Meeting April 3

The next meeting will be at 7.30, Wednesday, April 3, at Coffee Corner. I plan to lead a workshop – with two different types of activity taking place. Firstly – if anyone would like to submit a poem they have written for a detailed and supportive reading by group members, I will pass it on and make it available (anonymised). Secondly – I’ll arrange some writing activities, which will be based on language games, and will I think prove enjoyable. I am a firm believer in Pooh Bear poetics: “Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is to go to where they can find you.”

The subsequent event planned is an investigation of what is or isn’t poetry (May 1) – I’d like to get us to consider what we might feel are borderline poems (genuinely questioning is it or isn’t it?), absolutely not poems (even though it might claim to be or look line one), and maybe absolutely pure & unchallengeable poems on which we feel all must agree. We’ll maybe explore this more a little next week. Then in June (June 5) a more simple session of sharing poems, either written by us or that we would like others to share.

Holly Pester at Stort Poetry Group, October 3

Stort Poetry Group’s first public event of the autumn is a performance and workshop by visiting poet Holly Pester, on Wednesday October 3, at 7.30 in Bishops Stortford’s Coffee Corner cafe. Holly Pester will combine a reading/performance of her work with a talk and a workshop. This is a rare opportunity for Bishops Stortford to experience one of this country’s leading performance artists, working between poetry, art and vocal performance.

Holly is a sound poet, artist and researcher based in London. She regularly performs at text, art and poetry events such as the international Serpentine Poetry Marathon 2009 and Text Festival 2011. She has also had sound installations in galleries including the Cartel Gallery for the ‘Word of Mouth’ exhibition, a sound piece at St. Andrews poetry festival and this year the prestigious international art exhibition Documenta at Kassel, Germany. She is currently in her final year of a practice-led PhD researching ‘Speech Matter: Sound Poetry and its Intermedial Field’, at Birkbeck, University of London. She teaches English on Birkbeck’s BA programme, and assists on the Voiceworks project aiding collaborating poets, singers and composers. Holly Pester’s collection, Hoofs was released with if p then q press in 2011, followed by KatrinaSequence (IntercapillaryEditions, 2012). Her work experiments in frequencies of speech, song and articulated noise – it’s also extremely funny and unpredictable.

Holly has a website, www.hollypester.com, which has on it a lot of material by her. It probably looks all rather arty and avant-garde and weird: she is a very compelling and engaging performer, appealingly down to earth while doing some extraordinary things. She is in many ways quite far from conventional ideas of poetry - but equally is experimenting & playing with sound qualities of language which are absolutely basic to poetry. I await eagerly both her performance and her workshop (which is likely I suspect to be oral rather than written - when I have any more information I'll communicate it.)

From Interview with SJ Fowler

3:AM: Performativity seems to be at the root of much of what you are doing. Was it natural for you to give speech preference over the page, if you are doing that at all?

HP: Yes that’s my medium, over language or page. I’m experimenting in the sound and shape of speech; its noise and its parasitic qualities. I work very much on the level of the everyday, and the throw away aspects of spoken language. I like the hilariousness in mundane speech acts and the comedy in performative speech. Any political violence that reveals itself behind the word is quickly offset by incongruity, banality, silliness. Maybe that’s because I’m not bold enough yet, or maybe because I’m audacious enough to make that my playground.

3:AM: Your work forces the audience to re-establish their focus continually throughout your reading. The variability and specificity of pitch, diction, volume conveys so much and yet the words you utilise are disarmingly immediate. Is this something you have tailored closely, or experimented with?

HP: That’s absolutely something I’m experimenting with – the aural colouring of speech and how that affects meaning or poetic operation. Maybe that’s my contribution to Sound Poetry. It’s also about the event of speech and the eventing of the score. That aspect of live performance is important to me. It’s a lot to do with sacrifice, you have to sacrifice poetry to a persona, which is potentially ‘bad’, you sacrifice yourself in the same way a clown might, and – on a more ontological level – you sacrifice textual meaning to present sound.

