Seven Degrees
The long forecast
Sunday 21 June. 6.04pm. A cancellation hits my inbox. I’m not surprised by the unbooking, or the email that follows, a short, regretful message that explains why the attendee, a long-time supporter of Longbarrow Press, will not be able to make the poetry reading scheduled for this Wednesday. I’ve been tracking the weather too. When I met with Fay, two days ago, to fine-tune the details of the launch event, the midweek temperature was expected to peak at 26°C. It’s now likely to hit 33°C. Allow for relative humidity and this rises to 40°C. I email Fay. We share our concerns. What we know. What we don’t know. The forecast has changed. It might change again. We agree to leave it for now. To make a decision on Tuesday.
This month has not been going particularly well. Slow progress with overdue projects. Three book sales in three weeks. A loss of momentum. Or grip. It hasn’t all been hopeless. Two weeks ago, I sat in on the rehearsals for a performance of ‘Reform Is Here’, the extended sequence at the heart of The Gleaning, Fay Musselwhite’s second poetry collection. Fay had recruited several Longbarrow poets and associates - Matthew Clegg, Ray Hearne, Rob Hindle, Karl Hurst - to lend their voices to this meticulously researched and crafted account of the events surrounding Sheffield’s first parliamentary election. In the book, the sequence runs to 45 pages; the version that Fay has prepared for the launch event omits three-quarters of the text, retaining a few of the longer poems and most of the choruses and chants, the clamour of the crowd, their call and response. The script is roughly 20 minutes in performance but generates three hours of rehearsal and discussion. It’s not pedantry or perfectionism but a collective thinking-through of approaches to the work. Whether to hold a silence for two beats or three beats. How to modulate the voices within a chorus. When to pick up the pace and when to break it down. Timing, stress, tone. It’s a privilege to see this develop, in the moment, a mode of invention and persistence that has enabled some of our best work, over the years, creative solutions that seemingly arrive from nowhere, but this is not nowhere, it’s a space set aside for dialogue and reflection. It’s how we started out. People in a room.
Tuesday 23 June. 9.22am. A slight dip in the forecast. One degree. It’s not enough. We agree to cancel. This is, I think, the first time that we’ve abandoned an event (apart from two readings that were due to take place in the first spring of the COVID-19 pandemic). It’s not easy. Even when it’s the right thing to do. We’ve put a lot of work into this. The bookings are still coming through (another two this morning). Perhaps the temperature will fall. Most likely it won’t. I know at least two people with medical conditions who might be compromised if we proceed. A trial of endurance for everyone else. One degree. Two degrees. What’s the difference. A habitable space. I log into Eventbrite, scroll through the options, and pull the plug. To be done with uncertainty. Fay and I spend the rest of the day informing attendees and updating the publicity. Undoing an event involves almost as much admin as the event itself.
Wednesday 24 June. 6.15m. Fay and I have agreed to meet at the venue, in case the message hasn’t got through to everyone. I step out of the house and into the rising humidity. Vehicles tailing back to Hillsborough Corner. Three or four pedestrians seeking shade. A light wind. Unshifting blocks of heat. Langsett Road. Infirmary Road. A mile or more. A corridor of concrete. Grass verges cut to one or two inches. Baked earth. Dead bees. Shimmering islands of infrastructure. Metal railings hot to the touch. Sweat on the brow. The lightest clothes I could find. They cling like heavy static. 6.50pm. Shakespeare’s. Fay is at the bar, she is speaking with the staff, they are helpful, sympathetic, and happy to reschedule the event. The pub is deserted, but for one customer in the corner, I look again, it is Paul, an old friend of Emma’s, from Leeds. What are you doing here, we ask each other. We’re here to meet anyone who might be expecting a poetry launch, I explain, which we’ve decided to postpone on account of the heat. What were you launching, Paul enquires, and it so happens that I have a few copies of The Gleaning in a carrier bag, and I hand him one, and invite him to browse. I’ll take it, he says, and it also happens that I have a card reader in a carrier bag, and I switch it on. I synchronise the apps and devices and the payment is made. Fay signs the book for Paul. It turns out that he’s in Shakespeare’s by chance, he’d arranged to meet someone in the Fat Cat but they failed to appear. Shortly afterwards, one of Fay’s friends walks into the pub, and no, he didn’t get the message, but doesn’t seem perturbed by these developments, he is happy to sit with us for a drink and a chat. He also takes a look at the new book and spends a few minutes with it before asking to buy a copy. It’s nice to sell books like this, in the corner of a pub, from a carrier bag, impromptu and faintly illicit. It’s a transaction but it’s more than that. It’s a moment of connection that starts with the book but is not necessarily centred on the book. The book is part of the conversation. The conversation takes various turns, unhurried, unforced, the late poems of Lee Harwood, the deficiencies of Samuel Smith pubs, the vagaries of international shipping. It’s a Sheffield conversation. It’s the conversation of people who have only just met. We talk about everything but the weather. 9pm. We call it a night. I gather my things. A cancelled book launch. Not the end of the world. What would that look like. Would we know it if we saw it. I rise to leave. My clothes are damp with sweat. I’ve hardly moved in the last two hours. The heat inside is the heat outside.
The temperature scarcely drops overnight, or the night after that, or the night after that. Midsummer. The middle of a heatwave. Emma and I improvise domestic cooling systems, tailored to each room of the house, none of which work for very long. The heat has nowhere to go. Sleep comes late and with pieces missing. Work is at a near standstill. I make and abandon plans. Unexpectedly, there are book sales, a few here, a few there. Some of the addresses are in Sheffield and I work out a delivery route for Crookes and another for Meersbrook. I set out at 7pm on Thursday. Five miles, two hours, two deliveries, one small tortoiseshell, one river, one cemetery, twenty-nine degrees, twenty-seven degrees, twenty-five degrees. At 5am on Saturday I set out again. Nine miles, two-and-a-half hours, one delivery, five mallards on the river Sheaf, three overheating broadband cabinets, two swifts, one exhausted bee, rescued from the pavement and relocated to the shade of a nearby garden, one fox running.
The Sheffield launch of The Gleaning will be rescheduled for autumn 2026; details of the event will be posted on the Longbarrow Press website. Click here for further information about The Gleaning and to order the book.