Palette and Page: form and OuLiPo

George Ttoouli ruminating like a ruminant on issues of poetic form...

I had an interesting argument with someone recently (Jonathan Skinner in fact, and I don't know whyI need to be reticent about his name, he's a man of vast intelligence), that led me to thinking whether form is different to constraint, or that shape is different to constraints. This in response to a discussion of Oulipian procedural constraints as different to traditional ideas of poetic form. I see these elements as contigently dependent, or overlapping, in the manner of a Venn diagram, to the point that those brief elements you might argue lie outside of the nearly-equalised sets of the two terms, in the manner of two spotlights not quite perfectly overlaid, could easily be accommodated into equalisation through a little bit of thinking.

So, while the procedural constraints of Georges Perec's La Disparation might not appear to be a 'shaping' factor, or formal rule, it does restrict the words he may use in the way that, say, asserting the length of a poem called a 'sonnet' can. If a sonnet is a rule that starts by cutting out of the morass of blank page a small edifice, the size of a room of one hundred and forty syllables, or seventy stresses, or ten by fourteen, and cetera, a lipogrammatic rule begins by placing its restrictions on the palette with which the poet can build, resulting in a poem of any size or shape, formally speaking.

The argument might then be a distinction between the 'form' of a poem as being that which takes shape on the page; and the 'constraints' of language whereby the means for making those shapes are curtailed. However, to complicate this, words come with little rule packages for how they can be deployed on the page: they are verbs, they are nouns, they are articles definite and indefinite. "Slowly accommodation the the and" makes bugger all communicative sense, non? However, it is still acceptable in a certain poem (is 'earned by context') if we choose to bend the rules, or break them. That's a given, and part of the point: form earns content, gives content context.

If we constrain the language palette, therefore, creepy little feelers spread out into our capacity to shape language on the page: with the lipogrammatic removal of the letter 'e', we lose the definite article; and syntax gallops in wyrd unfixity, an unabling form aggrandisingly visual in all outbursts. Syntax is the order of language in relation to communication units. Is syntax a constraint, or a form, or the hazy space whereby these two mentally distinct concepts conjugate? (I defy you to find a definition of syntax that doesn't include either the word 'form', or 'rule', or both, and which isn't rubbish.)

If we think of form as a translation of a set of rules into a repeatable abstraction (not as difficult as it sounds*) and that constraints can only be communicated in the same way, or even only refer to the individual rules when the word is taken at face value, then one can start to ask, 'What are the constraints of a sonnet?' If one tries to do the same with procedural poetics - 'What are the constraints of the lipogram?'- a distinction does emerge, of sorts. Constraints begin to fall into the category of rules alone, rather than the wider form; hence constraints are a subset of form. And lipograms begin to manifest more specifically as a type of form, rather than a constraint.

This still leaves a blank in the map where the idea of 'procedurality' lies. Joseph Conte, in Unending Design, suggests certain poetic forms gravitate towards categories of procedural and serial, infinite and finite, predetermined and free. Procedurality is therefore a loose grouping of approaches to form, or forms themselves, as demonstrated by specific poems, where the constraints are set in advance (referring to palette, not shape on the page) of writing. Oulipian forms, such as the beautiful-inlaw and outlaw, demonstrates this as a crossover problem also. Harry Mathews' 'Husserl's Curse' is also a sestina; is this the blending of two distinct practices of rule-making, the one being the palette, the other the page space? Or is it that the two can now go hand in hand, since traditional form has been under sustained testing, attack and experimentation for long enough that we no longer need to see a full distinction?

I sound a little more definite in parts of this than I intended, so hope this won't put off any responses.

* E.g. what is the form of a chair? A floor to arse interface, comprising a construct to provide distance from the floor (legs), a horizontal surface to support the arse (seat) and a vertical surface to support the back (back). Remove the back and you have the abstract form of a stool. Add wheels and a spinning column thing and you get a swivel chair. With inclusion of materials, design aesthetics and so on, you get a specific, (non-Platonic, although arguably the ideal of 'chair' is a non-existence objective) manufacturable chair. The 'form' is translateable into set of written instructions so that another chair may be constructed by someone else. I see this as no different to explaining what a sonnet is, or what a lipogram is.

Blinking to miss it: Isolated Examples of Imaginative Transformation in the writings of Luke Kennard

George Ttoouli has just finished reading Luke Kennard's novella, Holophin...

