Paul McCartney attends the Hay-on-Wye Literature Festival

From BBC News, May 30, 2001:

Sir Paul McCartney has read extracts of poems – inspired by a friend’s death – at the Hay-on-Wye Literature Festival.

Sir Paul took up writing poems eight years ago but has rarely performed them in public.

The former Beatle is among a host of prominent guests at the literature festival in the Welsh Black Mountains, including Bill Clinton and Van Morrison.

He made his debut as a performance poet in his home city of Liverpool last February.

There, he recited excerpts from his first anthology, Blackbird Singing, in front of an audience of 400 at the city’s Everyman Theatre. […]

At his first live performance, he admitted to a dose of first night nerves before the performance, alongside playwright Willy Russell, the Blackbird singing’s editor Adrian Mitchell, and Newcastle poet Tom Pickard.

A crowd of around 3,000 fans queued for signed copies of Blackbird Singing at a city centre bookseller.

Sir Paul gave another reading in New York in April.

“I’m just one of those people who jumps into black holes and does things like this,” he said, earlier this year.

Paul McCartney is someone whose lyrics have had a profound influence over four decades. There are lyrics of his which articulate truths with a beauty and power that make them as enlightening and generous as any lines of poetry in the past 40 years. Clinton is probably the greatest intellect to have occupied the White House in 150 years, and is also a wonderful user of language. The problem exists only in the minds of journalists.

Peter Florence – Festival’s organiser – From Making Hay | Fiction | The Guardian, May 31, 2001

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