Live at the Bike Shed Theatre

What with everything that's been going on, I also haven't had a minute to write about the gigs we had at Cabaret Oasis in Torquay, nor the Sunday Funny Sunday cabaret night at the Bike Shed Theatre, the latter being after an invitation we (Widsith and Deor Storytelling Theatre) got to perform because the organizers had heard our comic tales on the Phonic Drama Show! They were both brilliant, and the latter was rather special as a couple of other members of the Cartwheels Collective came along, who happen to be staying at HQ at the moment. They helped take in our gear on a lovely warm April evening, and we all piled into the delicious bar of the Bike Shed Theatre, with its wonderful dark red painted corners, outsized stencils in classic designs, ostentatious mirrors, luxurious sofas, fairylights and generally charming atmosphere, hiding away down a back street reached via an unlit flight of stairs into a basement! It really is a fantastic venue. Our set went well, us telling the trademark 'Girl Who Gave a Kiss Out of Necessity' from Sweden, and a new story, premiered at the Storyclub called 'The Four Liars' (which I'd changed quite a lot) originally from  Cambodia. But much of the fun of the evening was having along fellow Collective members whom we call 'The Crew', as they played ping pong in the bar, and tried on our hats (tricorn, straw, and helmet), and generally made us laugh... It's a treat to have such supporters whether in the the audience or in the bar...
    Thanks to Chris of Poetry Island, Andy of Monkeys with Puns, and the Crew for making it all happen!
 

The Phonic Drama Show

Since mid-February (and so much has happened that I haven't had a chance to write about it - but that's another story involving the Collective!) Deor of Widsith & Deor has begun a second radio show on Phonic, a Thursday morning weekly slot - ambitious given the time constraints? Certainly, but he's managing very well, and I have been recruited as the Associate Script Editor, reading the scripts that come in and assessing them for broadcast. It's been another rollercoaster, as squeezing it all in with everything else is just madness, but to my surprise (although there are scripts waiting to be read even as I write) it is proving possible.
   The Show alternates between dramatic storytelling by Deor, storyteller/solo renditions of classic plays, so far Greek tragedy! and plays sent in by playwrights, so far ones with access to their own recording studios and actors, which is brilliant. We have been amazed and delighted at the quality of the work sent in, and as the Phonic Drama Show swings between experimental and Exeter's answer to Radio 4, so the fortnightly 'Widsith and Deor Presents...' has been making occasional stabs at being the city's reply to Radio 3...no comments on how it's been going, we have no producer but ourselves!
   The solo Greek tragedies, Euripedes' 'The Bacchae' and his (almost unwatchable and unlistenable in the grim stakes as well as so loaded that it was banned by the Greek colonels in the 1960's) 'Trojan Women' have both been performed by Deor. I have to admit I wasn't sure it could be done, as both have quite a number of characters! But was astounded, as ever by his versatility. 'The Bacchae' is one of the most beautiful plays ever written, with incredibly poetic language, and one of those tragedies that is, for me, like Macbeth - there are times when you want to cry, but, like the opera Carmen, somehow everything is as it should be, and the gods or the witches or the cards have their way, and strangely it seems right in that context. The Trojan Women by contrast is one of the grimmest and possibly finest, and certainly earliest known, of anti-war plays ever written. It deals with war from the what-happen-to-the-civilians? view - the women after the city is captured. Enough said.
   In the storytelling shows, Deor has been doing epic cycles from the Finnish Kalevala, and this morning's show was of Viking myths of the gods, but told as a series, with background techno/dance tracks to up the tempo and tension. It was powerful stuff - well, I was moved, and I've heard some of them many times before. The interpretation took up the usual mantle of blood-thirsty gore and comic book slapstick of the Norse gods' tales and turned them into a well-forged blade, dipped in ironies and laden with extra depths, multi-faceted, bringing out the real tragedy and the dark politics involved in a way that I've seldom heard done with Nordic retellings. A heady brew!
   Once a month at the moment there's a 'Storyclub Special' where whatever we've managed to record from that month's Storyclub gets played on the show. I say 'managed' as Michael Dacre must've put a copyright spell on his tales, as the machine never plays back his brilliant tellings!
   More new plays are in the pipeline, including a political satire by the author of our first featured play the tragi-comedic 'The Rose Garden', Simon Jackson a professional writer and film maker based in Edinburgh. We are also looking for Devon and Exeter based playwrights, so if you have something, and especially if you can produce/record it yourself, we would be interested to hear it! Just e-mail it to me, the Editor at the usual e-mail.
 

