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Brian Catling, cris cheeek, Aaron Williamson South Bank Centre, Literature, Voice Box, 8 July 1997 This was an excellent evening. In a venue predisposed to the traditional 'poetry reading' format of 'text-based literacy,' work was presented which extends the range and sense of poetry without loosing sight of its grounding in language art. 'Performance' was the key word invoked, and yet this was not a matter of 'packaging' ['marketing'? ed.] -- not, for example, a way of making poetry palettable by applying banal guitar-work and domestic humour (as in Hegley's 1990s Flanders & Swanism) or through the pop expressionism of poetry slams. This was work that requires performance as a extension of the reading of poetry, or because of the nature of the poetry which is being read. cris cheek gave performances which are the clearest indication of this inflection of poetry as reading/shaped breath/(tongued) embodiment. His work engages the page, but it also scores for the voice and occasionally requires musical/taped overlays. He works seamlessly in and out of these media, which are not 'mixed' in his performance but brought together. Surprisingly -- since his perfomances are usually visually inflected and recall his practice as sculptor -- Catling gave a more or less 'straight' reading, from his classic, 'Stumbing Block' and also from a new sequence. This was assured work, anchoring the evening to the (more generally understood) practice of writing. Aaron Williamson's performances are legendary, visceral. On the page, his work is cerebral, considered; in performance, the body takes over and transforms postmodernism into solo expressionist theatre. It is all but underbearable, the pitch of intensity unrelenting, although the occasional clear poetic sentence is there to prove that a choice has been made. Because it is unique, it is difficult to assess his work. I would preferred to have more access to its linguistic content. The venue was sold out and I imagine more tickets could have been sold. The audience was mixed in age, mostly white, perhaps younger and less middleclass than for the usual poetry reading -- all to the good. The Voice Box is a strange venue, it feels (and is) marginal to the main activity of the Royal Festival Hall and it is not very accessible, yet it is light, airy and open. The air conditioning is terrrible for its noise, which severely impairs the potential enjoyment of quiet poetic passages. Why the engineering of a large building has to intrude into this space in this way, I do not know. ----- [Now, to whom is this (slightly abridged) review addressed, I wonder?] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > John Cayley / Wellsweep Press http://www.demon.co.uk/eastfield/ 1 Grove End House 150 Highgate Road London NW5 1PD UK Tel & Fax: (+44 171) 267 3525 Email: [log in to unmask] < - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%