ParSec magazine & has been reprinted in The Best Horror of the Year. His latest novel The Hollows as by ‘Daniel Church’, was shortlisted for 2023 British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel, his fifth nomination in all. He lives on the Wirral with fellow author Cate Gardner & loves dogs, tea & Pepsi Max.
Mat Joiner lives near Birmingham, England, where they absorb tea and second-hand books, watch foxes, and admire crumbling buildings. Their stories & poems have appeared in Not One Of Us, Lackingtons, Goblin Fruit, & Stone Telling. You can find them on Twitter as @damsonfox
6:30pm
Film Screening: Jean Genet’s Un chant d'amour (1950, 26m)
Prefaced with introduction by film curator Paul Farrell.
‘If you watch a film, part of you should always be aware of what it would mean if these things were happening in front of you…’
– Joel Lane
An unnamed prison, a peephole, men in isolation. Legendary writer Jean Genet's sole directorial work, Un chant d'amour (1950), follows a prison guard spying on the sexual activities of the inmates under his watch, exploring his own lust through their writhing bodies while two prisoners flirt between the solid walls, pushing their touch beyond the stone. Immediately banned on release, ‘Un chant d'amour’ presents Genet's voyeuristic vision of desire under lock and key, a vision shared by Joel Lane (who would claim Genet as influential to his own writing) through his literary depictions of physical exaltation and degradation amidst the cold, unyielding concrete of the Midlands.
Age Rating: Strictly 18+
Content Warning: Contains explicit sexual imagery & suggested physical violence.
Runtime: 25 minutes
Paul Farrell is a film curator based in Birmingham and Manchester, and a member of Artefact artists' co-operative in Stirchley. Follow Paul on Instagram here.
7:30pm:
The Lost District: Writing The Black Country
Anthony Cartwright, Wayne Dean-Richards, R.M. Francis & Kerry Hadley-Pryce in conversation with Tristam Vivian Adams
What is the Black Country? Where do its border start & end? What compels one to write this territory? These are the questions we’ll be asking in this wide-ranging panel discussion featuring some of the key literary figures currently at work in the Black Country, highlighting the multi-layered relationship between Joel Lane’s emotional landscapes & that of the built & natural environments of the Black Country.
Anthony Cartwright’s five novels are all set in Dudley and the wider Black Country, or in the case of his novel Iron Towns (2016), reimagined versions of them. First published by Birmingham’s own groundbreaking Tindal Street Press, his most recent work was the novella The Cut (2017). He teaches on the Creative & Professional Writing programme at the University of the West of England, Bristol, and lives in Cardiff with his family.
Wayne Dean-Richards is a writer & poet. His work includes a novel Breakpoints, & a short story collection At The Edge – funded by the Arts Council. Short stories have appeared & continue to appear in magazines & anthologies in the UK and the US; including Tindal Street Press’ Birmingham Noir, and Thi Wurd's forthcoming second anthology.
R.M. Francis R. M. Francis is a writer from the Black Country. He completed his PhD at the University of Wolverhampton, where he is lecturer in Creative & Professional Writing. He's the author of five poetry Chapbook collections. In 2020 Smokestack Books published his first full length collection, Subsidence, & his debut novel, Bella is out with Wild Pressed Books. In spring 2019 he became the inaugural David Bradshaw Writer in Residence at Oxford University. In 2020-22 he was the Poet in Residence for the Black Country Geological Society. His second novel, The Wrenna is published with Wild Pressed Books in 2021. In March 2023 his collection of poems, essays & fieldnotes The Chain Coral Chorus came out with Play Dead Press. Poe Girl Publications published his horror short story collection Ameles / Currents of Unmindfulness. He is reviews editor for the Journal of Class and Culture
Kerry Hadley-Pryce was born in the Black Country. She worked nights in a Wolverhampton petrol station before becoming a secondary school teacher. She wrote her first novel, The Black Country, whilst studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University, for which she gained a distinction & was awarded the Michael Schmidt Prize for Outstanding Achievement 2013–14. She is currently a PhD student at Manchester Metropolitan University, researching Psychogeography and Black Country Writing. God’s Country is her third novel. She has a story in the forthcoming Best British Short Stories 2023, published by Salt.
