Richard Wilcocks writes:
They have a
lot in common, Hannah Stone and Patrick Lodge, and they know it well. This
delectable, intimate evening in Headingley Library (26 July) was well-prepared as a joint venture. In an ideal world, we
would all have sat down to dine like gourmets at some stage, but wine and crisps had to be our
only bodily sustenance as we listened to so many intelligent and affecting
poems, served with great confidence. And libraries are not suitable for dinner parties anyway.
Hannah
Stone gave us evidence of her increasing sophistication as she read from her
second collection Missing Miles,
published this year by Indigo Dreams. There are many references to the books in
her canon, and a classical world is constantly shimmering somewhere on her
horizon, with titles like ‘Penelope’ and ‘Hubris’ indicating an interest in the
Greeks, though the Romans are there too: like any sophisticated poet, she has
re-read Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but the
poem which deals with that is the very opposite of dusty and academic. It is
clever and witty. She gives Ovid a convincing afterlife.
Twice-born
Bacchus spent the rest of his natural
boozing and
belching...
You can
catch his devotee today;
he’ll be
propping up the bar
after a
session in the gym,
branded
tee-shirt sculpting honed abs,
a regular
Adonis in Adidas.
But it was
the close autobiographical, the family stuff, which got to me most. Memories of
her late father, who had dementia, to be specific. ‘Protection Racket’ links
music from a Bechstein piano with a scene in her parents’ house when her mother
‘cajoles the unresponsive figure’ of her father after she has played some of
Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. That one was truly moving.
Patrick
Lodge is the sort of world traveller who tends to be described as ‘inveterate’,
but that would be wrong, and not just because of the cliché. He does not bore
with his holiday snaps. He has a knack of putting his finger (his pen?) on all
those details which can be recognised as aspects of our universal humanity, as,
in his Valley Press collection Shenanigans,
we look through his lenses at scenes in Greece, Vietnam, Spain, Wales, Cambodia
and other destinations. He is the only poet I have met who has been translated
into Vietnamese, and his poem on Cambodia’s equivalent of Auschwitz, ‘Tuol
Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh’, written plainly and directly, addresses
the reader and the listener with enormous force:
Look, a
death pit
dug in a
playground;
bone wrists
still tied,
skulls
blindfolded
as if the
dead
might see their
killers,
point reproachfully.
But again, his
early memories affected me the most. Before he read ‘Yiannis in His Bar’ he told
us that the Yiannis in the title, who ‘conjures the punch of rock ‘n’ roll, the
smell/ of patchouli and lust in the backstreets’ was a real character encountered
on family visits to a Greek island, seen again many years afterwards, causing
him to be strangely amazed at how he had grown old. And then there was the poem about his
late father (‘a daydreamed man’), ‘Sure of Father: VE Day, 2015’ who was brought back to mind by a late-night film from 1942 and the Andrews Sisters singing ‘Don’t
sit Under The Apple Tree’.
Audience Comments
Great well-prepared event. Fantastic
poetry. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Fantastic evening. Funny, moving,
inspiring poems.
A well planned and progressive
programme. A joy after so many mumbling, unprepared offerings.
An excellent night, and I was heeding
their fine poems and their splendid readings
A lovely evocative evening of excellent
poetry - a good and varied selection, enjoyed the evening very much.
Good to listen to both poets - sorry I
couldn't stay for the second half.
They were both on their mettle. Hannah
was in fine fettle and Patrick Lodge is no Splodge
I enjoyed these readings, would come
more often if there were others.
Great event!
Brilliant!
