A happy interlude.

I went to a poetry reading last Tuesday. A friend of mine, Eileen Carney Hulme, has just had her second book of poetry published (and not by herself - by a proper publisher, quite a feat these days!) 'The Space Between Rain.' She brought me a copy into the shop one morning and happily it was a quiet time because I read the poems almost in one gulp. I don’t often read poetry. Of course I'm a fan of T.S.Eliot; occasionally someone else hits the right note or amuses me, but generally I just I like to write my own, thinking of it as a therapy for me rather than a creative art form. That said, it’s quite amazing to me how much Eileen’s poems move, excite and lift my spirits, possibly because they are not unlike the ones I would write myself were I able to pull myself out of the need to express gloom and despondancy! Mine would drag folk down into the slurry with me I fear.

Hers are full of the northern skies, the special light of the Scottish coastal plains, of beautiful imagery that stays with me as surely as any painting. They also have what seems to be termed by the critics as 'musicality’ (surely a newly-minted word?) Even when the tone is sad (and she inevitably speaks of love and loss and death) they are never maudlin or depressing. Short, compact, close-grained, they are each a moment of heightened consciousness.

She was sharing the stage with another local poet, Donald Macarthur Ker, whose most recent collection was brought out in 2009 'The Differences Between Women and Men at Funerals in Lethen' Donald was born and bred in Lethen just up the road from here. At question time someone asked him how, after all the sadness in his life, he could have made us laugh so loudly ( a belly laugh isn’t often to be heard from Scottish audiences In my experience.) He didn’t have an answer really. I think he’s just that sort of man, born to make a good story out of every event, be it tragedy or daily nonsense, lightening the mood without obscuring the feelings or experiencing it less himself, only rendering events more poignant. He interspersed his readings with anecdotes, each of which would make (have made?) highly enjoyable short stories peopled with memorably eccentric characters and daftness. I’ve put in my order to Amazon for a collection of short stories: ‘Horses, Stones, Wrecked cars.’ hoping I’ll be able to relive them through it. Above all I’m glad to have met Donald, even for a moment. He’s one of life’s natural flavour enhancers.

Eileen, knowing her own strength for creating mood, read hers straight through with only short introductions or interjections. I enjoyed hearing both poets reading their work very much, but - and this is my experience - I get far more pleasure reading their poems by myself, to myself, watching the spacing chosen by them, each poem like a visual work of art hanging in the white space of the page, bringing space and silence to my own mind.

Maybe poets are embarrassed by their own words; maybe they know them too well. I think they are better presented by another voice (provided it’s a sympathetic one.) But best of all they are to be read straight from the page, by the single ‘listener.’

I told Eileen afterwards that her poems cry out to be set to music before they go on stage. Not as songs, though that might work too, but just set against a background of light sound, almost-music, just something a bit atmospheric (and it will take a sensitive ear to know how to do it) to make the images stand individually s they do when read by the inner eye.

I wish I could post some here but am cowed by copyright.