Another spin-off from the London Book Fair via the SelfMadeHero graphic book connection, I am really grateful that, when investigating the Vincent title, the pubishers pointed me south-of-the-Thames towards the combination bar, cafe, mini-art-gallery, exhibition site and general Bohemian venue that goes by the name of The Peckham Pelican.

Gone are the days when we north-Londoners could afford to turn our noses up at any artistic pretentions south or east of Hampstead with, perhaps, a passing nod at Chelsea.  We are now sinking beneath the dinosaur-style depths of our own pomposity.  We have been overtaken and surpassed by vast areas of suburbia and exurbia and are in danger of failing to recognise that they are the New Jerusalem.

Let the river run,
let all the dreamers
wake the nation.
Come, the New Jerusalem.(1)

I've recently enjoyed theatre, art, and architecture in areas of and around our capital city of London whose existence I would hardly have suspected a few years ago.  Elsewhere in this issue of Potential Unleashed I shall be paying tribute to some of these experiences, but for now let me concentrate on the matter at hand - The Peckham Pelican.

The event to which I was invited was a Small Publishers' Festival at which SelfMadeHero were to have a stand.  I had no preconception of what it would involve.  The only fairs of this type I had attended previously were on the South Bank of the river Thames, near the Festival Hall.  So I was not surprised but actually delighted to discover that the Peckham Pelican was unpretentious, bustling, friendly, welcoming and a veritable haven of young, enthusiastic, eager to help, purveyors of literary works in a format that was - as yet - unfamiliar to me.

I was furthermore enchanted and gladdened by the invitation from a rather young, city-besuited, woman to become her first customer of the day.

Click to enlarge

The young woman in question (pictured above) is Sara Wingate-Gray.  The service she offered me was membership of her free travelling library - The Itinerant Poetry Library.  A sucker for anything that is free (although my cynicism suggests a bill of some kind ultimately appears), I unhesitatingly completed the application form and was duly enrolled.  I have yet to discover what benefits it confers, but Sara's stand-up Chaplinesque performance in enrolling me was alone worth the price of admission.  (Sorry!  Forgot it was free!).  I also extracted the following about this remarkable woman  from a website:

Sara Wingate Gray is a researcher, writer and artist. She is a Teaching Fellow at University College London and currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Information Studies. In 2006 she founded The Itinerant Poetry Library, a worldwide travelling public library of poetry, which she operated full time for three and a half years across eleven countries. In 2010 she was awarded a Fellowship in International Librarianship from IREX and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, while in 2011 she led the Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives digitization project at San Francisco State University, making digitally accessible for the very first time the largest historic collection of American poetry recordings outside of the Library of Congress.  She has a first degree in English Literature and Creative Writing and an MA in Creative Writing.  Sara is especially committed to the interdisciplinary nature of the BASc due to her own wide-ranging professional background, which has also included youth work, radio broadcasting, journalism, 

Well done, Sara!  I was so pleased to meet you.

Back to The Peckham Pelican - and, indeed, all those other off-centre centres of art, adventure and apperception.

I really recommend a visit to one or other of the websites featuring this establishment.  http://www.thepeckhampelican.co.uk is the main site, but their Facebook connection is worth a visit https://www.facebook.com/thepeckhampelican .  The surrounding geographical area seems to be a cultural wasteland, but may not be.  After all, if I hadn't had a specific reason for the visit, I probably would not have suspected the existence of the Pelican.

As for the other "centres", if the Nurturing Potential's Art Editor (coincidentally my elder daughter) did not live in Bromley, Kent, I doubt if I would have had occasion to make so many visits south of the Thames, nor to discover so many "gems of purest ray serene".  And if her husband (coincidentally my son-in-law) had not built himself a career so closely aligned to the theatre, I would probably not have had the memorable theatrical experiences that have enriched my life for so many years.  And this is without even taking into account their daughter (coincidentally . . . oh, forget it!) who has gladdened my ancient eyes and ears with her theatrical performances.

Before these tributes become too nauseating, I shall cease.  They will inevitably have reason to reappear in a subsequent blog.

 

(1) The New Jerusalem, music and lyrics by Carly Simon, featured famously in the movie Working Girl and lifted it from mediocrity to splendour.