Tonight is the last night of De Montfort Universities' Cultural eXchanges week. So far I have witnessed retired punks, avant-garde concerts, and DMU's very own post-grad creative writing students stun their audience with tales of sex and the macabre. This event was the one I'd been looking forward to for weeks. There is a buzz, as the packed-out room wait for acclaimed comic book writer and novelist, Alan Moore.
"Don't peak too soon." Moore warns as he enters to rapturous applause. He comes across as a very warm and witty individual, discussing a myriad of anecdotes, from how his brother 'died' of choking when they were children, to how angels play a game similiar to snooker, but with the souls of humans.
He reads a gargantuan portion from the yet-to-be-completed novel Jerusalem, which was inspired by his curiosity with the nature of time and transience. It will contain around three quarters of a million words within 1500 pages. An ambitious project to say the least, even more so than his first novel Voice of the Fire. Again it will be set in his beloved Northampton.
I find myself lost within his reading. It is complex yet I was fully engrossed. It's rare these days to find writers who explore writing in an explicit and honest way like Moore does. He estimates it'll be two years before Jerusalem is published. I don't think I can wait that long.
Sarah Beckley
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