An evening of poetry with Liz Lochhead

By Anita Sethi

www.twitter.com/anitasethi 

Liz Lochhead was this year named as the national poet of Scotland, or Scots Maker, succeeding Edwin Morgan. This week she gave a brilliant poetry reading followed by a fascinating and far-reading discussion with Jude Kelly, artistic director of the Southbank Centre, exploring topics including poetic vocation, the difference between poetry and art forms such as theatre, and how poetry can bring great pleasure to life.

“There are some people who make the world better and make you sit up and listen”, said Kelly, and one of the ways Lochhead does this is through humour, and it was indeed an evening punctuated with delighted laughter.

It was an evening celebrating the power of the human voice.  Kelly pointed out what a lovely voice Lochhead has, and it was a voice that did indeed hold the audience in the Purcell Room entranced as she read out a selection of her poems. When asked about her development as a poet, the moment she “knew in her belly” she wanted to be a poet, Lochhead described how her granny worked as a maid in an elocutioner’s house so voice has always been of interest.  She takes great pleasure in the act of being able to communicate with a voice. When in love or grief, people turn to poetry, said Lochead, and she believes that poetry should be heard out loud.

“The purpose of art is not to instruct but to delight” – David Mamet

Liz Lochhead described how being the national poet of Scotland had not changed the fact of doing what she believes in, but gave her a greater platform to speak out against issues that concern her, such as library closures, and how poetry is taught in schools.

She called upon this quote from Mamet whilst discussing how the joy of reading poetry should be brought back into schools, rather than students and teachers hating or fearing it.  Poetry should not be a penance but a pleasure, she said.

“That rare, random descent” – Sylvia Plath

Lochhead also shed interesting insight into the mysterious process of creating poetry, quoting Sylvia Plath’s phrase “for that rare, random descent”. Part of the delight in reading Lochhead is the way she plays with language. She spoke of how she enjoys flipping clichés, for example “I wouldn’t like to be in her shoes”, and find ways of refreshing outworn sayings.  Shoes were indeed a theme of the evening, as Lochhead’s silver shoes sparkled before the spotlight.   It was her poetical feet that also stole the show, as Lochead discussed the joy of reading other good poets and being inspired by them and also held the audience captivated with the beguiling poetic feet of her own verse.

“I don’t really believe in standard English”, said Lochhead, saying that to do so would be to condone a “bog-standard English”; instead she celebrates the gloriousness of “living language”, a language she delighted audiences with at the event this week, leaving us with a sense of the thrilling possibilities of that language.


The Kelly Gang

There are occasional moments in life that even as you are experiencing them you know, on some lizard level, that they are being indelibly burned into your memory. The sort of scenes that make sense of the phrase “when your life flashes before your eyes, make sure you’ve got plenty to watch.”

One such occurred to me just the other day as I was arriving at Southbank Centre (there’s no definite article in Southbank Centre I seem to remember being told last year, take note.) in readiness to chair the event with one of the world’s leading biographers, Hilary Spurling, for her magnificent and fascinating life of Pearl Buck.

It was Saturday and the sun was not so much shining as searing. Any outside space was filled with weekend patrons of the arts, the bars and the restaurants. It was hot, damned hot and I was hotter than most having cycled 12 miles. The water fountain sculpture outside the Royal Festival Hall, the name of which always escapes me but which I always think is called “Disappearing Rooms’, was providing welcome relief from the heat, not only to the usual swimming garb wearing children, but also some rather clever adults who had obviously planned their wardrobe ahead. The balcony overlooking the Thames was so tightly packed that you couldn’t get a cigarette paper between those who were lined up against it.

I wandered around, somewhat aimlessly, enjoying the buzz, people watching and catching my breath from my two-wheeled exertions by having, of course, a cigarette.

I wanted to sit down but every chair, stool and London Literature Festival branded deckchair held at least one occupant, in many cases two, in at least one case three, all enjoying the sun, the food and the drink. But as I rounded a corner to a walkway where until last week pterosaurs flew overhead, I noticed an oasis of calm.

A single deckchair, positioned to catch the sun full on cradled a reader who was totally immersed in the book before her. I discreetly approached; intrigued to know what held her attention when so much was going on all around. The lady was wearing large and rather stylish sunglasses, her blond hair concealing the fact that she had her iPod on and was evidently fully focussed on both her reading material and the sounds she was listening to.

I got nearer and saw that rather than a work of fiction or of non-fiction, the book on her knees was the score and libretto of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, the work so evocative of its time, that was commissioned by Jackie Onassis in memory of her first husband John F. Kennedy, and that she was evidently following the music she was listening to note by note.

She noticed me and we fell into conversation and it was only when I looked more closely that I discovered that the lady in question was none other than the Artistic Director of Southbank Centre, Jude Kelly, who of course was directing that evening’s performance.

I mentioned this meeting to someone else shortly after, before I chaired Hilary Spurling’s event. The response “She was doing what? So publicly?” surprised me for I thought it to be a sublime moment, so worthy and typical of what the Southbank and in fact the London Literary Festival is about. The close proximity of the art, the artists and the audience, a locus where all those who love art in all its forms congregate without pretension, without boundaries, to appreciate that wonderful thing that artistic endeavour does, bring people together for  mutual purpose and collective wonder at the highest expressions of what makes us human.

