Among other things, I am excited about this film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival:
Bloody Mama 1970, dir. Roger Corman, starring Shelley Winters.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Bloody Mama
Among other things, I am excited about this film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival:
Bloody Mama 1970, dir. Roger Corman, starring Shelley Winters.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Saturday, May 02, 2009
"Can you curl your tongue?": the Text Festival in Bury.
Hearing Ron Silliman read is a fantastic experience. I was lucky enough this evening, in Bury, at Tony Trehy's Text Festival. He read from The Alphabet, the sections 'Albany', 'Force' and from 'VOG'. (I think a bit more too but I am still lost in The Alphabet, and it's late.)
Before his reading, Silliman walked on stage and took a photo of the audience. It was a tip of the flat-cap to Tony Lopez who had done so at his reading earlier in the day. Silliman told a Ginsberg anecdote, that Ginsberg had told him on a panel once that he always felt when giving readings that he wished he didn't have to be reading so he could be taking pictures of the audience. If someone had taken photos of me at various points during the reading, the evidence would show befuddlement,wonder and smiles.
But this wasn't the start. In what he called 'experimental' programming, Trehy had an exciting line-up to perform alongside Silliman. Catriona Glover (who, though from Edinburgh, I am ashamed to say, was completely new to me) gave a tremendous,delicate, poised, beautifully pitched performance in which she explored language and landscape. Next up was Hester Reeve, whose performance had begun in the bar when she mysteriously prowled around with a clipboard getting audience-members' names. On stage, she crept reluctantly out of a cardboard box, proclaimed a miracle, put it on her head and spoke the names in different tones from desperation to seduction, and very often like a child searching for mates. It was thriling waiting for your name to be called , and for those of your nearestanddearest, but it was also funny, and it seemed an apt, beautiful metaphor for what we all want from a reading. Actuall I spend my life just hoping my name will be called, so for me it was fabulous. I think I read somewhere that Nada Gordon used to give readings in a T-shirt that said the word ''You'', and Hester Reeve's performance seemed to take that gesture a little further. To finish off the first-half, Trehy had one final trick up his sleeve: Claus Van Bebber. New to me, and what a find! He's a turntableist, and the room was transfixed as he riffed on the possibilities of imagining Shakespeare did not write his attributed oeuvre.
The highight of Silliman's reading itself, for me at least, was the moment when he read the line 'Can you curl your tongue?', and promptly did so. I never thought he would stick his tongue out at me, but it's happened now and we neither of us can go back. Apart from that, the elegy to Larry Eigner was heart-renchingly perfect. 'Force' is one of my favourite parts of Silliman's tome so I was delighted he read that. All of the preceding acts seemed to rear their heads. In the tongue-out, there was something of Hester Reeve's swagger and Catriona Glover's insistent, confident, searching vulnerability. The sheer volume, the variations of pacing, the dramatic changes in pitch and the subtle shifts from humour to bleakness, all seemed more potent thanks to Bebber's performance.
Not even this was the begining of the day, Tony Lopez had read at lunchtime with Carol Watts and Phil Davenport. They all read beautifully, including suites of Bury poems. Watts, in particular, stood out for me. Her poem 'Convertible', about her 'Roy Orbison-phobia', in her words 'meaning I love his stuff but... it's phobic' is as extraordinary and stunning as that sounds.
I was devastated to miss Geof Huth's reading due to my driving-incompetence and lack of directional-nouse but luckily, for us all, the videos are up at his blog.
Good job, Tony Trehy. And I for one can't wait until Silliman's Birkbeck reading, woo hoo.
Before his reading, Silliman walked on stage and took a photo of the audience. It was a tip of the flat-cap to Tony Lopez who had done so at his reading earlier in the day. Silliman told a Ginsberg anecdote, that Ginsberg had told him on a panel once that he always felt when giving readings that he wished he didn't have to be reading so he could be taking pictures of the audience. If someone had taken photos of me at various points during the reading, the evidence would show befuddlement,wonder and smiles.
But this wasn't the start. In what he called 'experimental' programming, Trehy had an exciting line-up to perform alongside Silliman. Catriona Glover (who, though from Edinburgh, I am ashamed to say, was completely new to me) gave a tremendous,delicate, poised, beautifully pitched performance in which she explored language and landscape. Next up was Hester Reeve, whose performance had begun in the bar when she mysteriously prowled around with a clipboard getting audience-members' names. On stage, she crept reluctantly out of a cardboard box, proclaimed a miracle, put it on her head and spoke the names in different tones from desperation to seduction, and very often like a child searching for mates. It was thriling waiting for your name to be called , and for those of your nearestanddearest, but it was also funny, and it seemed an apt, beautiful metaphor for what we all want from a reading. Actuall I spend my life just hoping my name will be called, so for me it was fabulous. I think I read somewhere that Nada Gordon used to give readings in a T-shirt that said the word ''You'', and Hester Reeve's performance seemed to take that gesture a little further. To finish off the first-half, Trehy had one final trick up his sleeve: Claus Van Bebber. New to me, and what a find! He's a turntableist, and the room was transfixed as he riffed on the possibilities of imagining Shakespeare did not write his attributed oeuvre.
The highight of Silliman's reading itself, for me at least, was the moment when he read the line 'Can you curl your tongue?', and promptly did so. I never thought he would stick his tongue out at me, but it's happened now and we neither of us can go back. Apart from that, the elegy to Larry Eigner was heart-renchingly perfect. 'Force' is one of my favourite parts of Silliman's tome so I was delighted he read that. All of the preceding acts seemed to rear their heads. In the tongue-out, there was something of Hester Reeve's swagger and Catriona Glover's insistent, confident, searching vulnerability. The sheer volume, the variations of pacing, the dramatic changes in pitch and the subtle shifts from humour to bleakness, all seemed more potent thanks to Bebber's performance.
Not even this was the begining of the day, Tony Lopez had read at lunchtime with Carol Watts and Phil Davenport. They all read beautifully, including suites of Bury poems. Watts, in particular, stood out for me. Her poem 'Convertible', about her 'Roy Orbison-phobia', in her words 'meaning I love his stuff but... it's phobic' is as extraordinary and stunning as that sounds.
I was devastated to miss Geof Huth's reading due to my driving-incompetence and lack of directional-nouse but luckily, for us all, the videos are up at his blog.
Good job, Tony Trehy. And I for one can't wait until Silliman's Birkbeck reading, woo hoo.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
