Magma Poetry

I was having another read through Magma 52 the other day and came to Glyn Maxwell’s fascinating article on poetry and theatre. He finishes off with a plea to young poets to create verse theatre. Here’s the quote (I’ve left out the exhortation to ‘young poets’ in particular, as I see no reason why this couldn’t apply to anyone of any age):

“…go and find a space and some actors. Test your verse on the lungs and throats and tongues and lips of creatures trained to know utterance from nonsense, trained in the best English written, trained a hundred times harder than you. You’re not afraid of poverty or critics or you wouldn’t be a writer. Make some poets’ theatre, someone, before I go cheerfully mad alone in this field.” (Glyn Maxwell, from ‘Character and Verse Theatre’, Magma 52)

That’s the kind of challenge I feel I’d like to respond to, partly because I enjoy both poetry and theatre, partly because it feels like such an uncommercial move and I am unaccountably attracted to uncommercial moves (I do occasionally wish that wasn’t the case, especially in a recession). Whether I have the time and a half-decent idea is another matter. There’s only one way to discover whether I have the talent… I guess the best way would be to start small, to write something short and easily/cheaply staged, and take it from there.

But how about readers of this blog? Would you go to see a contemporary verse play? Would you like to see more being written and performed? If you’re also a writer, would you consider writing one and trying it out with a group of actors?

Natalya Gorbanevskaya will be best known to some as the activist to whom Joan Baez dedicated her song ‘Natalia’. Part of the Soviet dissident movement, Gorbanevskaya was arrested in 1969 and interred in a Soviet psychiatric prison for several years. Though the work by no means relies on it, some knowledge of Gorbanevskaya’s life helps inform her spare, powerful poems and this volume of translations by Daniel Weissbort provides an accessible introduction to both her work and life – useful historical notes are offered unobtrusively throughout.

In these Selected Poems, the beautiful and the brutal are dangerous bedfellows. Political landscapes are often described through tender evocations of weather: coming rain or “the indomitable wind / over this absurd, wide world”, the place where “an icy wind / chills the bright surface of a well.” In an extract from ‘Seaboard’ (1956-1966), the poet describes facing death with equanimity:

I was interested in reviewing The Model Shop because Williams hails from my own part of the world and is just a few years older than me. I hoped to find the cultural icons I grew up surrounded by, rooted in a familiar environment. Williams’s style is one of clarity and precision, with a quiet wit in his sidelong glances at things. Like William Carlos Williams, F.J. sees ‘poetry only in things’. The title poem acts as an intriguing opening to the collection, as he compares model making to world creation, the maker to God:

God repeats himself in the flat-pack doll’s house, The rubber furniture and plastic piano Hushed of all arpeggios

Come and join us for the launch reading of the new issue of Magma on Monday 5th March at The Troubadour, Earl’s Court, London, as part of the Coffee House Series.

The event will be full of contributors who’ll be coming to read, and we’re also thrilled to have as our guest readers Greta Stoddart and Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch who have both contributed poems to this issue.

We would be delighted if you would join us for this event at Waterloo East Theatre, Brad Street, London SE1 8TN (5 minutes walk from Waterloo Station)

Doors (and bar) open 6.30.