Friday evening. Fifty or so people gather in a corporate art venue, the Bloomberg Space, for Errors Hit Orient. Nick and I are here because I saw a tweet from Studio Voltaire about the event, mentioning B.S. Johnson. We're not quite sure what to expect. The idea sounds a bit mad, but definitely unmissable. Someone …
Category: London
talent times two
Another excellent and uplifting Loose Muse last Wednesday evening at the Poetry Café. The featured writer in the first half was Patricia Foster. A poet and educator, Patricia performed her poems with great charm and presence. Many of her poems draw on her Jamaican heritage and celebrate her close bond with her family. The Broomstick relates …
and the point of it is
Fun. Play. Inquisitiveness. Encountering the everyday at an odd angle. Provocation. Or no point at all, IT just IS. And the 'it'? Art. Specifically, the Martin Creed retrospective What's the point of it? at the Hayward Gallery, which we visited on Thursday evening. Although some of the work was familiar to me, there was a …
Loose Muse feature
Wednesday night was blowing a gale in London, but the threatened tube strike had been suspended, and the day's lashing rain finally dried up. So, given the circumstances, there was a good turn out for Loose Muse at the Poetry Café, where I was billed as one of the two featured writers. Unfortunately, Sally Spedding, …
first Tuesday, second Wednesday
So my new year's not-quite-resolution to do less, to go out less, got off to a flying start this week when I went to two poetry events on successive nights. It was my second visit to Beyond Words in Gipsy Hill, which takes place on the first Tuesday of every month. January's star attraction was …
dot dot dot
I am struggling to articulate my response to the Australia exhibition at the Royal Academy, which ends next Sunday. I've visited three times now. It's a big show. Each time I've spent around two hours in there. It definitely has the sense of a journey. There are some interesting echoes or counterpoints as you wander …
Curlew River
Thursday 14th November. A cold clear night. A three quarters full moon rising above the city of London. We cross from the brutalist Barbican Centre along a raised concrete walkway, down some steps and join the short queue waiting outside St Giles Cripplegate. We're here for Benjamin Britten's chamber opera Curlew River - A Parable for …
admiring Mira
Last Saturday I avoided the mayhem of the fireworks display in Battersea Park and instead took in the Mira Schendel exhibition at Tate Modern. And a thoroughly rewarding experience this was. I hadn't come across Schendel's work before, and the Tate show is a wonderful introduction to her prolific and varied output. Schendel emigrated to …
wine, women, words
That's a recipe for a convivial and enriching evening, and that's exactly what we got last Thursday at the launch of the fourth Loose Muse anthology, downstairs at Cottons on Exmouth Market. Once again, Agnes Meadows and her co-editors have put together a varied and top-class collection of writing by women who have attended one …
poetry panic attack
I spent Saturday morning sitting at my desk, thinking about a new poem, jotting down words and phrases, delving into dictionaries and reference books, nurturing that little knot of something in the back of my brain that I hope will evolve, take shape, emerge slowly onto the page. So I was already in a rather …
