Very very good Mairead, take care, Anny
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather
admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky
----- Original Message -----
From: "mairead byrne" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 6:27 AM
Subject: A Reading at Brown University
JOAN RETALLACK
McCormack Family Theatre
8 o'clock
9 Novembrock
TeacherPoetTeacherPoetTeacherAPoetTeacherPoetteacherPoetTeacherPoet
MEMNOIR
A new edition, about the size of the City Lights HOWL. She mentioned
the earlier Wild Honey edition. CHAIN.
Memnoir: A negotiation between memoir & anti-memoir, brokered by film noir.
She said (I think): "In fact I am a wreck."
It might have been: "In fact I am a wrack."
Or something about Iraq.
But everyone laughed.
Her voice was sweet, steady.
A pleasant, measured voice.
She said:
e.g.
e.g.
e.g.
i.e.
She held her small book in her right hand & read conversationally to it.
She spoke firmly and emphatically to her book.
Her left hand was relaxed, the fingers half-closed. There was no wedding
ring.
She wore dark casual clothes and a large blue & red (to my short
sight) scarf, remotely reminiscent of tie-dye.
She had short iron-grey hair. Iron-grey.
And glasses that were not very obvious.
Her diction was rich.
Her syntax articulated & expansive.
"Shrubs are pruned to look like gumdrops."
I noticed anaphora.
Clarity.
Humor (wry).
THE REINVENTION OF TRUTH: One Year Project, Sept 4 2004-Sept 3 2005
A mellow voice
The Belladonna Series of Readings from Ephemeral Texts
A warm & mellow voice
She quoted: "Niagara Falls is nature committing suicide."
I think: What is Marilyn Monroe? The female body risen from the dead.
She said: "Why not?"
I think: Earlier today Alice said "There is no concept of why in India.
She stumbled only once:
"…for any millennia"
"…for many millennia"
She quoted Charles Peirce.
She is thin & white or grey & pink & black with a blue & purple
heather haze of scarf swathed about her neck & surprising dark blue
sneakers with grey soles.
The audience is also thin & white though I noticed one beautiful &
not-so-thin girl leaning forward & smiling benignly.
How strangely faces & hands emerge from clothes.
Her poem is studded with a strange language.
She went "Sssshhh."
"If I don't slow down the synesthesia won't kick in."
"Sssshhhh."
She slows down. What I have always wanted to do. She take the
silence down a notch. It's resonant.
26 PIECES OF PAPER
26 pieces of paper to go into boxes to be sold to raise money for a
poet in need.
She explained the piece, gesturing slightly with her hands.
"As close to improvisation as I will ever come."
If I were to read after Joan Retallack, how would I not seem like a thug?
"Hey—about that poem: What noises did it make? What exactly did it look
like?"
She tilted the pages to read one line from the top of each, she lifted
them lightly.
I feel the winter coat of tiredness about my eyes.
"Thank you," she said, and walked back to sit, not in the chair she
occupied before the reading, but in another, more accessible chair.
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