ZONE at Free Range
Another Free Range session up at the Veg Box Cafe last Thursday (11/02/12). This was one of the "ZONE" nights, involving parts of said poetry collective (linked with Kent University's Centre for Modern Poetry). This is the collective which collaborated with the-quartet on that collaborative poetry/jazz piece at The Ballroom last year (I'm glad to hear they'll be doing that again, hopefully with the poets a bit more audible this time).
We got another brief but excellent set from Sam Bailey, followed by a reading by Kelvin Corcoran, one of the ZONE poets.
His first poem was based on imagery from old folk ballads, but managed to be really fresh and humorous. Sam accompanied on the piano with the melody from "Barbara Allen". This was followed by the remarkable "Words Through a Hole Where Once There Was a Chimpanzee's Face", a lengthy account of the poet's recovery from a stroke (which involved a gifted book from a second-hand shop in Harlech, wherein a picture of some chipanzees had one of the faces cut out). This involved quite a lot of music imagery — the line "John Coltrane bends time, and Bach straightens it out again" particularly struck me. He finished with a series of short poems about various trips he's undertaken since the stroke, the first being to the Arctic Circle(!) in February(!). There was a wonderful bit about Glen Gould dragging a piano to the North Pole...
The most enjoyable poetry reading I've been to in years. And someone else blogged about this before I did!
The evening ended with a brief sound collage created live by a young Christchurch sound artist called Reed (I think) based on recordings he'd made of the evenings two sets.
We got another brief but excellent set from Sam Bailey, followed by a reading by Kelvin Corcoran, one of the ZONE poets.
His first poem was based on imagery from old folk ballads, but managed to be really fresh and humorous. Sam accompanied on the piano with the melody from "Barbara Allen". This was followed by the remarkable "Words Through a Hole Where Once There Was a Chimpanzee's Face", a lengthy account of the poet's recovery from a stroke (which involved a gifted book from a second-hand shop in Harlech, wherein a picture of some chipanzees had one of the faces cut out). This involved quite a lot of music imagery — the line "John Coltrane bends time, and Bach straightens it out again" particularly struck me. He finished with a series of short poems about various trips he's undertaken since the stroke, the first being to the Arctic Circle(!) in February(!). There was a wonderful bit about Glen Gould dragging a piano to the North Pole...
The most enjoyable poetry reading I've been to in years. And someone else blogged about this before I did!
The evening ended with a brief sound collage created live by a young Christchurch sound artist called Reed (I think) based on recordings he'd made of the evenings two sets.
posted by Matthew Watkins at 5:28 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home