Wendy Klein, Dorothy
Yamamoto et al, Spring Arts Centre,
Havant, Feb 27
Some might think it’s a great shame that poetry is such a
minority interest that an event like this could be moved to a smaller room and
accommodate the 14, was it, that attended rather than feel a bit lost in a
larger one. I don't know so much. The best things come in small packages, one cliche says. There's a lot to be said for a bit of intimacy, the audience and performers being closer together and this was an event with a real sense of community within the wider, sometimes divided, world of poetry. I understand that The X Factor and other such programmes attract a much bigger audience than The Proms but I don't think that means they are better.
The premise of the show was that Wendy Klein was reading in Havant as the winner of the Havant Festival's competition last year but she also has a shared act with Dorothy Yamamoto, their common theme being differently mixed cultural inheritances, Wendy being USA-Jewish and Dorothy English-Japanese. They are both superb, well-practiced performers and captivating readers of their work. Dorothy brings memories of her father's origami and a poem in which we were challenged to guess the animal and I was happy enough to be thinking it was a lizard when the answer was actually a chameleon. For me, the most memorable line of the evening came from Wendy with her 'velcro of memory', velcro being something that some things stick to but others don't.
Tim Dawes did a fine job of hosting in relaxed fashion, introducing an undercard of local poets who were all of great interest and, it was noted, possibly of a calibre higher than is generally guaranteed at an 'open mic'. I'm never convinced that includes me. How can one tell. I'm glad to get on and off again without taking up more than five minutes of other people's lives but in a small room, the applause hits you so gratifyingly that one can only think, blimey, they are so kind, it looks as if I've got away with it again.
Denise Bennett read from her forthcoming book, Parachute Silks, as calmly and authoritatively as ever and I dare say there will be more to say about those poems sometime soon here.
I'm so glad I went. Standing on Havant station waiting for a delayed train to take me the few miles to Cosham, from where it might not be so easy to get a taxi home as one might think, I could have been the young Paul Simon on Widnes station, thinking of writing Homeward Bound. I wasn't that but the more I thought about the evening- and it often takes some time to think about- the more I realized how much I'd enjoyed it.
Wendy and Dorothy are in Guildford in March and Cheltenham in April. Get there if you can.