poetry
Art and poetry: the image makersSunday, 01 December 2013
When it comes to a blank page, artists and poets lead different kinds of lives and leave different kinds of marks. One for the eye, one for the ear, but both dependant on the thrill of recognition. The word, like paint, can be worked and reworked... Read more... |
Listed: Poems inspired by paintingsSunday, 18 August 2013
Poetry has always inspired artists. Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Dante’s Divine Comedy are two of the most enduring. And according to Art Everywhere, of which I will say little here but have written about elsewhere (see sidebar), the nation’s favourite... Read more... |
CD: Benin City - Fires in the ParkSunday, 07 July 2013
This is not an easy record to get a handle on. When I first got it, I bounced through a couple of tracks idly, and it felt like it was coming from the messy genre fusions of the mid-90s – somewhere between trip-hop, indie-dance, rap-rock and mildly... Read more... |
Shun Li and the PoetThursday, 20 June 2013
Italian documentarist Andrea Sigre’s first feature captures with great tenderness the delicate balance of friendship that grows up between two characters who live as relative outsiders in their community. From its Italian title Io sono Li (I Am Li... Read more... |
Ute Lemper, Queen Elizabeth HallThursday, 30 May 2013
The show which Ute Lemper brought to the Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of the London Literature Festival - “Pablo Neruda: A Song Cycle of Love Poems” - is brand-new; the six-piece band (with which she has just recorded it, and which will be touring... Read more... |
The fiery poetry of flamencoThursday, 14 March 2013
When Sadler's Wells 10th Flamenco Festival opens tomorrow night with thudding heels, swirling skirts and wailing voices, some will sit there begging to know what the wailing is about. Dancers like Eva Yerbabuena and Israel Galván, singers like... Read more... |
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Old Vic TunnelsWednesday, 09 January 2013
Here’s an elegant thing to do before eight o'clock dinner - stroll out for an hour’s recital of a rollicking story-poem done by a leading actress in a hip underground venue with judiciously hip application of modern dance, then go off and diss it... Read more... |
CD of the Year: Christine Tobin – Sailing to ByzantiumThursday, 27 December 2012
On Sailing to Byzantium Christine Tobin's utterly singular music fuses with the amaranthine force of WB Yeats's poetry to create one of the most transporting jazz releases in aeons. From the iridescent colours of “The Wild Swans at Coole” and the... Read more... |
Black Top #5, Café OtoTuesday, 13 November 2012
For the way it combined mercurial, on-the-fly interplay, seismic textural shifts and listening of the highest order, this gig was remarkable. In the space of two continuous sets there wasn't a longueur to be found, such was the incredible union of... Read more... |
Van Morrison, Sligo LiveWednesday, 07 November 2012
Sligo Live is Europe’s most westerly music festival, and its mix of indie and traditional is unique. For four nights and days, cracking traditional players fill the town’s many excellent pubs - Kennedy’s, Foley’s, the Snug, Mchugh’s and Hardagan’s... Read more... |
CD: Little Machine – Madam LifeMonday, 15 October 2012
Poetry has a habit of colliding with rock'n'roll. Mick Jagger read some Shelley when the Stones played in Hyde Park in 1969. John Cooper Clarke's speedball delivery lit up the late Seventies and helped to inspire comedy poet John Hegley and the... Read more... |
Christine Tobin embarks on autumn tourThursday, 04 October 2012
Christine Tobin’s latest CD Sailing to Byzantium brings to life the lyrical magic of W B Yeats’ poems and has been widely acclaimed. Reviewing the album earlier this year, I wrote that "Tobin has created an unqualified masterpiece. Setting poems... Read more... |
