Ditto to all of these comments. Rob's use
of a handheld dictaphone with choked throat
clearings was very arresting, as was Scott
beginning his reading with a ringing bell
sound emanating from circling a wooden bat
around a metal bowl; his colour slides were
particularly exciting for me; very harmony-
synaesthetic; felt like the colours of the
moods of the poems set into them, texture
too, but the odd lines going through, or
shunting the text off, felt like very
interesting counterpoints, acting against
the text but like a villain or just another
character at loggerheads in a play.
Scott's work of the last few years
has, to me, a hallucinatory domesticity; gone,
a little, is the early work's interest in
architecture and the wide mapping of a nation
or world; this new work feels like a poet
getting on with demanding domesticity, marriage
or child-rearing, or hard social work, and
finding small sometimes frustration-feeling
reveries (yet the frustration is tempered by
a sense of a need for rest after a long
ambitious intellectual and emotional and
spiritual engagement with the world; if a
laying fallow, then in a very interesting
explored fallow). I sometimes wonder at the
degrees of acceptance and frustration in the
work: sometimes placing this domestic rest
as an essentialist feminine trap, in some old
worrying senses, rather than historically a trap
associated with women because more women than
men have found themselves in it, and found their
ways to hallucinatingly and complexly deal
with it, and Scott sometimes feels to me
as if he is marking a gender identity in
detachments and frustrations that he marks as
his, not shared, I hope that's taken as a possible
reading of part of the flow only; I'm offering
this as a small note for the future on a poet
I admire very much,

Ira


On Wed, 28 Jan 1998 01:16:43 -0000 Lawrence Upton. wrote:

> From: Lawrence Upton. <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 01:16:43 -0000
> Subject:
> To: british-poets <[log in to unmask]>
>
> Fine readings tonight - Tuesday -from Rob Holloway and
Scott Thurston at Sub
> Voicive Poetry.
>
> Sub Voicive Poetry 1998 - 2 was published with a
substantial contribution of
> unpublished work by each of the poets. Available at L1.50
incl p & p
>
> Brief intros of each poet, informally delivered -
>
> noted that this was Rob Holloway's first formal reading
which followed on
> from frequent lengthy contributions to the WF Workshop
which were so good
> that he had to be given a slot at SVP
>
> noted that Scott Thurston has had 3 booklets, two still
available from WF
> as well as a contribution to SLEIGHT OF FOOT from RSE and
the forthcoming _2
> sequences_ from RWC; and that he gets better and better
>
> Holloway read a largeish selection of poems which
exhibited the wide range
> of his styles and techniques - an accomplished first
reading - ideas in
> content and execution bouncing all over the place,
promising much for the
> future
> assuming he sticks at it
>
> Thurston read new work which showed growing confidence and
control;
> concentrated, dense writing full of sound play... rhythmic
interplay and
> variety
>
> part of Thurston's reading was accompanied by projected
slides
>
> ----------------
>
> The next reading at Sub Voicive Poetry is on 10th Feb 98
with a rare visit
> to London by Colin Simms who shares the bill with Harry
Gilonis
>
> L
>
> Visit the mainstreamuk website at -
> http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/6753
> Visit the alp website at
-
> http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/7911
>
>
>
>
>
>
>





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