Reading at Peter Barlow's Cigarette (set list)

The principle of my part of this reading was the old addage

 

SOMETHING OLD
SOMETHING NEW
SOMETHING BORROWED
AND
SOMETHING BLUE

 

I’d used it before for a reading, but this time it was more like: something abstract;
something concrete; something conceptual/amusing and something performative.

 

Set List

SOMETHING OLD

‘Implosive Samples: Exploded Sestina’ from Neutral Drums (published by Writers Forum, with images by Patricia Farrell in 1997), also in Complete Twentieth Century Blues (p. 239)

 SOMETHING NEW

 ‘Book 3 Poem 5’ by Sophie Poppmeier (Austria, b 1981) one of the EUOIA invented by René Van Valckenborch at the end of A Translated Man. I am currently writing the EUOIA collaboratively, but this is one fictional poem written by me.

 

SOMETHING BORROWED

I read from the sequence ‘Petrarch 3’ (which came out of my need for a plain text translation of that poem for my ‘form’ chapter on PeterHughes and Tim Atkins):

 

The ‘original’: ‘That pitiful morning when the light of Heaven…’

‘Pet’ (dog)

‘Petrak: the first English sonnet, Good Friday 1401’ (Middle English)

‘A Florentine Vampire in Paris’ (Baudelaire-Petrarch)

 AND (then)

SOMETHING BLUE

‘Bad Mornin’ Blues’ (blues version of Petrarch’s sonnet) which sang with harmonica; there was a PA so I made some use of it. In E.

 Back to SOMETHING BORROWED, two more Petrarchs 3:

 ‘Vow’ (Rimbaud-Petrarch)

‘VE Day 1985’ (after Wayne Pratt)

and finally – suddenly all the lights went out – I tapped the mic and that was still working; luckily the lights came one again before I could think what to do, for the final

 ‘You Know’ (National Poetry Day Poetry Society finale)

 

Playing the harmonica (not eating a burger)

 

Links

 Read about the new paperback Complete Twentieth Century Blues here.

The EUOIA is examined here. And Sophie Poppmeier appears here.
My post on the Petrarch Boys, Peter Hughes and Tim Atkins may be read here. The ‘original’ poem appears there too.

Patricia read a new long work, only one title to her set list: ‘Logic for Little Girls’.