I therefore consider myself to be a new member of what Southbank Centre is, which is to my mind, the Kelly Gang.

Not I

Last night, I went to see a performance that lasted just nine minutes and fourty-seven seconds. Twenty-four hours later, it still resonates in my mind. What I saw was Lisa Dwan perform Samuel Beckett’s ‘Not I’. The performance, my first exposure to Beckett’s work, connected with me in a way that I haven’t experienced before.

Actors, with the voice they give to art, have always been able to effect me, inducing all manner of emotions, ideas and the like. But never before have I felt from a performance such a pure and unconscious response as that which I did last night, when I fell under the spell of Lisa’s voice and Beckett’s composition of words.

During her performance, Lisa was removed completely from sight. All we could see was her suspended, illuminated mouth which hung ominously in the pitch black of the Purcell Room. The words this mouth spoke were delivered not in sentences, but in short, fast, loosely connected, at times confusing, utterances.

The manner in which I am accustomed to being communicated to, the prompts that a person’s facial and bodily gestures provide, the access to sense that grammar immediately delivers, was therefore taken away from me. My brain was of no use in discerning any literal meaning of what was being said by the mouth.

The mouth refused to divulge specific details or facts of its evidently sad story; instead, it merely voiced incomplete thoughts. All that I was capable of doing was to listen with my heart, rather than my head.

My heart heard the mouth speak in the exact rhythm and nuance with which the inner voice of  thought speaks. In a vacuum of detail and specifics, the mouth made me feel like I was experiencing the essence of emotion itself. I never knew such a thing could be possible.

If it wasn’t for Lisa Dwan’s astonishing abilities, perhaps it couldn’t. It is bewildering that her – or indeed any – mind could deliver the exacting technical demands that Beckett’s monologue requires in order to give clarity to abstraction, to make uncontextualised words leap from a page, and into our hearts, into our “centres”.  

Lisa’s talent and shockingly dedicated hard work provided an inspirational experience. I’ll never forget it.

The mouth is the muscle…

As written so excellently by Paul below, last night was the launch party that kick started the incredibly exciting London Literature Festival. We enjoyed homemade scotch eggs and miniature ice creams whilst the Southbank buzzed with summertime activity outside.

Jayga Rayn, Adele Morse, Lisa Dwan and Paul Blezard

Jayga Rayn, Adele Morse, Lisa Dwan and Paul Blezard

Out of the numerous interesting people I met, Lisa Dwan was certainly a highlight. On the 7th and 8th of July she’ll be performing Samuel Beckett’s Not I, a highly anticipated event in the LLF calender, and she kindly invited me to observe one of two rehearsals today in the Purcell Room. I won’t divulge too much information on the technicalities but it was fascinating to observe Lisa and director Jude Kelly, aided by Rachel Holmes, going to great lengths to ensure that Lisa’s mouth is perfectly lit by a single beam of light emerging from the darkness. Having watched a run through of the 20-minute monologue, I can’t recommend this event highly enough.

Rachel Hunt and Jude Kelly at the rehearsal for 'Not I'

Rachel Holmes and Jude Kelly at the rehearsal for 'Not I'

In other news, the flyers for Where To? are hot off the press (literally, my legs were covered in green ink after fondly cradling a pile). We have one week until the show, so tomorrow I’ll be shoving flyers at as many people as possible at The Wedding and Mashing the Classics, whilst taking photos of the shows and getting some audio interviews for here. Both are free events, so come along, and if you see a girl juggling her camera and microphone with a large pile of brightly coloured flyers please take one; I’m sure the ink is dry by now.

Our very lovely flyer

Our very lovely flyer

The Game’s Afoot…

“The game’s afoot” as the Bard once wrote and certainly the game opened last night with much fanfare.

At the launch party, South Bank’s “empressaria” Jude Kelly gave the opening speech, explaining that the South Bank’s remit is to “push back the membrane” to the point that there is “no-one on the outside.” Now that’s a properly inclusive approach to creativity, artistry and expression, a rousing, modern version of ‘Cry “God for Harry, England and Saint George”’ as the Bard went on to say.

Receiving the microphone Rachel Holmes gave thanks to those people who make such a festival happen not least ,in this case, the quiet guru of the London Literature Festival, Martin Colthorpe, who Holmes described as ‘forensic’. If any of you are/were fans of the TV show NCIS then Colthorpe is the Jethro Gibbs character. He’s that good at what he does, but without the head slapping so favoured by his TV avatar. I so like the idea of Holmes describing her Watson as ‘forensic”, it has a marvellous resonance that I just can’t quite place!

Fred D’Aguiar, could be found mingling as, briefly, could Arundhati Roy before being whisked off for her sound check. You’ll have read about her event in Jayga’s excellent post below. Also spotted was Kamila Shamsie, one of this year’s Orange Prize contenders, Time Out’s Paul Burston whose new novel sounds like a hit-in-waiting, Lisa Dwan who is performing  Beckett’s “Not I” on  Tuesday and Wednesday (you really should treat yourselves to this event, it’s going to be something really rather special) and some of publishing’s ‘golden ones’, those very people who find the people that write the books that we so love reading.

All in all a great start. I’ve got to dash… or as William S. put it, and so much better, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.”

More later…

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