Saturday morning found me in a large room at Leeds College of Music, with eight other poets and nine young composers, all showing each other what we could do. The aim was to get student composers from the major music conservatoires in the UK to work with poets ‘in a creative venture to encourage the composition of a new art song’. The students looked very young while the poets, with a few notable exceptions, were a more seasoned bunch. We listened to each other’s poetry and music in quiet amazement at the quality of the words and the formidable talent of the composers. And all the while I was listening, I was having a slight worry about how we might be paired up, which of the composers’ music I really liked, and which of them as individuals I felt I could work with.

It was all resolved at lunch-time where over a buffet it was clear that we were to be part of speed-dating exercise where we were meant to be talking to each other and making some pretty quick decisions about whom we would like to work with. The organisers pushed us writers out of safely chatting to other poets, and like parents with shy children, encouraged us into conversation with the composers.

Munching on finger food, I found myself chatting to the amiable Alastair Putt [www.alastairputt.com] and very quickly we realised we were on the same wavelength; he comes from a tradition of church and sacred music and a lot of my poetry at the moment deals with knotty issues of faith and belief. So together we are going to produce a classical song [for voice and one other instrument] which will be part of a Composers and Poets Forum on 3rd October at the College of Music in Leeds, and performed at a 6pm concert on the same day, along with all the other songs produced from these exciting collaborations.

This venture is all part of the LeedsLieder+ exciting weekend of classes and recitals. I can’t help thinking of the lieder of Schubert which I love; it remains to be seen what kind of Goethe or Schiller I make….

You can book for the day’s Forum [10am to 4pm] and for the concert from 22nd June on 0113 222 3434 or on www.lcm.ac.uk. Check out the rest of the LeedsLieder+ programme; it’s full of great artists and fabulous music.