This is one of those notes to self that feels fresh enough in my thinking that I want to share it here, in case someone else has input. (I'm increasingly using G&P to air ideas I've not got straight in my head, for which, trad-mag readers, I apologise. Go find a weekend supplement, they're more reliable.)

Firstly, Luke Kennard's novella, Holophin. I'm going to try and restrain myself from gushing praise, as Luke is a friend and has had enough PR from me. Read someone else on it: Annexe and also the trailer (rumour has it, Tom Chivers literally hung out of a plane at 25,000 feet to get that footage). It is, of course, wonderful reading, imaginatively fresh, technically surprising... etc. etc. I'm not entirely sure what the crazy chapter between 14 and 15 actually means, but it looks pretty.

Two isolated incidents I want to refer to:

1. In Holophin:

"the ... School's tutors have been re-hired as Learning Resource Managers. The Research Institute is no longer free - a luxury we cannot afford in such straitened times"

(I've elided some of this and not referenced precisely because some of this might constitute a spoiler otherwise.)

2. In Planet Shaped Horse (Nine Arches Press):

"The gate has no lock, but is operated by credit card, // charging you £1,500 each time you swipe to open it" (from 'Snob').

[The latter quotation was embellished by Luke in performance to something like, "£1,500 the first time, then £3,000, rising to £9,000 when you swipe to open it" so more obviously a reference to UK university tuition fees.]

Something I remember Luke saying in response to writing from personal experience: whatever happened to making stuff up?

Here's a writer who's also a university lecturer dishing out poetry about a man recovering from mental health problems waiting in a halfway house, and a[n] SF novella about a world supported by little dolphin stickers, with no little resemblance to Ghost in the Shell crossed with a war between Apple and Microsoft computing and a minor dash of Terminator thrown in for good measure. Plus fairytale, and maybe even The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. I'll stop there, the influences and connections are so manifold as to become meaningless after a while - it is an original synthesis of familiar tropes in a way that utterly delights. (Oh, more gushing...) But it reads fresh, the characters are made up, as far as I can tell, the world distinct from the genre comparisons, despite the odd homage. (This pitches into an awkward discussion about how easy it might be to demonstrate originality, when it's taken to mean organisation of language, rather than structural, or contextual organisation, but let's save that for another day.)

Anyway, two references to the privatisation of education, but transformed into the context of the two books' worlds (which I've elided in the first quote, but read it yourself and decide). I got these references and responded to the satire because it's an issue close to my heart, of course. Does it stand up, or is it a cheap shot at the real world, at contemporary society, which takes you out of the SF?

SF operates in a tension between utopia and reality. The reality we are living, what we understand of the world, its physics and society today, is the reader's point of reference for engaging with the [impossible / extrapolated / speculated / dys- / u-topian] world of an SF story. (SF doesn't have exclusive rights to this, of course, as Planet Shaped Horse demonstrates: an alternative reality world where everything is surreal but plausible through a distorted subjectivity.) Holophin falls into the category of speculative fiction in the main part - a dystopian world loosely based on technological projections and the replacement of nation states by corporations. You could argue there are elements of pure fantasy SF in there, in the context of the implausible energy and material resources that would have to drive Holophin's society (which only gets one minor reference), but let's leave that alone.

Well-executed satire is satisfying, right? Only it does leave you with that bitter taste of reality washing back in after a cool clear dram of escapism. That's called morality, or if I were feeling ungenerous, moralising, but done here in a delightfully Hogarthian way, a non-puritannical 'let's make entertaining stories and be good people at the same time!' kind of thing.

Is it satisfying enough? Here, the transformation of satire on privatisation of university education is entertaining, sure, but that's just one of the three elements of great writing: "magic, story, lesson" as Nabokov put it (PDF link); or in reverse order, 'educate, entertain, enchant' as Peter Blegvad rephrased it. Along with satire, the education of social critique, we want story, the context of the world, but what about enchantment? That feeling of flow that keeps us out of reality and in the story's new world, forgetting all the research I should have been doing this morning, not going to the library to work, because I was reading this book.

I think that came out of the urgency of Hatsuka's story: her relationship to her parents, the tension with Max, the super rich room mate. Then another kind of 'dropping out' of the story arose with a thread centring on depression - something else this shares with Planet Shaped Horse - a treatment that reminded me of Eggers' film version of Where the Wild Things Are, emotionally affecting enought to make me stop and think for a moment, also dropping me out of the flow of reading.

