Poetry and other nourishment
Apr. 16th, 2019 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustColpitts Poetry, a long established Durham institution, emerged from a period of dormancy (which I shall be optimistic and call "hibernation") on Friday evening, for a reading by two local poets, both members of the Vane Women collective. S.J. Litherland is much respected, but I don't usually find her poetry very approachable. On this occasion she was aided and abetted by traditional musician Ian McKone - that is, there had clearly been collusion about the choice, and the timing, of his tunes and songs, and the combination worked well for me. It was pleasant to sit in the darkening room, as the candles became more visible in the dusk - a Colpitts tradition, that only the reader has electric light - and listen to the words and music.
What had drawn me to the reading, though, was the support act, Diane Cockburn, of whom - of whose work, but also in fact of whom - I am very fond. Here's Electric Mermaid, the title poem of her first and to date only collection. I could have sworn I'd posted this before, but I've spent longer than I should have poking around the internet, and found no evidence of it. I did, on the other hand, find one of the poems she read on Friday, Hocus Pocus, a cautionary tale of a sénce gone wrong. But the poem that stays with me is the one with which she ended her set, written for a project to write in the voice of a woman from an exhibition of portraits of unidentified subjects. Diane had chosen a woman in severe costume, wearing a gauntlet on which she carried a bird: but instead of producing some historically plausible monologue, she had come up with a fever dream of a poem about a dystopia beset each morning by noxious vapours, which could only be warded off by a gathering of bearers of birds and beasts. The speaker, with a linnet on her gloved fist (the part of the linnet played by an RSPB fluffy songthrush, linnets being unavailable, attached to a furry mitten) and curses the person who arrived before her and grabbed her favourite axolotl. This sounds comic - and it was funny, and we laughed - but there was something eerie about it too, especially in the final song of the false linnet.
On Saturday we went to Bishop Auckland, for the Food Fair; I had picked up a leaflet and then forgotten all about it, but J. telephoned and we agreed to meet her there. We have done this before, more than once (the first time seems to have been ten years ago) and part of the attraction has always been that the fair extends out of the Market Place into the grounds of the castle, and there's usually a chance to nose around the castle as well. Not this year, as there are extensive renovations going on at the castle. So there were fewer photo opportunities than usual:
But the nice man from Riverford gave me an apple, and I stocked up on Lacey's cheese, and J. introduced us to the free bookshop, and it was bright and warm enough - just! - to buy our lunch from the street food stalls... We took J. home, and she gave us tea and showed off the progress of her home improvements, and then we stopped at Lidl on the way home. Which is like going to another food festival, so many strange and wonderful things to tempt us:durham_rambler considered a bargain hedge trimmer from the centre aisle (not that we have a hedge, but it was a bargain!) while I resisted the siren song of the freezer full of Polish dumplings: should I buy plum, or sour cream? No, I should not. But I did buy a jar of stuffed cabbage, and some pickled herring.
What had drawn me to the reading, though, was the support act, Diane Cockburn, of whom - of whose work, but also in fact of whom - I am very fond. Here's Electric Mermaid, the title poem of her first and to date only collection. I could have sworn I'd posted this before, but I've spent longer than I should have poking around the internet, and found no evidence of it. I did, on the other hand, find one of the poems she read on Friday, Hocus Pocus, a cautionary tale of a sénce gone wrong. But the poem that stays with me is the one with which she ended her set, written for a project to write in the voice of a woman from an exhibition of portraits of unidentified subjects. Diane had chosen a woman in severe costume, wearing a gauntlet on which she carried a bird: but instead of producing some historically plausible monologue, she had come up with a fever dream of a poem about a dystopia beset each morning by noxious vapours, which could only be warded off by a gathering of bearers of birds and beasts. The speaker, with a linnet on her gloved fist (the part of the linnet played by an RSPB fluffy songthrush, linnets being unavailable, attached to a furry mitten) and curses the person who arrived before her and grabbed her favourite axolotl. This sounds comic - and it was funny, and we laughed - but there was something eerie about it too, especially in the final song of the false linnet.
On Saturday we went to Bishop Auckland, for the Food Fair; I had picked up a leaflet and then forgotten all about it, but J. telephoned and we agreed to meet her there. We have done this before, more than once (the first time seems to have been ten years ago) and part of the attraction has always been that the fair extends out of the Market Place into the grounds of the castle, and there's usually a chance to nose around the castle as well. Not this year, as there are extensive renovations going on at the castle. So there were fewer photo opportunities than usual:
But the nice man from Riverford gave me an apple, and I stocked up on Lacey's cheese, and J. introduced us to the free bookshop, and it was bright and warm enough - just! - to buy our lunch from the street food stalls... We took J. home, and she gave us tea and showed off the progress of her home improvements, and then we stopped at Lidl on the way home. Which is like going to another food festival, so many strange and wonderful things to tempt us:
durham_rambler considered a bargain hedge trimmer from the centre aisle (not that we have a hedge, but it was a bargain!) while I resisted the siren song of the freezer full of Polish dumplings: should I buy plum, or sour cream? No, I should not. But I did buy a jar of stuffed cabbage, and some pickled herring.
