poetry
Peter Perrett, Concorde 2, Brighton review - it’s a family affair for the former Only OneTuesday, 28 May 2019
It’s been a couple of years since Peter Perrett, the former frontman and creative force behind the much loved but commercially under-performing Only Ones decided that he’d had enough of being a mere legend and got back into the musical ring. He had... Read more... |
CD: Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith - The Peyote DanceSaturday, 25 May 2019
Soundwalk Collective is a multi-disciplinary audio-visual collective founded by Stephan Crasneanscki, a musical psycho-geographer and field recorder, the source material of his works drawn from specific locations: in the case of The Peyote Dance, it... Read more... |
Four Quartets, Barbican Theatre review - ultimate stage poetryFriday, 24 May 2019
The first surprise is that this hasn’t been done before. The poems that comprise TS Eliot’s Four Quartets are so embedded with references to dance that presenting them alongside choreography feels inevitable. Perhaps it took an anniversary – 75... Read more... |
Tribe//Still I Rise, Brighton Festival 2019 review - an evening of poetic movementWednesday, 22 May 2019
Maya Angelou’s iconic poem Still I Rise is a good starting point for many things in life. But it’s a particularly good beginning for a piece of contemporary dance choreography, and Victoria Fox has done a great job of bringing the poet’s words to... Read more... |
salt., Royal Court review - revisiting the Atlantic slave tradeSaturday, 18 May 2019
Most of the facts about the Atlantic slave trade are well known; what is less easily understood is how history can make a person feel today. A question which invites an experimental approach in which you test out emotions on your own body. In 2016,... Read more... |
Ben Okri, Brighton Festival 2019 review - adventures in writingWednesday, 08 May 2019
If there’s one thing to learn from Ben Okri in this evening of conversation at Brighton Festival between the Famished Road writer and author Colin Grant it’s how to “upwake”.The phrase, coined in his new (11th) novel The Freedom Artist – a post-... Read more... |
Patti Smith, Roundhouse review – the priestess of punk has lost none of her powerSaturday, 26 January 2019
“Don’t love me yet,” replies Patti Smith to the first of tonight’s many excitable shout-outs. “Who knows, after 20 minutes you might be gone!” An unlikely scenario, given that this show – part of the Roundhouse’s annual “In the Round” series, which... Read more... |
CD: Marianne Faithfull - Negative CapabilitySaturday, 03 November 2018
There are many layers of allusion that come with Marianne Faithfull’s powerful new album. The title is drawn from Keats, his formula for great poetry as opposed to instructive morality, and it’s towards a poetry of experience rather than the fixed... Read more... |
CD: John Grant – Love Is MagicSaturday, 06 October 2018
There are people who do and say awful things in the name of honesty. It can be used as a cover for rigorous appeasement of our own worst impulses, or as a thin veil to disguise needless personal attacks on those around us. With singer-sonwriter John... Read more... |
DVD: Mary ShelleyTuesday, 04 September 2018
This should have been the perfect match. Saudi-born director Haifaa al-Mansour earned real acclaim for her 2012 debut film Wadjda, whose 12-year-old central character had to break the conventions of a restrictive society to realise her dream –... Read more... |
DVD: Al BertoFriday, 17 August 2018
There are plenty of reasons to be apprehensive about biopics of poets. The activity of writing is most often, after all, anything but cinematic, unless its moments of creativity are forced, while the “myth” of the poet all too easily becomes... Read more... |
Proms at...Cadogan Hall 4, Connolly, Middleton review - perfect partnering in the unfamiliarTuesday, 07 August 2018
“It has a music of its own. It produces vibrations.” Oscar Wilde was being ironic when he had Gwendolen contemplate the sound of her beloved’s drab name in The Importance of Being Earnest, but he had a point when it comes to composers and poetry.... Read more... |
