Tag: lewes live lit

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‘Zones of Avoidance’ – a live literature performance

Maggie Sawkins - Zones of Avoidance

What would your understanding be of a ‘live literature performance’? Is it the same, or related to ‘performance poetry’? Could any poetry, when read or recited in front of an audience, be performance poetry?

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity of seeing a live performance of Maggie Sawkins’ Zones of Avoidance which won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry last year. It’s billed as ‘multimedia live literature production’, and with Mark C. Hewitt as director I had an inkling of what that meant. I knew it would be staged in some way. I suspected that the performance aspect would have little to do with the use of ‘trained actors’, or slam poetry, or a poet dominating the audience with sheer force of personality.

Mark is a writer, theatre maker, producer, director and all-round talented person who I know from Lewes Live Lit, the umbrella for all kinds of poetry activities in Lewes over the years. It’s he who organises the regular workshopping groups with Mimi Khalvati, and whose one-man show ‘Expiry tbc’ I really enjoyed a year or so back.

The performance I saw was actually a dry-run before its London debut, at The Cockpit Theatre in Marylebone, with the last performance taking place this evening. Certainly more than a rehearsed reading, as the piece had been performed quite a few times, it was nevertheless a ‘be prepared for anything’ kind of show. It was a small, invited audience and we’d been warned that not all aspects of the production would be happening (such as some lighting effects), also that we shouldn’t be alarmed if there were unscheduled moments or re-takes. In fact, there were no interruptions. Much of the material was read confidently from memory, all the technical aspects seemed to work (or work well enough for the impromptu venue). I loved the intimacy of what felt like a private view.

I knew the subject matter was based on the poet’s experience of her daughter’s drug addiction and her own professional work with recovering addicts. So I knew it wasn’t going to be ‘light’ entertainment. But I have to say I found the whole experience mesmerising. The trouble with trying to describe the dramatic elements of something like this (to someone who wasn’t there) – the props, the lighting, the use of projection/audio tracks, how the poet/performer changes position – is that you end up with a list of features which can, out of context, sound a bit periferal or mannered. But it wasn’t like that – the staging was absolutely integral to the piece.

The poet’s delivery was matter-of-fact, deadpan even. There was humour. And pathos. And most of all the frustration, anger and desperation of a mother having to stand by as her daughter self-destructs. It was moving, but not maudlin. Occasionally, between poems we heard recordings of addicts in recovery, speaking about their experiences. Some poems appeared on film. The whole production was carefully paced, giving us the audience time to take in what we were hearing and seeing: a muted, ordered presentation of a sad story of utter disorder.

Do go see Zones of Avoidance if you’re able to. I came away with the book which contains the whole sequence (not all the poems are in the performed version). I’ve added it the The Reading List, so in due course I’ll be talking more about the poems.

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Mimi Khalvati on editing and what to bin

Notes from a poetry workshop

On Saturday I dropped back in on one of the regular workshops with Mimi Khalvati run by the excellent Lewes Live Lit here in my home town. I was lucky enough to be rewarded with a place in one of these highly popular groups about 18 months ago, and although I’ve been on a break from them, when the opportunity arose to re-join I took it.

As usual I took notes, and while many things discussed were specific to the poems we workshopped, there were a couple of strong ‘aha’ moments for me, which I thought I’d share with you here.

First of all, on the subject of a poem that isn’t working but that has some ‘good bits’…

Mimi described how she had recently been working on a poem at which she had made five or six attempts – not edits, but actual start-again different approaches. In the end, all she kept was one line. And the rest? Kept for a rainy poetry day when she might use them in another poem? Still lingering in her notebook under ‘good metaphors or phrases I could use somewhere’? No – it all went in the bin.

Her point was that when something isn’t quite working, poets are often quick to say “maybe I can put that great line into another poem” when in fact it’s worth asking the question “maybe I can put it all in the bin.” Not that it’s always the answer, but that we should be more prepared to let go. I know I’m guilty of this, and it may be the reason why I’ve one or two poems that have been rejected seven or more times, despite several re-writes. I probably need to go at them from a completely different angle and not be so wedded to certain lines.

Secondly, on the subject of editing …

‘”Nobody writes magical stuff straight off,” (well, most of us don’t!) “the magic usually comes in the editing.” What often happens, said Mimi, is that we create some magical moments in amongst some other writing that might be less than magical. The key is to recognise this and cut out the less interesting stuff. Only it’s difficult, because we think it’s all crucial, all part of how we got to the magical moment in the first place. But the reader may not need to see your ‘workings out’. Don’t worry about being clear or logical.

In other words, editing doesn’t just mean things like cutting out unnecessary adjectives or replacing uninteresting verbs, but really thinking also about the impact on the reader, where the real interest, tension and magic lie, and making sure other parts of the poem aren’t detracting from this. This really made sense to me. I’ve already looked at two of my current poems with this mindset and made some (hopefully good) changes.