I really don't know if anyone on this list is interested in these
issues any more but I'm going to fire away anyway.
Last night in Plymouth I went to an Apples and Snakes performance
featuring Salena Godden, Paul Marshall and Aoife Mannix. Marshall,
from Cornwall, and Mannix, from Ireland, were new to me but I've heard
(and read somewhere as well) Salena Godden a few years back when parts
of her poetry were the only flashes of edge and dynamic in a night of
dire, typical 'performance' stuff.
The first thing that struck was the size and composition of the
audience - easily four times as large as poetry events in Plymouth
normally attract (and mostly different faces) , and a very high
proportion of women - 4 to 1 at least.
First on was Aoife Mannix. Her's wasn't 'performance poetry' but it
was the kind of poetry that often sits comfortably in a support slot
for performance poetry - very basic and direct cut-up prose on simple
and immediately recognizable subject matter. It was boring, cliched,
totally predictable fifth rate stuff - it went down very well.
Next on was Paul Marshall - essentially a comedian in that half comic
half poet mode like Hegley etc - a popular type of 'performance
poetry' that forms quite a chunk of the Apples and Snakes stable. He
made me laugh, as a comedian should do, and he entertained me, as an
entertainer should do, but only in one piece did he really make me
laugh and make me think at the same time - a very funny piece based on
a take-off of Nick Cave. He went down a storm.
Then Salena Godden. Godden is a half West Indian half Irish girl from
London. Let me tell you first about her performance I witnessed about
5 years ago. Her subject material was mostly sex, quite graphic, and
most of it seeming to be reported experience. She seemed half drunk
and a lot of her words were slurred but this seemed to add to the
material, not take away from it. There was a marvelous slipperiness
about both the work and the performance - the work came across as
being 'her', not just an artificial extension of a 'her' that might be
good for performance. I say that because such artificial extensions of
a cartoon type personality are often the mode in which 'performance
poets' operate. So there was something 'real', there. This showed
itself in the totally uneven nature of the work itself - a bit like
wild teenager gone-off-the-rails rant, but one which unexpectedly
found itself some flashes of originality and true poetry - but you had
to be concentrating to pick them up. A lot of her appeal for the
audience seemed to come from the fact that her poems were simply about
graphic sex - they were applauding the 'shock' of the subject matter,
that's all. But there was a real poet in there trying to get out. I
thought, she could be good. Sadly I also thought, but I bet she won't.
Why? Because of the way 'performance poetry' works.
OK, bring her up to date. She had grown. Last time she was a skinny
thing oozing a certain lost quality but now she was taller and you
could see, less desperate, more confident in what she was doing. Her
'performance' was good - superficially similar to last time but honed,
a lot more controlled. And less dynamic. Less slippery. Subject wise,
sex was still high on the agenda - she read a piece that was little
more than minor porn - could have been written by anybody, stock porm
mag stuff - a nothing really, but it got a huge positive reception -
weird (other issues going on here of course). But she also read a
shorter piece about a sexual experience that had some some real poetry
in it - a lovely line about her and her partner rolling along the bed
that was the sea wall - and a line about him being as delicate as a
faun. But that was it. She finished on a big 'performance' piece that
worked ok. But I was disappointed. I'd been proved right again. The
promise shown by this young poet had not flowered. The values and
expectations of the performance scene had stopped her developing as a
poet. And that's it.
Tim A.
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