International Festival of Mountaineering Literature

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History by Terry Gifford

When David Craig and I started planning the first festival on our 1987 journey to climb the sea cliffs of Anglesey in North Wales, we wanted to include some elements that have remained central to the experience I have tried to provide at every festival over the last sixteen years. The celebration of new work was the original impulse and perhaps we can be forgiven if that new work was our own. Nobody else was going to arrange readings from David's now classic book Native Stones or my first collection of poetry, The Stone Spiral. Being climbers, we were imbued with the spirit of 'Just do it!' In the event I only read one poem from my own collection as an introduction to inviting other poets in the audience to read a poem of their own. (Ten years later I could invite David to read from his new book Landmarks, although fear of cries of 'Foul!' prevented my programming a reading from my own latest collection, The Rope, even though every poem was a climbing poem.) We were also aware of the immanent return to England of Ed Drummond and rumours about a book being on the way from him (A Dream of White Horses), so we invited him to do his poetry reading performance whilst up the pole (actually three poles - a 40ft high tripod with a small platform at the top).

Women's writing about climbing was even rarer in those days than it is now and we wanted to offer encouragement to it, so we invited Marjorie Mortimer to give us what turned out to be an amusing, mocking talk about what she called 'The Mine Is Bigger Than Yours' display in men's climbing writing. We have always had at least one woman speaking at the festival - and memorable contributions they have been, such as Jill Lawrence's feminist analysis of the climate of magazine publishing for women climbers followed by octogenarian Janet Adam Smith on the same bill saying stridently, 'Well, I've never experienced any drawbacks in being a woman!' We could quite believe that this was true in Janet's case, if not for her argument in general. Another memorable combination was the late Alison Hargreaves and Alison Osius, Senior Editor at Climbing. Whilst visiting from the USA to talk about writing profiles of mountaineers, Alison Osius was actually writing what was to be the last profile of Alison Hargreaves, a tribute the festival was pleased to have made possible.

We have always felt that the festival should be fun if climbers are giving up a whole Saturday to talking about it instead of doing it. (This must be the only festival in the world that prays for rain.) At our first event Mike Mortimer gave us a quiz to test our knowledge of the literature. This was wittily devised and is published (with the answers, of course) in the book of the festival papers from the first five years, Orogenic Zones, published by Bretton Hall College (£12.00 post-free, from Terry Gifford, University of Leeds, Bretton Campus, Wakefield, WF4 4LG, UK). The fourth festival featured a play devised by local school students using a specially erected climbing wall. For one festival Rosie Smith and Celia Bull revived some of Tom Patey's songs and for another they wrote their own. Among the more bizarre ideas to inject a little fun into the festival was one that arose out of a pub conversation with young hotshot Johnny Dawes who had just sat his final exams at university and was enthusing about what a buzz they had been. So, when people ordered their tickets for the sixth festival they were invited to set an exam question for Dawes. At the opening of the festival he was given the exam paper of 14 questions from the audience and sent away to write an answer to one of them for a reading three hours later. He chose the question 'My first time' and duly returned to carry off the reading of his paper with characteristic imagination, wit and flare. This will be published in the next book of festival papers. On two occasions humorist Steve Ashton has given theatrical performances that have taken the audience by surprise. At the tenth festival he was a climber in a mental hospital in conversation with his therapist. This was both very funny and extremely moving at the same time. The text will be published in his long-promised forthcoming book Fear of Falling.

The fourth element of the first festival that has been a cornerstone of our planning as been controversy and debate. Dave Cook's lecture at the first festival threw out a challenge to mountaineering literature to be more inclusive (of women, young activists, climbers from minority ethnic groups, foreign literatures), more connected to climbers' wider lives (as workers, lovers, and political, even musical creatures) and more expressively experimental in form. We have regularly commissioned new poetry, from the brother of Colin Kirkus, septuagenarian Guy Kirkus, for example, and from the festival's popular discovery, the young feminist climbing poet Kym Martindale. We have also tried to commission new work from younger climbers. 14 year-old Chris Briggs, who read his poem 'Doomsville' at the fifth festival, holds the record. At the tenth festival, bold young activist Paul Pritchard took the audience by storm with his writing about the Llanberis rock-climbing scene with the result that publisher Ken Wilson was not talking about if he was publishing Paul's book, but when he would be publishing Deep Play, which went on to win the Boardman Tasker Award the following year.

Debate has been lively each year following the adjudication speech by the Chair of the Boardman Tasker judges. This is the only public opportunity to hear this speech and to hear the winning writer read from his or her book following the press announcement at the Alpine Club. By the time the short-list has been announced opinions have formed about what ought to be the winner and views can be aired in the presence of the Boardman and Tasker families who are reminded annually of the seriousness with which this award is coveted by writers and publishers in the audience, to say nothing of the seriousness with which the bibliophiles in the audience hold opinions about their reading of the entries. Of course, one ought to say that a specialist bookshop run by Jarvis Books of Matlock, does a good trade in providing books to be signed by writers present for the day.
Finally, the international dimension, which was begun in a unique and topical manner by Waclaw Sonelski's lecture on 'Climbing in Poland Under Communism', has produced a series of authoritative papers on the mountaineering literature of France from Anne Sauvy, and of Italy from Mirella Tenderini. Allen Steck gave us an insight into the secrets of keeping up the innovative standards of Ascent. Much of this seemed to do with Ascent's having its own wine label. More recently from the USA Mikel Vause has shared with us his Ph.D. research into mountaineering literature (Of Men and Mountains) and Pete Sinclair, who developed his thinking about access to wilderness after writing We Aspired, comes back each year simply to sit in the audience because he had found the festival so much fun on his first visit. Singer and storyteller Sid Marty has also travelled more than once from Canada to amuse the audience with his deadpan wit.

Despite the international stars who have talked about their writings like Chris Bonington, Doug Scott, Stephen Venables, Kurt Diemberger, Paul Piana, Doug Robinson, Pat and Biaba Morrow, the show has often been stolen by the old-timers like Tom Weir from Scotland and Charlie Houston and Bob Bates from the USA, or the unexpected discoveries such as Irish storyteller Dermot Somers and retired Hodder and Stoughton editor Maggie Body. Indeed, the unpredictability of the event is perhaps part of its charm. I hope this does not suggest that the organisation itself is unpredictable. We pride ourselves on running an event where things happen on time and, with very little sponsorship income, on keeping ticket prices as low as possible. A number of people have been stalwart supporters of the festival throughout the years. The late and hugely missed Paul Nunn, especially in the early days, lent our discussions his idiosyncratic wisdom and widely respected authority. Jim Curran has always been on hand to debunk any pretensions or drop his papers on the floor and reshuffle them for his talk. Ian Smith has annually rehearsed his very professional readings from the winners of the Festival/High magazine writing competition. In addition I should mention that late in each festival we open an exhibition of original mountain paintings as a break from the festival's intense pace. I like to think that it is part of the festival's function to offer hospitality to visiting luminaries, such as Harish Kapadia, the Editor of The Himalayan Journal, so that they are able to honour the festival with their presence whilst they may be attending events elsewhere in the UK.

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