Roddy Lumsden and Colette Bryce

Roddy Lumsden and Colette Bryce, Cheltenham Literature Festival, October 12

Perhaps you can get something for nothing after all. At the very attractive entrance price of free, two most accomplished and distinctive voices were available at tea-time at this great festival.
Colette Bryce is both tough and gentle, a traditional poet in most interpretations of the word, resilient and evocative in describing her childhood in Northern Ireland and unsentimentally involving when moving on to later themes. She is completely convincing as a poet confidently in charge of what she's doing, most memorably for me in the title poem of her latest book, Self Portrait in the Dark with cigarette, about her ex-lover's car that stayed parked outside her house after the relationship ended. Interestingly, the idea that poets don't drive, also mentioned in the Larkin discussion, surfaced again here. I hadn't heard that for some years. A copy of the book will shortly be on its way to my house from one of my regular suppliers.
Roddy Lumsden is a natural talent but also wise and aware enough to know exactly how to temper his potentially pyrotechnic linguistic effects within well-made poems. This is, of course, no more than one should expect of art but Roddy's abundance of tricks and ideas needs more restraining than most and he is respectful enough of form to do so. His is another charming voice to listen to, clear and accurate in expression of his considered phrasing and he has a keen eye for picking up subject material for poems, always diverting and finding ideas worthy of our attention. Here we had, for example, the scientific theory of how ghosts might be possible, the way that San Francisco dive bars have been renovated into theme bars themed on old dive bars and a possible highlight that was probably called Europe After the Rain. The new book next Spring will shame many poets with Lumsden's output not for its prolific volume but its consistency. Serious about his poetry and encyclopedic in his knowledge of everyone else's, few come better to equipped to writing poems and he puts it all to good use.
Both poets would have benefitted from longer, which sounds rich coming from me who was in a hurry to get to the next event, but the audience was attentive and must have had an appetite for more of each. Both were models of the poetry performer's art and could hardly have expressed themselves better. Impressive.