LISA ROBERTSON AT KCL
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Lisa Robertson gave an interesting talk this evening at Kings. I heard it
through and some of the question and answer but then rushed off to the South
Bank. Because of that I feel my grasp of her talk may be tenuous. Maybe
someone who didn't rush off could be more coherent...
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MAGGIE O'SULLIVAN & BOB COBBING AT THE VOICE BOX
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The room wasn't full, which really surprised me. Could that be something to
do with the advertising? It portrayed them as "urban shamans". I thought
that the advertising, when I first saw it, suggested the VB had little
idea - its tone, the confusion between book titles and poem titles.That was
confirmed tonight. A group Bob has been in was named as a poem... I'm glad
they got the gig. But I wish more was known of them in those quarters. How
did it come about that the 2 were booked if no one knew who they were?
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They read in 2 halves, each half divided into 4, solo and group work. Maggie
did the best performance of Winter Ceremony I've heard, which means she did
it very well indeed.
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A few extracts from In the House of the Shaman, with which she started, had
lost their edge, read smoothly; she's read from it so many times;
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but there was an uneasiness and edginess about Winter Ceremony which helped
make it ambiguous and polysemous. Her extract from Xcla,
performed by her and Cobbing, was more abstract than ever, far more so than
their performance of it at SVP a couple of years back. Only a short take of
it, today; but I look forward to hearing it again in the future. I like the
way it goes on transforming, less and less semantic...
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& a little new - to me - work from her forthcoming book
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all good stuff
all level headed
using personal history / using stuff about shamanism... USING
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Cobbing opened with good humour... leaning on the lectern, growling
sequences of synonyms that would have warmed Themerson's heart in his
semantic poetry mode...
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Another time he was off round the room - they were both better OFF the dais.
I'm sure it's a nice dais and I'm sure it cost a lot of money, but it throws
sound back up and into the microphone. Neither needed the microphone...
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Cobbing approaching the dais, looks frail; at the lectern, he's in control;
later he turns the frailty on and off

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He went off round the room, performing, getting to the end of his text, from
memory, at the riverside / west end corner of the room, whereupon he crept
up on the picture on the wall and began to perform it - wide gestures
tracing out its markings - a rather fine impromptu sound composition
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When I was talking just now about Maggie taking changing approaches to text,
I was thinking, though I didn't say it, of musicians returning to the same
piece from different angles, Ellington say. Appropriate comparison for
Cobbing here doing a most extraordinary soma haomo. I used really not to
like it, though I remember backing up Clive Fencott 20 years ago when he
said Cobbing could have a No 1 with that. Tha''s righ', I said and had
another drink. But maybe he could have. I didn't like it because at that
stage I had a very odd feeling that Cobbing might just offer to give
everyone Holy Communion in the middle, deep sonorous chanting, repetition,
and the whole thing being Hymn to the Sacred Mushroom and at one time
subtitled which promotes health and well-being, or something like that.
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Since then, it has returned, by being performed without the Hammer film
d.i.y. religion trappings - what would Top of the Pops have done with it?,
to being one of his many permutational poems. Today's was an astonishing
performance - breathy, breathy as if he were gasping for breath, though he
wasn't, sometimes quite loud, loud enough to be heard, loud enough to make
one turn round if it had been a social gathering, sometimes fading out like
someone falling asleep or fading away, and both within the same phrases; and
there was also a quality of forgetfulness, like someone saying their prayers
by rote; yet all the time one could hear the patterns rolling
through like an undercurrent, an under rhythm he seemed to ignore,
determining the basis of his utterance, the written text he was recalling.
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A freeze frame of the encounter at the picture. Cobbing, lurching his right
arm rightwards along a bold line uttering it loudly; the VB wardress,
uniformed, staring straight ahead, no emotion; and then, unfreeze, Cobbing
shuffling past her, daiswards, Prisoner Group H, without her acknowledging
anything. People looking in at the room through the closed door. Art in
progress. Do not disturb.
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Sort of sub vocal recitative from Cobbing till he gets to the dais and then
he leans forward, and then arm reach lengthening over his whisky and then
over his beer, towards his drum, still lengthening minutely, cantilevering
himself, slower and slower and nearer, but it's going to be a close run
thing - will he make it? will he give up? will he give up and go round? will
he fall? and if he falls is it appropriate to help a person in performance -
stand back please; is there a theoretician here? a nice little Beckett
moment as a rather small thing - man wants drum - became enlarged by
progressive failure to succeed into a major event, (I am quite sure he knew
exactly what he was about) and then he got it, gripped it, raised it and
with one dead beat began. Drumming irregularly where once he would have
drummed all the time. Half beating the drum. Using it mostly to mark out the
variations from the basic rhythm...
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Arriving back at his seat, he continued sounding until he sat down, making
quite a groan as he did so - which prompted solicitous concern from the m.c.
Are you exhausted? No, not at all. Just performing.
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btw Group H is one of the names that the activities that would now be called
Writers Forum have had - the Hi is for Hendon









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