This is all beginning to get a bit incoherent. I have been trying to say something about how Luke has managed to transform elements of his personal experience - for example, university work, no doubt some emotional life as well, to help breathe life into the characters - into something highly entertaining, morally positive, and, within the whole, a sustained degree of enchantment also. Some moments that are so hilarious they put all the cheap chuckles of a 'comic writer' like Bill Bryson into the recycling bin and throw a petrol bomb in after them - equally, moments that drop you out of the story, because you can hear yourself laughing.

Maybe we need these moments - it's not a flaw to say you left the flow of reading, the page-turning. But you're acknowledging those moments when the story made you think, or feel; moments when you remembered you were human. The idea of being fully in the flow of a story would be meaningless without little reminders of the world you have to return to; it might even be a negative thing; you might start believing that you could escape the real world, your problems, rather than only leaving for a while to gain some perspective. (Maybe that's the problem with apathetic social idealism: it isn't facing up to the problems, it's trying to escape. Oh, another can of worms - I'm leaving them in to feed the trolls.)

OK, enough. If someone knows what I was trying to say, please fax it to Luke's departmental office at the University of Birmingham. They're barely funded by taxpayers money these days, so consider it an act of resistance against the Nautilus future I'm trying to prevent (read the book to get the reference). I'll close with a list of names I came up with at one am to describe the colour of Holophin's cover - more suggestions welcome:

Lurid 9

Wallflower Comedown
Grape Grope (sadly, this one exists)
Broken Fuschia
Summer Pervert

Ripe Stains

Culpability Pink

Bubblegum Vulva  (blimey, so is this one)
Gollyberry
Keninnards

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Holophin was printed in a limited edition hardback run of 300 copies. Less than 100 remain - I know this because I have copy 203 (assuming Tom is as OCD as me and only sends them out in the correct numerical order; also he tweeted about having sold more than two-thirds). It will be out as an e-book in a few months, but trust me, the hardback is beautiful. So is the text, of course. It deserves to sell millions. I haven't read so much joy since Heartsnatcher.

News - Links - Miscellania

A few resources, following time away and a bit of conferencing (I would write about that, but I have 20,000+ words of uncondensable notes, some of which is slanderous, other parts gurningly idolatrous), which I was hoping Simon would fill here, but he's been up to other things (see end), or possibly not.

- James Womack is running a series of fascinating etymological posts on his blog, Trunt. I was particularly taken by 'blade' after a discussion about the value of originality to ecopoetics last week.

- The aforementioned project Sophie Mayer has been cooking up is live: I Don't Call Myself a Poet. A fascinating database of fixed interviews between students poets at varying stages in their careers. I'm in there (and didn't, unfortunately, send Sophie corrections for the two errors in there), of course, but ignore my casual ranting. There are an astonishing 68 interviews so far and plans to grow this, not just through Sophie's teaching, but an invitation to tutors elsewhere to inspire their students to do the same. (Which reminds me, I should get in touch about that, classes starting in a few weeks.)

- A somewhat anodyne article on Ballard over at the BBC Website, but justified because there can never be too many articles about Jim.

- Forthcoming Radio 3 programme about John Cage, which includes a segment by the wonderful Marjorie Perloff.

- Saul Williams is returning to the UK in late November. I'd really like to get to this, but it's a teaching night, so I'll have to work something out with my students first of all.

- Luke Kennard has not abandoned poetry, but has taken a brief detour into prose: Holophin.

- Peter Riley's grumpy and insightful critiques continue in great spirit over at the Fortnightly Review. Given my participation in Poetry Parnassus as a buddy, and the fact I went to the Poetry Pyjama Party and had a great time (it was completely empty for the first 20min, then people I knew wandered in and we all lay about on the cushions eating sweets and reading poems to each other) AND the fact I spent all of August working on a 6500 word chapter on Riley's Alstonefield for a collection of essays, I feel this link wins me enough good karma to kick a deer to death (to paraphrase Mike Niblett...).

- And finally, in case you thought, like me, that Simon was merely being lazy for most of August, then we were wrong. 'How’s My Driving?' HOW'S MY DRIVING?!? If anyone has time on their hands and is willing to catalogue the random titles Simon spat out of his combobulated mouth in biogs and interviews in the run up to 2010's Difficult Second Album and post them here, I would be very grateful. In fact, on Simon's behalf, please send in titles for his next collection based on his mugshot photograph. An opening suggestion: Attack of the Man Hand. (Incidentally, I just noticed the article went live in July, so who knows what Simon's really been up to in August?)

