Tag: mark hewitt

Books/

Catherine Smith’s The New Cockaigne

The New Cockaigne by Catherine Smith

Last week I managed to grab the last available chair upstairs at The Lewes Arms for the first performance of Catherine Smith’s The New Cockaigne. Luckily I didn’t sit in the chair reserved for the performers, or it could have been embarrassing – we were treated to an unrestrained romp – “a verbal feast of sexual, gastronomic and alcoholic excess” – the performers being two young actors who emphasised each word with mime-play and were intent on a bit of mild audience participation.

The New Cockaigne is published by the Frogmore Press, with a superb cover design (look closely at the images in those pretty circles!) It’s a ballad, and a note in the foreword explains that “the Land of Cockaigne was a medieval hedonistic fantasy, explored in legend, oral history and art.” Catherine incorporates all the details of the original, but brings it up to date into a kind of Orwellian satire on regimes and regimens.

I’d call it both scary and hilarious – (‘scalarious’?) Not to give the story away, but just to say that by half way through I was feeling a bit queasy as I nervously sipped my white wine spritzer, but it all came good in the end (sort of) – and I did enjoy the Licorice Allsorts. Having live music (“from a live musician”) was a great addition and director Mark Hewitt did a fantastic job of staging this piece in a very small space indeed, the claustrophobia was perfect. I know he and Catherine are hoping to tour performances of The New Cockaigne and certainly for me it worked beautifully in the confines of the pub space, with the ambient noises of pub goings-on and the audience-as-props. Great fun.

audio/

Audio poem (an experiment)

I was inspired by Mark Hewitt’s performance of ‘expiry tbc‘ the other evening here in Lewes. It was actually a 3-person production featuring Peter Copley on live (and looped) cello, and wonderful lighting effects by Kristina Hjelm. I’d had the privilege of being in Mark’s workshopping group led by Mimi Khalvati earlier in the year, and he had brought along various versions of the text. But although some of the words were familiar, it was amazing how exciting and moving the whole package became with the addition of sound, light and staging. I’ve often fallen into the trap of thinking that performance poetry is mostly about shouting, rhyming and making the audience laugh. But this was something else entirely.

So I went back to my ‘3 voice canon’ poem – the one I sent to Magma for their theme ‘The music of words’ (still open for admissions, by the way) but was rejected, because they said they couldn’t see the connection between the stanzas, and I recorded it the way I envisage it being read. I used a bit of software called Audacity, in which it’s easy to record one track and layer copies of it over the top in a stagger. I was having so much fun I gave it four tracks in the end. So maybe I should re-title it ‘4-voice canon’?

I did it on one take, so I’m sure I could improve on it, although I don’t want to start putting on silly voices or making it over dramatic. Let me know what you think – thanks.