'The Ruin of Britain'

This morning's radio show on Phonic FM - having been thinking about King Offa in the previous show but one about Geoffrey Hill's 'Mercian Hymns' - circled around Gildas the Monk's 'The Ruin of Britain' from the C6th, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The discussion was about different aspects of a historic conflict, that of the wars and battles in Britain between the Welsh/Britons and Scots/Picts, and Roman Empire and then leading on to the Angles/Saxons/Jutes. The invasion of Rome, the rule of Rome, Roman and Romano-British Britain, and the way that Gildas' account - deeply political, a polemical sermon basically, favoured the Romans. Then the way that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle charted successes and less of the failures, the way it was written often long after the events it details, in many places, even though it's written in the form of an annual diary...the way that Gildas refers to things which 'everyone knew' and yet as one of very few records, of course, now we don't know! The gaps and the missing names, the obvious partisanship of historical texts...and we ended with 'The Ruin' poem from the C10th Exeter Book, as a classic re-imagining of the Roman times from a Saxon poet. It was really interesting - or at least, as topics and periods which we ourselves have discussed many times, it was great to actually try and structure a discussion to explain to folks who Gildas was, why these texts matter, why it is that they're so interesting, and of course, most importantly, what they can teach us now - not only about our own past, the past of the places we call or think of as home, but also about current conflicts. How things have very different versions depending on who is doing the telling! It's a point that's always worth drawing attention to, and more timely than usual just now.
    One can argue for ever about whether one can or cannot learn from history, when technology changes even if humans don't, when history repeats itself but not in exactly the same way...but what is true, it seems to me, is that history can illuminate situations as well as give context to a geography.

   It sometimes seems quite amazing to be given the opportunity to present a show where the whole kaleidoscope of arts, history and culture are available as subjects. Well, with a finite knowledge base, given shoehorning time for research into the day's tasks somewhere, anyway... My co-presenter always remembers his various and varied areas of knowledge, in a most impressive way. Whether post modern philosophy, the history of philosophy, the history of the English Civil War or the history of maths, he can lay his hands on the key names, dates and facts in a few moments... I on the other hand can read dozens of C19th novels, or study C18th garden history, philosophy, have a detailed knowledge of follies and folly landscapes or Tudor banqueting, Icelandic Saga facts, and then...after a while, it all becomes rusty. I know that I have known whatever it is, but can I recall it quickly or without preparation? Sadly not. Whether Expressionism, multimedia theatre as documented by Richard Kostelanetz, concrete and code poetry, the English Civil War, Anglo-Saxon poetry or Anglo-Saxon kings and culture, Surrealism or theatre history, sundials, astronomy, hydraulic automata, all of them passions and hobbies at different times and still. But could I now tell you the plot of Fanny Burney's 'Camilla' as distinct from 'Cecelia' and 'Evelina', or the names of other key characters? Or the actual difference between Trollope's 'Can You Forgive Her?' and 'He Knew He Was Right'? Disraeli's 'The Election' or 'Sybil'...? Errrrrmmmm.....

   I know I have known these things and read them, but... However, luckily, whatever the faults of this morning's show, at least Deor didn't do what he often does, which is ask me a question the answer to which I can no longer remember, will remember much later, or couldn't possibly remember on only the one cup of instant coffee I've had time for! Doesn't matter what you know or how much, radio is a strange beast and a tricky medium...I'm much less inclined to criticise presenters on most stations now. Whatever I do or have known, nine times out of ten I sound like an idiot at some point on these shows, and if not 'erm', then radio picks ups your stopgaps and stock slang like nothing else. 'Wow', 'absolutely', 'I mean' all get picked up and stick in the ear. Ouch! That and sounding like you've got brains made of spaghetti. But these topics are so worthy of the attempt - it's worth it.

