Bill Griffiths and Maggie O'Sullivan gave a great reading at
Waterstones in Durham on Friday Night - more restrained than the
Voicebox reading Lawrence described last week, but still two
captivating and physical bits of voice-performance, which won over
small sections of the small audience completely. Sold a couple of
copies of OTHER, can't be bad.
Bill read two poems: the first, a sprightly narrative on the myth of
the discovery of coffee (goats eating berries of bush; goats dance in
goat herd's dream etc) - the language light, warm and going along at a
good caffeine-driven pace; a crowd-pleaser which obviously stayed with
people. The second, a lyke-wake-dirge of a journey through the
security system to visit someone in Durham Gaol, so obviously darker,
labyrinthine. Some folk didn't know what to make of this -
prison-visitor poetry is now an established genre, and as we'd expect,
Bill's vision didn't fit with the general perception... like, in the
course of the journey, after this inspection, and that locked door, we
find the Glacier? and then the Hop Field? Powerfull stuff...
Maggie read three pieces - first, some of a long multi voice poem from
the (forthcoming) Sun & Moon book "Palace Of Reptiles". How long has
this book been forthcoming for? How long will it remain forthcoming
before it actually comes? Then the stunning Winter Ceremony, drawing
on her Irish ancestry, and utilising a rich, almost sung voice (Maggie
was less-than-at-home in the bookshop setting, which wasn't
acoustically perfect) with great range of dynamic and pitch - and
effective use of silence, as ever. Finally she read a new work, Red
Shift (to be published by Nick Johnson) which draws together sparse
text and graphics. In this context, of course, she presented only the
text, leaving the graphics as gaps - as text, it's a powerful,
cumulative piece which draws to a great ending.
My introduction was the usual stuff about Other, and Bunting, and
sound, leading into Bill n Maggie, and I won't post it to the list -
but if anyone's interested, e-mail me backchannel and I'll send it to
individuals as a Word file.
RC
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|