Getting festive

Last weekend I had to do a marathon drive between a Fourpenny Circus show in Kendal, a short-but-sweet performance at the Larmer Tree Festival near Salisbury, and Rufus Wainwright’s new opera in Manchester. It was a round trip of 730 miles but worth it – except for the last bit, sorry Rufus.

Larmer Tree Festival was a perfect example of how poetry can reach new audiences. The spoken-word venue was a little tent in the Lostwood area, which was indeed hard to find, and we were competing every time we spoke with loud music from the main stage nearby – but people gave us time, attention and a fair hearing. We had an audience of around 30 and a couple of people said the words I most like to hear – ‘I’ve never heard poetry before but I really enjoyed this.’

Meanwhile, Charlie Jordan has gone from the sublime to the ridiculous, suddenly generating reams of new material for her own Big Chill slot. I was beginning to wonder if I had served any useful purpose with my mentoring, but here she goes doing all the things we’ve discussed – playing with different perspectives and voices, using formats like a football chant to help frame a performance piece, and ruthlessly guarding against her ‘rhyme whore’ tendencies to produce a more sophisticated sound which still has structure and pace. God knows if any of this is actually a response to my input, or whether it would all have come about anyway, but I have a warm glow of pride.

By the way, bloggers, you have an honourable mention in the first pages of esteemed journal Mslexia this quarter. It plugs our Big Chill slot and mentions a few of you by name – enjoy!