Holly Pester Online

Maintenant#46: Holly Pester  (“Danger Scale” – an interview with Holly Pester by SJ Fowler)             

See (& hear) her website: Holly Pester: sound poetry, performance texts and writing                             

Holly Pester has purely sound files of pieces on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com/holly-pester, and some good video recordings are Holly Pester at The Other Room 14, Holly Pester poetry performance at Serpentine Gallery, 11th February 2011 & James Harvey memorial reading -Jeff Hilson & Holly Pester. “Enjoy!”

Poem C

Totem

Behind the chain-link fence

the mobile homes 

shudder under the battering wind,

abandoned hulks

stranded in the dead time

and the day is weary,

dingy in the low light,

colour gone – 

even the road goes nowhere, trailing away

through barren dunes

where the wind stalks the headland.

 

On the gatepost

a totem sits still as stone,

hunched,

head bent,

of no consequence

in the scattering rain

when a sudden movement breaks his contemplation,

then the pose is fractured,

head twisting

in a neat swivel, half circle,

the gaze malignant and full-on.

Distracted, he shifts

and with short skips flits

to the next post as if to show a playful side,

post to post,

tracking the field’s boundary.

But it’s short-lived. Scything the air on arching wings    

he maps out his territory,

like a vengeful angel quartering the ground.

Poem A

We never really bothered with New Year

– Or Valentine’s day, come to that –

But always we were ambivalent about New Year.

We did go to parties when invited,

It would have been churlish not to.

Left to ourselves we would take a drink

At midnight

To see off the old year, acknowledge the New,

And that was it.

We had been war children,

Had known the precariousness of life

At a very early age.

Remembered when New Year had brought dread

Of what might happen in the months to follow

And was a time of desperate prayers instead.

It was some time after the war

With family re-united

That my Aunt Rhoda determined

I should experience a “proper” New Year;  –

Steamrollered my Mother into allowing me

To travel to Trafalgar Square

With her & Uncle John in their car.

It was exhilarating to be in that melee of people,

Scary to be in a stationary car

Rocked by exuberant revellers.

When the clocks struck midnight

And the bells pealed out

And the haunting sound of fog horns

Resonated from the river,

Aunt Rhoda turned to Uncle John and softly said

“This is the year I shall die.”

She did not intend that I should hear,

But I did.

And it was.

So no, we have never really bothered,

Much, with New Year.

At last year’s New Year

For the very first time

We didn’t even bother to stay up.

We went early to bed.

– Strange, that.

As if subconsciously we knew

It would not be a year to welcome

But of course, that was something

We did not know.

Now January comes again

But the beginning of it holds none of the memories

That overwhelm me on other anniversaries,

When I remember our love

And how we celebrated it.

I am glad now

That we never bothered with New Year.

Poem B

Chin-hugging, short-trimmed beard

Listens attentively

To two women

And turns behind

The Italian ladies

Sunglasses as weapons

Hide their eyes

Emotions concealed

Behind darkened visors

What are they thinking?

The boat turns at Lenno

Skims sun-dappled water

Whines with speed

As hydrofoil skis

Mock resistant water

We glide past a small town

Huddling the hillside

Tumbling to the water’s edge

Past beach huts

Pink – or salmon?

Parading for browning bathers

And green hills

On the train to Switzerland

Rolling and falling to the earth

Above which I tower

Lord of all I survey

Below the towns are specks

Mere houses clustered for warmth

Against encircling nature

Children’s voices from behind me

Red baseball caps balanced on growing bones

And their games, handclaps

How long ago it seems

Was I really so young?

A black dog lies down

Scratches languidly

Looks with idle curiosity

As the school group leaves

His eyes tell no story

Hold no mysteries

It is peaceful here now

Only flotsam and jetsam of chatter

Tickles the silence

This is how Switzerland is – and always will be –

The lethal calm always seducing

Purple t-shirt

Clothing a short beard and combed back hair

He has an opera look

A tenor face

He holds his lady

Who returns his attention

With promise eyes

As the mountain train snails down the track

Slithers to civilization

Passengers stare

And think of tea

Time is slipping and saving

Through my bones

Blue shirt

Silvery-grey hair and turned-down mouth

What has he seen

Or felt

That I have not done?

Has he loved as I have loved?

Has time filed its copy on his eyes?

The children sing