Creative Midlands Events

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High Impact – A Review by Alyson Hall Posted: 28 Jan 2013 08:59 AM PST Tuesday 15th January saw an unusual congregation warm the pews of Birmingham's St Phillips Cathedral for the second date of High Impact: Literature from the Low Countries, an international 'literary roadshow'. The audience braved the frost to spend the evening with six best-selling Dutch and Belgian writers, who either write in or have had their work translated into English. Introduced in pairs by compere Rosie Goldsmith – journalist and champion of international literature – the group represented a diversity of genres, from poetry to dark humour to the graphic novel. The loose theme of the evening was identity and, in particular, the effect of nationality upon one's sense of self. Rosie suggested that Dutch and Belgian culture has a lot in common with English, which was partly confirmed by novelist Peter Terrin when he confessed that the Dutch can't dance. The night kicked off with Ramsey Nasr, Holland's Poet Laureate, who explained that his reading, the poem Psalm for an Origin, went down like a lead balloon with half of an audience of senior clergy at a formal celebration in Holland. Not so in Birmingham, where the guests showed their appreciation for that and four further readings from the engaging troupe of writers. The multi-award-winning Chika Unigwe spoke of the experiences of Nigerian prostitutes in Belgium, recounted in her novel On Black Sister's Street, while Lieve Joris similarly travelled to Africa for inspiration for her works Back to the Congo and Mali Blues. Novelists Terrin and Herman Koch, whose novel The Dinner was published in English by Atlantic Books last year to critical acclaim, entertained us with examples of their tragi-comic, existential angst-filled work. Finally, Judith Vanistendael spoke of her transition from art student to ground-breaking graphic novelist. Her second work, the beautifully illustrated When David Lost His Voice, generated a lot of interest at the end of the night when the writers' books were available to buy. High Impact introduced an interested audience of readers to the culture and literature of different nationalities. It also demonstrated that it is not where a writer comes from that determines their identity, but that an engagement with multiple places and nationalities enriches their writing. This was the second collaboration between Writing West Midlands and Rosie Goldsmith in recent months – Rosie hosted a European Literature Night during the Birmingham Book Festival in October – and a relationship which I hope will continue to bring international literature to Birmingham's doorstep.     For more information about the High Impact Tour, please visit the website www.highimpacttour.com.

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