The Philosophy Show

It's always really good to do something which you've been meaning to do for some time, and this morning's  installment of 'Widsith and Deor Present...' on Phonic FM on modern philosophy, was just that. Philosophy is a passion of mine, if in a hobbyist/slacker way. I love the history of ideas, the way that philosophy forms the backdrop to most if not all other disciplines, the way in which it critiques assumptions and looks at the scaffolding of language and culture that most of us take for granted. I love the way it makes you look at the world in a whole new light, and can make you change for the better. And I love the crazy quirky tales of how some books were written or recorded or lost and re-found, the wacky lives of many philosophers, ancient and modern, and just the whole way it seems to light up art and literature.
   So it was great to do a show just devoted to discussing it. We talked of how modern philosophy was probably to be charted from Nietzsche; Foucault's remarkable and eye-opening take on how the idea of sexuality has changed with technology and conceptions of what society's all about, from hanging to health care. Of Heidegger's Being and Time; of the difference between the Continental and analytic (or ordinary language as it used to be called) traditions in philosophy; of Deleuze's idea of the Event, very fruitfully I thought, and of course, of how the Stand Up Philosopher's performances came about! And we played one recording (a great piece, though the sound was a bit echo-y), and Deor performed the other. The show, punctuated with wonderful music from Debussy, Bizet and Britten, went all too quickly. We could have discussed just Foucault for a whole show, and we didn't have time to talk about the book I'd brought along, Foucault's beautiful and dynamic homage, art/criticism, work of philosophy 'This is Not a Pipe' - about (of course) Magritte, one of his favourite artists. There was also a lot more that could have been said about what it means to turn the history of thought and philosophy into theatre, but we did touch on the fact that of course, once philosophy was essentially oral, and changed its character with the printing press and so on. We could have gone on all day! But apart from anything else, it's in the nature of radio to have bite sized chunks of subjects. When you present a show, on any kind of radio station, it gives you some insight into why presenters and DJs sound as they do, and why programmes get studded with music or are only certain lengths.
    However, we also managed to record it, so it should soon be up on the 'Widsith and Deor presents...' site (link to the right).

    The Stand Up Philosopher will be appearing at the HowTheLightGetsIn Festival of philosophy and music in Hay-on-Wye, which runs during the same period as the Hay Literature Festival (26th May - 5th June) and the show is on the  on the 3rd of June, so do come along if you can!

Check out the HowTheLightGetsIn Festival of philosophy & music at;
http://www.howthelightgetsin.org/