Tristam Adams is a theorist, writer and PhD candidate at Goldsmiths College, University of London (Visual Cultures Department), & author of The Psychopath Factory: How Capitalism Organises Empathy (Repeater Books, 2016).
WALK
4pm, Sunday 12th November
Joel Lane: The ‘Witnesses’ Walk
with Andy Howlett of Walkspace
'What are the canals, do you think? A bit of random heritage, a scar tissue under the roads? I can tell you it’s more than that. It’s a palimpsest. A map of industry… and beneath that, the key to another world...'
Passing between worlds is a recurring theme in the work of Joel Lane: life and death, dreams and reality, cruelty and compassion – all are fluid in his universe. On this twilight walk, Andy Howlett will lead us around the backstreets and canals of Digbeth, bearing witness to the in-between places still haunted by Joel and his characters.
Andy Howlett is an artist, filmmaker and co-founder Walkspace. His interests include collective walking, urban exploration, Counter-Tourism and The Right to the City.
Walkspace is a collective of artists and wanderers in the West Midlands who are intrigued by walking in all its forms. Walkspace covers the interesting, weird edges of the humble perambulation.
Events taking place all day (Saturday 11th) at Voce Books include:
Joel Lane inspired live art with Patrick Wray
London-based artist, writer & musician, Patrick Wray (The Flood that Did Come: Ghost Stories I Remember) creates unique new artworks inspired by Joel Lane’s work & through reflections by writers who knew him. Patrick’s work will be available for sale on the day from Voce Books.
Tom Maguire (TMW) DJ set
Birmingham-based DJ & writer Tom Maguire (TMW) provides the soundtrack to the day, playing tracks referenced by & adjacent to Lane’s appreciation for raw, guitar-driven music. Expect post-punk, noise rock, drone, sludge, post-rock. Tom will also spin tunes which evoke the weird affects of Lane’s work, touching on the textured, glassy & haunting faces of techno, UK garage, dnb & dubstep.
Infinity Brewing Company
An all-day bar provided by Birmingham-based Infinity Brewing Company.
Dates
Joel Lane: The Witnesses Are Here
Saturday 11th November
Voce Books
54-57 Allison Street, Digbeth
Doors from 10:30am
Joel Lane: The Witnesses Walk
Sunday 12th November
Voce Books
54-57 Allison Street, Digbeth
Meet at 3:45pm
Tickets:
£20 (inc. full day access to ‘The Witnesses Are Here’ event, & a place on ‘The Witnesses Walk’ on Sunday 12th November)
£15 (inc. full day access to ‘The Witnesses Are Here’ event)
£10 (inc. a half day ticket to Part One of ‘The Witnesses Are Here’ event)
£10 (inc. a half day ticket to Part Two of ‘The Witnesses Are Here event)
£8 (inc. a place on ‘The Witnesses Walk’ on Sunday 12th November only)
We are holding a small number of Pay-What-You-Can tickets for customers who would otherwise struggle to attend. Please email us on info@vocebooks.com if you require one of these tickets.
All Influx Press re-issues of Joel Lane’s books including The Blue Mask, Where Furnaces Burn, The Witnesses Are Gone, From Blue to Black, Scar City & The Earth Wire will be available for purchase from Voce Books with ‘The Witnesses Are Here’ discount of 15%.
Tickets to the event are strictly limited, so we kindly ask that you select the correct ticket option via our Eventbrite page, link in bio. You will not be permitted to change your ticket on the day.
Refunds will not be processed if requested within 48 hours of the commencement of the event unless it has been possible to resell the ticket.
The advertised programme may be subject to change. In the event of an alteration to the schedule of events, customers will be informed via Eventbrite.
For further enquiries about the event, or to discuss any access requirements please email info@vocebooks.com