Hi Peter,
your account of the Michael Ondaajte - Lisa Robertson reading audience is a
likely scenario in other mixed grills. The principle is engaging but there
needs to be something that makes the billing work, some discourse
intentionally engaged with to a sufficient level that enough of those
present can grasp that a larger bone is being gnawed.
I remember trying to convinve Paul Beasley (of 57 Productions and then
Apples & Snakes) to put me on with Sister Netifa or Brother Niyi. He said
that I needed their audience more than they needed mine and the likely
result would be that nobody much would turn up. My 'crowd' (some hopes)
would stay away, not wanting to go to a different venue and be subjected to
agitprop raps, their crowd would stay away because they wouldn't want to be
exposed to a syntactically-challenged hoky dog.
In this case, actually the writers wouldn't have minded, but rightly or
wrongly the promoter made a projection onto the audiences along the lines
you syggest, except with everybody staying away rather than turning up.
Probably the thing to do would to be avoid the binary split and go for more
than two readers. Oh gawd, it does begin to sound rather like the Michael
Horowitz bridge-building blockbuster team scenario.
Of course what Simon Armitage arguably wants, is to be on a double bill
with John Hegley or Brian Patten, to secure an even larger following and
cross over even more into the entertainment or older literary audiences.
this is a bit like playing Fantasy Poetry
love and love
cris
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