'lyric urgency' vs. 'stratified histories of place' (Skoulding)

George Ttoouli on Keats vs. Critchley / mystery vs. expression

A new web project by Sophie Mayer kicks off in September, which you'll have to wait for. More details when it launches, but I was skimming through the draft interviews and was struck by a number of poets who claimed to have started writing because of reading Keats – myself included. This got me thinking about inspiration and background. For many it's the poets we encounter in school, often the familiar, white, male curriculum names like Keats and Wordsworth, which decide if we'll chime or not with the wider world of poetry. And of that familiar library, Keats stands out when you're young and impressionable.

Something Zoe Skoulding says in her editorial to the latest Poetry Wales: “Perhaps there are certain kinds of poems that are more easily written in youth, if lyric urgency is considered the ultimate value of the poem. However, age offers something else... a nuanced identification with the stratified histories of place.” Keats has that lyric urgency in abundance, a young poet who speaks to young poetry readers. He chimes, he captures youthful activity, even while his technical skill remains immature at times (though highly advanced for his age, but noticeable more in poems peripheral to his canonised odes and narratives) and his leaping at emotion is often uncomplicated by experience, still fixated on the passions and disillusionments of coming of age.

This led me briefly into wondering about the problems inherent in poets who aren't culturally rooted in British Romanticism, but are curricularised by a British Council-driven literary mould. My recent tastes stem from immersion in more experimental writing, kickstarted by university library shelves, which were stocked by the staunch, brilliant, alternatively-bespectacled perspective of Peter Larkin. (Names like Geoffrey Hill, John James, JH Prynne; Frances Horovitz, Marianne Moore and Lyn Hejinian, which I read randomly, with no sense of connections, movements, history. The gaps in my grasp of aesthetic grouping, in literary inheritance, are still vast.)

A sidenote emerges from this. The curriculum didn't teach me about poetry that is self-conscious about its processes, its intentions, that states within it an aesthetic manifesto. Take Olson's declaration of 'SPACE' in Call Me Ishmael, or (another recent joy to read) Emily Critchley's broadside on his masculine opening of the field (in the Spring 2012 issue of Poetry Wales), 'Some Curious Thing II': “& the extent to which SPACE is constructed in gendered terms is an interesting question / it is always an interesting question to write back the projection of body or SPACE or / urban creatures, who look suddenly cute snuffling round in the trash”. Critchley's subject is, in part, social organisation and social thought, but primarily you get a sense of the theory of space, of poetics, of a particular brand of feminism. The poem doesn't just enact space in its extravagantly long lines, its almost-prose, but discusses that formal tradition of projectivism and gender in theoretical terms. In other words, it 'nuances' itself with a sense of historical positioning, to return to Skoulding's phrase again, with an exposition of source. It joins the river and doesn't pretend it was born a fully formed Sealife Centre. (I've also started watching dolphin documentary The Cove, which is astonishing, upsetting, and points to the political problems in hiding one's roots/sources.)

Keats goes for the jugular of the emotion, not exposing, perhaps not aware of, the concepts feeding his poem. The narrative and imagery carry the meaning; the source of these things is glossed, not the point of the poetry. But the prosody works within formal, conservative lines to convey very subtle enforcements of content; and the content is patriarchal, lusty, laden with the kind of stock fantasies that frankly, a male poet writing today ought to question. (I know, a gross oversimplification, but up to a point very few British canonised poets methodically counter the pentametric conservative social values that make me think of women in corsets and white men killing natives on a tennis lawn).

By contrast, Critchley and Olson, in these particular pieces I've mentioned, work from a structural challenge to the norms of poetic tradition, using the essay form, prosaic lines, a splattergun of page space (yes, that's a technical term), while also incorporating a discussion of their respective counter-approaches as an additive to traditional ideas of a poem's subject. The world is not seen or represented directly, in either series; instead, the camera's focus is on the interaction between ideas about the world and the point where the physical world meets those ideas. (And while Olson still hasn't shuck off that patriarchal stuff, he at least invites a degree of interrogation of his SPACES and now this discussion sounds like it's heading towards latex gloves and stripsearches...)

And I said to myself, mid-ponder, No, self-reflexivity seems a little too irritating, too much a metastatic contagion, with an emphasis on the 'static'. Yes the focus has moved one place along to promote understanding about human perspective, but there's the danger of total detachment from the world. Or something like that. I think I need to unpick that a little, because it doesn't mean either Olson's or Critchley's poetry leaves me cold – far from it. But that when it's mishandled, this technique of exposing one's own processes, one's thinking, one's skeleton, is at risk of losing its reference in the actual world.

