I have just returned from the monthly Bilston Voices performance. For those who haven't extensively scanned the back entries in this blog, this is a gathering where local writers are invited to perform their work to an enthusiastic, if small, audience. I've sometimes read there myself.
Tonight, as is customary, there was a wide range of material on offer.
They opened with Michael Hill. His was an unusual piece. It was a memoir of his childhood but created with almost no narrative structure. This didn't, in the end, actually matter for what we heard was a broad brush impressionistic description of an unpleasant and brutal childhood. The lack of structure in some ways made it more personal and more affecting, as if we were hearing the raw and ragged recollections of a painful time in his life.
He was followed by lighter fare. Sylvia Millward I already know. More than that I already know the set she performed this evening having heard an almost identical version at the sister venue at City Voices in Wolverhampton. These performances are the first two times that Sylvia has ever read in public and tonight's was the more polished. It seemed a little slower and the better pacing let us focus more on the individual poems. The first collection in the set was a group of poems about the sea and they left me a little cold - I'm never a great fan of lyrical descriptions - but the industrial poems that made up the final section were very good indeed.
Iris Rhodes finished off the first half with a long description of Bilston and Bradley when she was growing up in the forties and fifties. This is a little before my time but many of the things she described were still there in my childhood in the sixties. I was particularly taken with her descriptions of the old market. I remember it fondly. It was the kind of old fashioned enormous building with a high arched roof and two long, wide aisles that separated the wooden stalls on either side of them. No one would ever construct such a market hall nowadays. It was incredibly wasteful of space and almost impossible to heat but it had character. The modern replacement is a squat square box with aisles too narrow for two people to pass easily while two others buy at the stalls. It's a dull, functional (barely), characterless block.
Iris evoked the difference between then and now perfectly.
After the break it was due to be Raj Lal but instead we were treated to a stand-in set by the MC, Emma Pursehouse, and treat is the appropriate word. Emma's poetry is always excellent and her theatrical and dramatic performances are terrific. Unlike most of us, she recites all of her work from memory, which frees her up to perform rather than to read. To go with her poets flair for words she has an actor's grasp of motion and a comedian's grasp of timing. It really is a treat to watch and listen.
It was a difficult act to follow but author Jeff Phelps gave it a solid try. He read a section of his new novel, "Box of Tricks", and a selection of poems. The section of the novel worked very nicely as a self-contained vignette, promising good things for those who read the whole thing. The poems flowed nicely and were perfectly read but lacked the drama of Emma's spirited efforts. One of the poems, Public Dreaming, reminded me very strongly of some of Bob Calvert's old work both as a poet in his own right and as a lyricist for Hawkwind.
So, overall another splendid night out with the only disappointment being that the next Bilston Voices will not be until the end of January. In December there won't be one because it would fall on Christmas Eve. They seem to think people might have other arrangements. Oh well, good things are worth waiting for.
Tonight, as is customary, there was a wide range of material on offer.
They opened with Michael Hill. His was an unusual piece. It was a memoir of his childhood but created with almost no narrative structure. This didn't, in the end, actually matter for what we heard was a broad brush impressionistic description of an unpleasant and brutal childhood. The lack of structure in some ways made it more personal and more affecting, as if we were hearing the raw and ragged recollections of a painful time in his life.
He was followed by lighter fare. Sylvia Millward I already know. More than that I already know the set she performed this evening having heard an almost identical version at the sister venue at City Voices in Wolverhampton. These performances are the first two times that Sylvia has ever read in public and tonight's was the more polished. It seemed a little slower and the better pacing let us focus more on the individual poems. The first collection in the set was a group of poems about the sea and they left me a little cold - I'm never a great fan of lyrical descriptions - but the industrial poems that made up the final section were very good indeed.
Iris Rhodes finished off the first half with a long description of Bilston and Bradley when she was growing up in the forties and fifties. This is a little before my time but many of the things she described were still there in my childhood in the sixties. I was particularly taken with her descriptions of the old market. I remember it fondly. It was the kind of old fashioned enormous building with a high arched roof and two long, wide aisles that separated the wooden stalls on either side of them. No one would ever construct such a market hall nowadays. It was incredibly wasteful of space and almost impossible to heat but it had character. The modern replacement is a squat square box with aisles too narrow for two people to pass easily while two others buy at the stalls. It's a dull, functional (barely), characterless block.
Iris evoked the difference between then and now perfectly.
After the break it was due to be Raj Lal but instead we were treated to a stand-in set by the MC, Emma Pursehouse, and treat is the appropriate word. Emma's poetry is always excellent and her theatrical and dramatic performances are terrific. Unlike most of us, she recites all of her work from memory, which frees her up to perform rather than to read. To go with her poets flair for words she has an actor's grasp of motion and a comedian's grasp of timing. It really is a treat to watch and listen.
It was a difficult act to follow but author Jeff Phelps gave it a solid try. He read a section of his new novel, "Box of Tricks", and a selection of poems. The section of the novel worked very nicely as a self-contained vignette, promising good things for those who read the whole thing. The poems flowed nicely and were perfectly read but lacked the drama of Emma's spirited efforts. One of the poems, Public Dreaming, reminded me very strongly of some of Bob Calvert's old work both as a poet in his own right and as a lyricist for Hawkwind.
So, overall another splendid night out with the only disappointment being that the next Bilston Voices will not be until the end of January. In December there won't be one because it would fall on Christmas Eve. They seem to think people might have other arrangements. Oh well, good things are worth waiting for.
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