Poet Isabel White reflects on her intervention at 68 Farringdon Road, the scene of a devastating Zeppelin attack, and curating the poetry for Silent Cacophony 2013. They say that poetry should be read aloud. Some poets work best off the page, others in performance. In this case, how to write a piece that has evident power, that is well crafted and considered; how to do that to a deadline? Anyone who understands the creative process will know that it cannot be forced. It is no use allocating two hours a day to writing if what emerges is dross. More is not necessarily better, more may well be less. As curator, I knew the performance styles of almost every poet in the programme. They are all performers and were chosen for their ability to perform. That said, they are all also good poets, else they would not have been selected to participate. They are also very diverse in the type of work they produce – from measured vitriol to contemplation, flirting with the language or subjugating it. However, I knew so very little about our audience. Who has any memory stirred by our intervention? Reading my fellow poets’ blogs there are a few hints of the light touch we made on their day. So many of us came across lost souls in the space of the day, when work intervenes for those who have it and those that remain are cast adrift from it. But such is the power to connect just by being in the space, with the poem a catalyst to engage. And in this case, with smaller audiences, so much the better - small things, small gestures, pinpricks of pain, droplets of memory like the rain that accompanied us. Our poets pricked the tiny bubbles of their world, and the casual throwaway remark belied a deeper engagement we might have achieved. We connected. Maybe we reconnected. Solo poets filling their space. In my case, a doorway. People came, no one spoke. They fell silent when I fell silent. They listened while I read, too focussed on getting it right. They melted away. That’s how it should go. The antithesis of performance and all its contrivances - no maestros in penguin suits making grand gestures, marching off, counting to twenty, marching on again and milking the applause. In short, no cacophony. Only silence. Isabel’s Poem written especially for Silent Cacophony LZ 38 – 31.05.15 (Oh my God, they’re here, they’re here) Hush. This time England didn’t expect; but it was complicit (you are all complicit). This will be as nothing you’ve experienced before. This will be unexpected. And you will experience it anew; maybe tomorrow; maybe the next day. You will be unprepared for it. You will deal with its consequences. It will not break you. You will move on. You will forget..., until the next time (If there is a next time; no one can really be certain...) Hush now Silence has its moment. Morgen kommt das Luftschiff! Wir bringen zerstörung on a London Strasse, frisch an die Tür, Alles in Ordnance. Our giant, silent, violent contrivance, deadly progeny of a quarter million gutless cows, shits thermite and benzene, rope and tar, steals lives with impunity, rampages through your airways. Midst all the ballyhoo, those magnificent men in their flying machines defy the ground, loop the loop, but they couldn’t catch this conger, eeling through the skies, playing peek a boojum, cowering in clouds, waiting its chance to rain munitions on my Albert, your Doris. And rain it does! A bloody downpour and no respite from it; no shelter. Our sponsor is impatient for victory “Let terror be our salvation; I am steadfast. God is with us. Moderne Krieg ist totaler Krieg” You wait on Uncle Jim, your Prospero. He will down them, you say; aim for the spy in the sub cloud car the eyes of our master, (and he will miss) and we’ll deliver Mutti’s London Love Gift Ferdinand, 17 nil at half time. Hush. Message ends.
- Platform-7