Then, in the spirit of this kind of poetry, I started asking where this particular argument comes from. It's from reading Keats, isn't it? It's from being moulded by the kind of poetry that isn't interested in its own processes, in exposing its mechanical operations – what's the phrase from architecture? structural expression? – but instead progresses by a kind of mystery, or worse, mysticism, in how the language comes by its emotive and intellectual qualities. The one or the other should be decided by the purpose of the poem.

At this point I'm purely speculating, but isn't the 'mysterious' approach, as against the 'expressed' one of transparency vs. snobbery? Is there a conflicting political demonstration in which of these directions you choose to take your own poetry? Even 'leftist' poetry can have within it an authoritarian control, a sense of wanting to cover its traces - a condescension towards the reader. And sometimes right-leaning poetry works towards justifying its content with questions and an exposition of process, while also carrying a kind of elitist closure. Keats seems decidedly mysterious when compared to Wordsworth's deeper interrogations of process and the self's relation to environment, for example.

Again, a simplification, as I think this is one of the discussions that Simon and I consistently return to, although the conversation tends to sit on the tails of particular poets who do or don't fulfil our preferences, without travelling much distance into the wider picture. Perhaps that would be stating the obvious too much? But this also seems to be a criticism we've had of one poet we've encountered recently, [name deleted, we may get to this in full], who has the strength of a massive marketing machine behind them, but little discussion of where their poetics comes from. But for now I'll stop where I am and see if anyone has ideas for ways to take this further - reading, ideas, examples, etc.

"In the rare case of the vehilcle collapsing"

Seeing Being Human...

George Ttoouli reviews a new theatrical production based on the Bloodaxe anthology, Being Human...

Simon has asked what I've been up to. In the words of Bugsy Malone, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. One thing is certain, I have forgotten how to review things. So, I did see Being Human, a theatrical production of selections from the Bloodaxe anthology of the same title, at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry; but every time I try to write down my reaction to the show, I seem to fall into stock phrases.

Which is not exactly, but might be, a review of the poetry in the book. While there are many recognisably poem-y poems, surprises - both names and poems - jump out at you. As with the previous incarnations of the anthology – Staying/Being Alive – there's a marvellously wide range of poets on show, from Fernando Pessoa and Mohja Kahf to Tomas Transtromer and Selima Hill. As with the previous incarnations of the anthology, there's a thinner range of poetics on show. So, for example, Pessoa's nuttier verse is overlooked in favour of the somewhat didactic 'To be great, be whole'; and Kahf's resoundingly confrontational and very funny 'Hijab Scene #7' has its punchline and sassiness, but is a relatively conventional performance piece once the very contemporary content is set aside. Gregory Corso's 'The Whole Mess... Almost' and Transtromer's 'April and Silence' stand out for their surprising constructions, images, syntax, so experiment isn't absent, simply slightly muted here.

I'm specifically mentioning these poems because they comprise some of the selection for the stage show. Being Human uses three actors to perform thirty four poems chosen from the book (I counted 'em, they're listed in the programme) as a way of presenting a perspective on the human condition. A worthy ambition and here it's carried off with panache. The three actors take it in turns to perform one or two pieces, using light-touch props, mostly based around a domestic kitchen scene with a solid wooden table and simple lighting, which progressively (particularly in the second half) steps up into more mystical, placeless set pieces.

Edip Cansever's poem 'Table' (trans. Julia Clare & Richard Tillinghurst) is used three times to excellent effect to tie the thematic approach together; the first is literal, and passed me by as little more than a good poem and a matter of fact statement, but the later two renditions expand the meaning and significance of not just the poem, but the whole show, to beautiful effect.

The three performers, dressed in white, each have their own strengths in performing. While Elinor Middleton's voice at times lacks the strength of the other two, she compensates with emotional depth. She delivers the most moving part of the whole, which had most of the audience, myself included, sobbing. I've thought Paul Durcan's poetry to be a little hit and miss from what I've read, though very striking when it works, but Middleton's rendition of 'Golden Mothers Driving West' is utterly, heartbreakingly brilliant. Benedict Hastings has a strong, bold, actor-y voice, though at times I wondered if certain poems weren't quite pitched right, that his delivery sometimes missed opportunities for impact and meaning. Barrett Robertson, however, was just fantastic. His voice bombed out for the (less subtle) performance poems, at others dropped to a stage whisper that remained fully potent. His rendition of Cansever's 'Table' marked a turning point in the show's tone, into something dark, utterly essential to human experience.