'Geometrica' - the chapbook

It's always amazing to see a stage of completion in a long cherished project, and the printing of 'Geometrica' (my latest chapbook) is just that. I would have written a blog about it at the turn of the year, but things have got in the way, and blogs about events seemed more of immediate urgency (if a non-current affairs blog can be urgent).
   However, I have at last scanned the cover! of it. And I must say, it looks to me like the best thing I have ever done. It's always a difficult balance as an artist - what you most wish to pursue, and what 'the market' is most interested in. There are surefire sellers - 'Porlock' being an obvious example. As an all ages historical adventure novel, it caters for a huge range of folks and occasions, and the most recent reason given for buying a copy was a guy who was taking a long plane journey and wanted something to read on the flight! Then there are the slightly niche but still targeted areas of creativity - 'The Books of..' being the example here. Political satire mixed with poetic commentary, the readership is never going to be as wide, but it goes down well at green fairs, respect festivals, and would sell at demos, marches, outside the Leftfield Tent at Glastonbury and suchlike.
    'Geometrica' on the other hand is (and for someone who works compiling information for and attending the live lit scene it feels that way) for the literary few. Written with a seriously unfashionable view that poetry is only sometimes meant for 'expressing shared and common experience'. Evidently 'The Books of...' are meant to make you think - to illuminate the News and the issues which it throws up, in another light. A common experience of the hearsay that is the News, but other takes on it. But some poetry is meant to throw a light on uncommon experience or things from the past that one cannot know, or only from old sources. My ideal (as like many poets I would rather have been a visual artist) is to express in the medium of words - form, colour, shape and structure. In this case, geometric shapes, and/or things expressed through geometry. 'Decagonal' for instance refers to a ten sided shape, or ten pointed star, and is inspired by the beautiful History of Science Museum in Oxford. The Museum is full to the brim with sundials, astrolabes, armillary sundials, and all manner of exquisite historical scientific instruments from a time that looks as if art and science weren't so very distant from one another. Amongst its many treasures, it also boasts a polyhedral sundial and a moondial! The latter as the name suggests, being for making out the time when there is a moon visible, and the former an extravagant 'conceit' of diallists, i.e. a bit of showing off by those who construct sundials, in that it is a three dimensional geometric shape of many faces, each one with another sundial, of slightly different type and function. One exhibit is in a many sided display case, hence the idea for the name 'decagonal'. It seems to be a wonderful way of expressing relationships - a monogon/henagon is a circle, a digon a line between two points, (in 'degenerate and Non-Euclidean' maths) and then things really speed up! Triangle/trigon, square/quadrilateral/tetragon, pentagon, hexagon, septagon/heptagram, octogram, enneagram/nonagram, decagram,  hendecagon, dodecagon...I am mixing up sided shapes with pointed shapes, but you get the idea. (Eg; octagons are eight sided shapes, octagrams are eight pointed stars.) I have always thought that this is a fantastic way to explore relationships in an angled/abstract way. The love triangle is commonly used, but less well trodden are looking at five couples as a decagon, or a group of six close friends as a hexagram. In 'Geometrica' I have not used this in any way as a tight construction/correlation, let alone attempted an algebra of relating! But this was a kind of backdrop, an idea in mind when writing the pieces for the collection. For various reasons, probably to do with a preoccupation with the C17th, philosophy and geometry are intertwined together for me, artistically/creatively, and so many of the pieces were written at philosophy conferences. I suppose the connection for me being that the former attempts to comprehend the world, and the latter to symbolize it, to be horribly simplistic.
   To relate philosophy and geometry in poetry is like thinking of abstract art/Expressionism and architecture as synonymous. But if one thinks of Kandinsky and Feininger's paintings and Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings, and then thinks of when architecture has been portrayed by art in three dimensions by artists in the form of the sets for the film 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari', then I hope it makes more sense, or becomes clearer why I would choose to do so.
   However people may prefer 'The History of This House in Twenty Objects' when finished, or other works entirely, still 'Geometrica' is the thing I most care about, and am most glad to see in print. The visual textworks (unfinished yet in terms of enough for an exhibition) come close, but really, this chapbook is my joy and pride. It matters that people like it and buy it, but ultimately, like much art that is made in many of the artforms, it just had to be done. It occurred because it IS the work about which I care most, and because of the kindness of various libraries and resources for putting the historic images which I desired to complement the text, within my reach.
   And so the text is studded with timeless images from the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, Wentzel Jamnitzer (master of the dodecahedral image), a fragment of the famous Flammarion woodcut, a piece from Andreas Cellarius' justly famous star atlas the 'Harmonia Macrocosmica', sundials and other wondrous things.
   There have been times when I thought it would never be finished - the right images, rejecting many poems originally intended to be part of it, re-writing, editing, changing last verses at last minutes, for some time the stasis of no longer getting to philosophy conferences once many of my contacts in academia had lapsed due to study periods ending at institutions, and might as well have been writer's block, for all that they were surmountable with anything other than persistence and trial. But here it is at last, and I never tire of looking at it, which is (rather than egotistical) I prefer to think, just as well!
   Thinking of not having access to the major manuscript libraries, and more importantly a password for the Humanities Index or Jstor (the resources that allow access to all the latest papers and research articles in countless branches of knowledge, and that ceases to be open to you when you are no longer a member of a university), I am immensely grateful to the University of Heidelburg, George Hart the geometric and polyhedra artist, and others who have permitted public access to their wonderful art and visual culture archives. Sites such as the Gallica Digital Library / Bibliotheque Nationale de France make research into more of a joy than endless frustration, and it's a real privilege to have somewhere I can thank them for making the completion of 'Geometrica' possible, (not to mention a dozen other branches of research for writing and the simple pursuit of knowledge).

Check them out at;

Gallica Digital Library;
http://gallica.bnf.fr/?lang=EN

University of Heidelburg Art History section; http://www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/Englisch/helios/fachinfo/www/kunst/digilit/architektur/welcome.html

George Hart, polyhedra and geometric artist; http://www.georgehart.com/

Poetry Island

 Then two days later it was time for a different kind of spoken word evening but one also packed full of excellent performances with amazing variety was this month's Poetry Island at the Blue Walnut (Britain's smallest cinema) in Torquay, hosted by the ever popular Chris Brooks. - Who had very kindly asked us along as guest performers. Headlining was Chris himself with a fantastic extract from his crazy new one man show 'Edward Lear Ate My Goat' - a twisted murder-mystery style poetic tale weaving together unlikely names in an attempt to discover the truth about what links the likes of Tennyson, Lear, and Chris himself, with some insane departures into and remarks on light entertainment on the way. It was definitely a night for tongue twisters as Chris got us all roaring rhymes that ended his lines like 'vexed' and 'texts' as he pieced together a wacky poem along the way, summarising various parts of the journey of his researches!

