Sinead Morrissey’s collection of poems Parallax, published by Carcanet, won this year’s T.S.Eliot Prize.
At the preview readings of the ten short-listed poets, the public study group attended to Morrissey’s poem, Baltimore, selected by the session’s chair and leader, Professor Vicki Feaver. In the poem, Morrissey creates the sensation of listening for a child’s voice at night, imagining it hidden beneath other extraneous sounds, or even in the sounds of silence. Each word, rhythm, pause and beat is part of the sculpting of language that delivers a detailed, telling rendering of human experience.
“…silence itself
its material loops and folds enveloping
a ghost cry…”
In the public performance of her work last Sunday evening, Morrissey was the only poet of the short-listed group to recite rather than read. This gave her performed work a measure of greater immediacy than the readings of the other poets, fine as they were. It edged closer to the connection between artist and audience to which theatre aspires.
In Bloodshot, currently playing at the St James Theatre in London, Simon Slater performs his heart out in a noir detective puzzle set in seedy 1950s Notting Hill and Belgravia. The play connects because of the central character, a mid-life talented but undisciplined photographer, a former CID officer inclined to drink, who narrates the action and wants to draw his audience into complicity with his highs and lows. Slater plays all the characters – the photographer, the three suspects to a murder, the investigating CID man who is his former boss. His fine acting skills build our belief in the characters, his musical prowess on ukulele and saxophone adding to the richness of the characterisation. Lyn Gardner’s review in The Guardian is complimentary.
It is a complex and sustained piece of building with words, sights and sounds. It makes and conveys characters and emotions. We respond by listening intently and working with what we hear and see. To Morrissey we respond by listening intently to her public voice and to our inner voices as we read.
Two solo artists taking flight, relishing and risking exposure to communicate.