The kind of poetry that crosses over into theatre these days tends to be performance poetry masquerading as stand up comedy, or a one-actor show with a bit of rhyme or thematic unity thrown in. I can't say I want to launch it all into the sun, but there's a way some people have of reading poems that doesn't just clutter the meaning with externally imposed rhythms, but pretty much destroys any audience engagement with anything in the poem, focusing attention on the performer's ego. I'll spare you a lengthier diatribe; the performances in Being Human will restore your faith in poetry in performance, and not just if you've had a bad run of open mic nights. Even the minor niggles I've pointed to above didn't detract from the over all wow-ness of seeing poetry made personal, relevant.

Yes, I could go on a little bit (as Jorie Graham once argued) about how a vocal rendition of a poem might emphasise one meaning over another, while a page reading allows many meanings to surface simultaneously, but that's a moot point. If you're making a decision to perform poetry, then the decision here is right: let the performance serve the poem. And the direction as to how to read each piece showed great attention to letting the language do the work. The actors used few semantics during each reading, once their poses and props were fixed in place, giving listeners a chance to create the poems for themselves. By the second half, I found myself disappearing into each scene, letting the images take over what my eyes were looking at.

OK, so I've glided fully into review mode, probably cruising at about a thousand feet now. I want to say something about storytelling, about how these poems use narrative extremely well, create their own scenes and pictures, but I'm mostly thinking of the performance of Paul Durcan's poem which achieved that the best. I want to say that the poems set scenes better than most drama I've seen lately – as with Transtromer's piece, or Corso's (a line about a prisoner painting the bars of his cell sky blue stuck in mind) – because some directors (film included) seem to think spectacle - CGI and lavish set design - can take the place of the human imagination. Well, you know what I'm trying to say about Being Human, which I should probably sum up in review mode as, Go see it.

Switching back to my G&P critical hat, though, I did want to point to one surprising aspect to the whole production in how it treated the conventions of theatre. The usual act of sitting in a seat, listening to actors speak lines written for the closed reality of the stage, in a way that often leans on the conventions of vocal training that drama drums up for itself when it's spent too long away from the real world... Anyway, you look at the stage, the constant (slightly militaristic?) thematic music in the background, the three thespians in their staged white clothes, and you expect something to come out of their mouths. A certain kind of delivery, a certain kind of conventional, RADA-trained performance. And suddenly they're saying the maddest things. Even the most familiar poeticisms feel enlivened by this staging – trained vocal chords, smooth, almost conversational tonality, control of physical movements and environment to give language its full due. When you put Being Human up against other attempts to perform poetry, like Daisy Goodwin's awful television series (sorry to any readers who had repressed those memories), or some of the overly-precious attempts that sometimes feature on Poetry Please, then this production shines.

Sure, you can't beat Paul Muldoon doing Paul Muldoon, but that's not what Being Human sets out to achieve. This is in the rhapsodic tradition, memorists bringing poetry to audiences that won't go out to see a lesser-spotted versifier; and it works extremely well.

As far as I know, the idea for these shows comes out of the mind of Jonathan Davidson, of Midlands Creative Projects. In his quest to make live poetry events tolerable, Davidson has pushed against traditional event formats and resisted going down certain paths, like slamming, or leaning heavily on celebrity to bolster audiences. Credit where credit is due here: this is pioneering work taken well beyond beta testing. An anthology that hadn't jumped up on my radar becomes an amazing theatrical experience here.

Just a few weeks ago, watching the Jubilee celebrations in all their glorious crassness, I couldn't help thinking about how well managed the stage was, the set up, but also that there should have been some poetry alongside all that kitsch synth pop. It starts to sound much of a muchness when it's crammed together like that. Nothing like interluding for five minutes with a spot of poetry; certainly beats idiotic, tax-dodging comedians attempting to read an auto-cue.* Anyway, if it does happen, someone should ask Jonathan Davidson to take care of the poetry segments. Judging by this show, he'd do an amazing job of it.

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* Simon, run that bit past our legal team, would you, before this goes live?

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There are more dates in the recent future, at Bury St. Edmunds and Ledbury Poetry Festival. The website is here. Don't bother trying to google the show, you'll get spammed with that TV show of the same name...