   Other performances of the night included Tim King (often heard and seen at Taking the Mic and recently at Forked! in Plymouth) who gave a very fine rendition of one of his trademark pieces, the inimitable James Turner doing haiku, (who'll be headlining later on in the season), and Matthew Hammond the Stand Up Philosopher doing a fabulous and hilarious rendition of Nietzsche's criticism of Kant, including more audience participation tongue twisters as we all had to shout 'have you thought the thought that's never been thunk before?' and 'have you plundered the ponder that's never been plumbed before?' I was impressed that everyone managed to yell them correctly - especially the second one! What a night. Despite driving there in a gale, and the latter only having finished work in time to drive straight there, and dinner in the van on the way in the dark, it was a great evening and one to remember. Well done Chris!

Storyclub Strikes Again!

What a week! February began with an excellent Storyclub - despite four of us turning up before anyone else - Jon Freeman of Tyburn Jig, the hard working host, ourselves Widsith and Deor, and Jackie who occasionally tells a tale with a variety of Native American flutes and suchlike. However soon after, Michael Dacre of Raventales turned up, Tracey and Lawrence of the amazing Goliards, and later on David Heathfield, as well as newer tellers and listeners. It was a hugely varied evening with wildly differing styles, which all goes to show you never can say that it's the same old thing at Storyclub! From creepy theatrical monologue to a truly bizarre tale of a duck kingdom told by gifted singer/songwriter Kimwei, to Michael's rendition of an abridged section from the Laxdaela Saga (which should have been called Gudrun's Saga!). I recollected him asking us (after we had done some Egil's Saga tales - our favourite saga to perform from) about Saga tales at a previous Storyclub, and this time we had a hilarious discussion about the merits and claims or otherwise of the various characters! Gudrun was a woman famed in Medieval Iceland for her beauty, wealth, powerful intellect and force of character, and above all, her tragic life and four husbands. But the Saga - every bit a modern novel as are all the best Sagas! if a depressing one - circles around her relationship with the young man she loved best, and yet due to his folly, her pride, and his best friend's duplicity, never marries, but ends up (in Lady Macbeth style) having killed instead. It is a heart-wrenching tale of betrayal, jealousy, love and horror. Michael was more on the side of those that think of Gudrun as Lady Macbeth and Bolli (the lying best friend who ends up marrying Gudrun on her rebound) as understandable and in love. I on the other hand am firmly of the opinion that whatever else she did, she was motivated by vengeance only because of the dreadful betrayal which Bolli by his machinations brought about - and that the one who gets in the way of 'true love' gets what they deserve - or at least, I could see where she was coming from, and felt a deal more sorry for her than for Bolli. It was a noisy and involved, but good humoured dispute! brought to an end only by the beginning of the second half of the evening.
   When it was my turn, I had to apologize that while I had wanted to tell a love story, preferably a stirring and passionate tale of a brave princess rescuing a beautiful prince from a ravening monster, unfortunately what had stuck in my mind all week was a crazy ghost story from the Deep South called 'The Plat Eye'! by Veronica Byrd. Which is a ludicrously wonderful tale of the supernatural which we adapted, and Deor played the parts of all three monsters brilliantly - the eight legged dog wolf, the terrifying dark dryad and finally the Plat Eye itself. He used three masks (all made by himself, the Plat Eye specially for the purpose) to great effect, and it went down very well, considering I had only decided to do that story at suppertime, and we hadn't rehearsed it once! I so love contemporary American fiction - there's a quirky voice I seem keep on finding in the 'zines and sites which I come across, that's just irresistible.
   Deor 's did another from the Kalevala (Finnish national epic), and though he ran out of time as it was the last tale of the evening, like the last one, it went down a storm, including laughter at 'Handsome Hero Lemminkainen's dodgy dealings with the maidens of the Island of the Blessed!