When a poetry reading really works

I've written in a previous blog that I can struggle with poetry readings - partly because I like the words in my hands.

Chrys Salt read some of her poetry from 'The Punkawallah's Rope' at the Indigo Dreams Showcase, part of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. Chrys is an experienced and well-established poet, and that rare thing - a poet who can read her written poetry exceptionally well - in fact the best I've heard.

I didn't just understand what was being said - I could feel it. It came alive. Ironically, I had the words in my hands because I had just bought her book, but obviously I wasn't looking at them. But I could take the words away with me and not just read them now, but really hear them too.

The poetry itself - and I have got to know a lot more of it since the Showcase - is so well-observed, lightly drawn, with humour and humanity. It is touching and beautiful. It has that deceptive simplicity which is so hard to achieve. It tells stories and brings people and places to life. It '...puts its hand out and is understood.' ((for RM), from 'Grass')

You can find out more at www.chryssalt.com  
 

Iterations & Amy Kinsman

Everyone is on a spectrum - or more than one spectrum, not at a fixed point - but at different points at different times. We have different iterations of ourselves.

I saw Amy Kinsman perform at the Indigo Dreams Showcase at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. Amy performed (among others) the poem 'iterations of self' from the pamphlet '&'. To quote the blurb on the back of the pamphlet: 'these are poems... where everything hangs in the balance and we must decide who we are and what that means.' 

This isn't easy in light of the way we constantly change, and are not just one thing, but many. Is there a 'core'? Something which is fundamentally 'me'? Amy is genderfluid. Does this make it harder to answer? As it says in 'iterations...' : pray tell, which of us is you? But then, doesn't the same question apply to us all in our different iterations?

Amy's performance was both reassuringly nervous and very strong - thus showing the ability to be at more than one point on a spectrum at the same time. I'm very glad I heard it, and got a copy of '&'. And I went away thinking.

And overthinking - about iterations of my self. And in which iteration(s) I'm happy. And is self as poet one of them?