more from the text festival - the bury poems

I'm going to split my reaction to today in half. First I'll deal with the Bury Poems reading this afternoon. Ron Silliman's reading will be in a separate post.

The day was interesting to try and negotiate for those of us coming from Manchester for both events - especially those of us using public transport. Although there were around four hours between the events it wasn't really enough time to be able to go back to Manchester, do anything useful and come back in time. Besides which the tram isn't especially cheap. Consequently everyone appeared to stay in Bury through the afternoon.

But anyway - the reading. Again I wasn't really sure what to expect. The three poets were Carol Watts, Phil Davenport and Tony Lopez. Carol and Phil I'd seen perform before, Tony was new to me. The reading was divided in two. In the first half each poet read from their own work, and in the second half after a break they read from the Bury poems they'd been commissioned to write. The set up was simple - a microphone on a stand in front of a lectern under a spotlight. Perhaps a little static for some tastes but not really a problem.

Carol was first to read I think. I liked her poems although there were some characteristic formations of words that I thought belonged to another era of poetry. There is sometimes a sense even that the feeling of modernity is slightly on the surface, that without too much effort you could recast the poems as Beat Poems, or older. This is not a criticism, and I think there are probably things in the poems that I will be able to find with further reading that I've missed so far. Her pieces centred on imagery of an imagined adolescence, of Roy Orbison and American cars. I'm not sure what they were about but for me the subject appeared in part to be how we imagine ourselves into identity, and how identity and memory are not static facts but a dynamic process of negotiation and invention.

I believe Tony Lopez was next. Not only had I not seen him perform before but I hadn't read any of his poetry. In the event I found his poetry the most interesting, but we're talking a matter of degrees, I enjoyed everyone's work. The poems utilised several strands running through and taking turns to be foregrounded. Scientific concepts appeared frequently, but well integrated into the text. How the pieces look on the page may be a different matter but in the reading I liked the way that it was not made clear when one strand had been left to one side for a moment while another was picked up. It created a kind of feeling of suspension followed by momentum. Tony opened his set by taking a couple of photos of the audience - a touch repeated by Ron Silliman later in the day. I don't think I came away with any great thematic overview, but that's not really necessary.

Phil Davenport read in the first section from About Everything, which Tony Trehy has blogged about in very complimentary terms, and some of which at least I had heard before. One of the things I enjoy about the piece is that it periodically hits on a particular theme or strand and then sticks there and begins to decay before moving on to something else.

Now if memory serves it was Phil who started off the reading's second half. At this stage I'm afraid to confess I remember very little of this part of his reading. Partly this is because I suddenly had a bunch of ideas firing off for an actual text poem of my own. On the whole I'm afraid to confess I found the first half poems by all three writers somewhat stronger than the poems in the second half. Phil's poems in this half, so far as I can recall referred a lot to other poets, to the practice of writing, to the process of being a writer, and seem to have grown out of the experience of the first text festival in 2005 - which I completely missed.

Carol's pieces had a more tangible local connection, although had she not mentioned it I'm not sure that I would have known as much. They were a series of seven sonnets structured around a news item about Bury from the mid-nineteenth century. Like Phil's pieces before they circled around a few recurrent images and phrases. Perhaps even more than Phil's they are pieces that while perfectly performable are more easily apprehended read from the page.

One of the problems I have with poetry readings, especially more difficult poetry, is that unlike poetry on the page you're not able to go back and re-read sections at will. I'd imagine it's rare for anyone faced with a new and challenging poem to read it right through once and then go on to the next piece. You re-read sections, you cross-reference different parts of the poem, you put different poems against one another in a constant, dynamic process of trying to find a meaning. A performance really only gives you an impression, a surface snapshot of the poem. So I apologise for any grievous misreadings, vagueness or trite observation about any reading I review.

If my reckoning is right then Tony Lopez must have been the final reader of this event. Apologies to Tony that although I remember finding his Bury poems the most successful at present I honestly can't remember a thing about them. If I remember later I'll be sure to update this post.