Richard reads
Back in the nineties Richard Taylor was one of the loudest voices on the Auckland live poetry scene; in more recent years, though, he has lain low in Panmure, writing incessantly and making complex and beautiful posts on his unique ongoing blog-poem, Eyelight. Tomorrow, though, Richard will be emerging from East Auckland to give a low-key reading at Blockhouse Bay library. Richard writes that:
I will be giving a poetry reading at the BLOCKHOUSE BAY LIBRARY at - 578 Blockhouse Bay Road - (Auckland NZ) this Thursday (18th Sept) at 2 pm as a part of The NZ Book Week.( Ph for Library 374 1311.)
All welcome - free. It will probably be a small event. I will read poems from various stages of my "age and life" and from my three books.
Perhaps it could be an opportunity to discuss what literature is and what poetry is etc in light of my EYELIGHT (" 'infinite" poem' " based) project (and the many developments of other writers - "postmodern" or political, lyrical, nihilistic, sad happy, deluded, or philosophical - or just
"beautiful, (how do we define "beauty"?)), or other - and the shifting nature of art or literature in the "modern" world or an opportunity to catch up, abuse me, or be nice to me; have a cup of tea or whatever and so on...
Titus and possibly Maps will be there or there in spirit if not substance - and my latest book "Conversation with a Stone" should be there...
The Immortal Jack Ross will be there in spirit and glory of his great (if absent) personage - and will caste his Great Beneficence on the event...
Giordono Bruno, Raymond Lull, Eva Android, Marx, E P Thomson, Eros, Levinas, Derrida, Barthes, Sam Hunt, Bill Manhire, Hitler, John Key (he is a great poetaster I am told), Orwell, and Ovid - or their shades - all may also put in an appearance...
posted by maps at 9/17/2008 01:28:00 pm
1 Comments:
Thanks for this Maps. I piously turned down a reading at Massey Uni on the same day! I actually forgot I had a reading that day - but I suppose I could have gone to both but the temptation to imbibe was or would be too much I was afraid ... actually I sent message via Jack thinking he might get into contact with you or Brett or other Titus writers...for that.
The reason I used read a lot in the early to the late 90s was that I discovered that I got a fantastic reaction from being "published" by myself in front of a crowd.
So I used to write to 2 or 3 poems week - many of them pretty bad (some were good though) and - gradually my style changed - but when I was young (in my teens or 20s) performance was something I totally shunned. (In fact I shunned people so much I nearly missed the 60s!)
But once that adrenalin fix (of live performance) gets you - the being published in a book is not so exciting... (of course its great to be published in books etc) but it lacks that immediacy. I was also in The Poetry Brats (a performance troupe or group we appeared in Auckland and once in Hamilton) organised by Raewyn Alexander (who BTW did a lot for me and other poets in those days) - with Olwyn Stewart (she is of course also highly talented), Rene Harrison, Yves Harrison (both or these young fellows were into acting and poetics etc); Matt Sunderland (recently he "played" David Gray in "Out of the Blue") - he is a good poet BTW; Linda Earle who was great also (we were all pretty good!! There's a video of us all I still have); Raewyn and Nickolas Alexander (not related to Raewyn) who had and has a great (Gothic /surreal?) talent with words but keeps appearing and disappearing..."into the human darkness" (to self-quote)...
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