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From dance parties on the shores of the Thames to a temporary boating lake atop the Hayward Gallery, the South Bank - London's premiere cultural strip and home to the Tate Modern, the National Theatre and the British Film Institute - boasts some striking and unusual attractions. So poet Lemn Sissay had his work cut out for him when he appeared on a walkway overlooking the Hayward on a sunny Saturday afternoon and began reciting to the crowd below, queuing to view Psycho Buildings, the centrepiece of the cutting-edge visual art establishment's 40th anniversary celebrations.
The Manchester-born, Hackney-based scribe, who is the South Bank Centre Artist in Residence, was making his contribution to the London Literature Festival, which over the course of a fortnight last month offered a diverse combination of conventional interviews with authors such as George Monbiot, Tony Benn and Mark E. Smith of The Fall, with spoken word performances and live music from the likes of Ursula Rucker and Brian Patten.
Rather than appear on a traditional stage, Sissay shouted his work out from the rooftops for all to hear - or ignore.
"I believe an audience reserves the right to walk away from an event if they are not enjoying it," he told me afterwards. "Poems don't work as static things. They are living things and should be allowed to go all over the place. Somebody might get a whisper of a line and carry on walking. That's good enough for me. In fact, it's perfect."
At first, Sissay fell on deaf ears but by the time he launched into his third and final poem, Invisible Kisses - a heartfelt paean of love which he said was read at a wedding at least once a month - a sizeable and enthusiastic crowd had built up.
"It's become kind of viral, which is lovely," he laughed. "I wrote it after going out with somebody who was quite materialistic and at the end of the relationship, I said, 'This is what I'll send you, this envelope of invisible kisses'."
Earlier in the day, illustrator Andrzej Klimowski, who has designed book covers for Milan Kundera and Harold Pinter, and his collaborator Danusia Schejbal, analysed their graphic novel adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's surreal Russian classic The Master and the Margarita before a small, appreciative audience in the more sedate surrounds of a Royal Festival Hall function room.
Later that night renowned comic book author Alan Moore (The Watchmen, V for Vendetta), along with his wife and artistic partner Melinda Gebbie, held court in the nearby Purcell Room, packed with adoring fans who hung off his every word. Ironically, a giant poster of Dorothy and her iconic ruby shoes, advertising the South Bank Centre's upcoming school holiday stage production of The Wizard of Oz, adorned the side of the neighbouring Royal Festival Hall, as the pair discussed their controversial "literary pornography", Lost Girls, a sexual rite of passage which features a definitely-adult version of L. Frank Baum's heroine as well as Alice, late of Wonderland, and Peter Pan's foil, Wendy.
Loss of childhood innocence was also at the heart of Kapka Kassabova's recollection of her Bulgarian upbringing, Street Without a Name. Kassabova, formerly of Dunedin and now Edinburgh-based, was one of three New Zealanders participating in the festival.
Princes Among Men author Garth Cartwright hosted a talk with Timothy O'Grady about his kaleidoscopic American travelogue Divine Magnetic Lands. And Stella Duffy (Room of Lost Things) took part in The House of Homosexual Culture, a celebration of queer literature that also featured appearances by gay luminaries such as Julian Clary and Sir Ian McKellen. Bishop Gene Robinson discussed the provocative gay Christian documentary, For the Bible Tells Me So.
A week after Moore's lauded appearance, Kassabova reminisced with Labyrinth author Kate Mosse's husband Greg Mosse about growing up in the oppressive communist-ruled People's Republic of Bulgaria. Mosse described Street Without a Name as "an extraordinary dialogue between [Kassabova] as a young woman and the mature writer" she had become.
Kassabova said Street Without a Name had provoked different reactions. Western readers would laugh at the many absurd anecdotes that she recounts, while East Europeans are reminded of the grim conditions of their own formative years, by the harshness of everyday existence she depicts in the book.
"The ideal reader of this book is the East European expat generally and not just Bulgarians," she said. "I have had some amazing emails from East Europeans from all around the world, who have responded quite emotionally to the book with a lot of recognition, whereas Bulgarians in Bulgaria will probably take a dimmer view."
Indeed, Kassabova was grilled by an older Bulgarian member of the audience, who wondered what her parents thought of the book. Another questioned whether she would fear for her safety when she returned to her troubled birthplace to promote Street Without a Name's release.
And when she suggested that Bulgaria was especially sensitive to criticism because it is a small nation, her adoptive homeland also came to mind.
"New Zealand is a much more functional country than Bulgaria but it is still very concerned about its image," she said. "Foreigners who come to New Zealand are always being asked, 'So what do you think of the place?' but Kiwis really want to hear only one answer."
