Blah mange
Once again Reading’s December Poet’s cafe offered the treat of the engaging Mr. Hegley.
Mr. Hegley manages varied and entertaining audience participation during his perfomance.
For one poem he found a member of the audience that was prepared to nominate another member of the audience to translate a poem from French. John would read each line and the audience member translated. For each line John would comment on the quality of the translation. Some of the French phrasing lent itself you English people making translational errors. The mistakes lead to some smile and laughter inducing imagery.
I giggled myself off the chair on several occassions,
Another form of participation involved the audience being given a line to sing on cue from John. For example, when he said ‘blah’ we had to say ‘mange’. I do like being able to take part.
During the evening’s events I learned many things including
- there are many, published, poets in Reading that regularly attended the poets cafe
- John’s head moves with agility through all sorts of angles, often quite dramatic.
- AFH’s fingers are prone to splaying and twirling
I wonder what bodily movement I should develop to enhance my (to-be-developed) poem delivery talents?
December 20th, 2009
I reckon if you can wiggle your ears you’d be very popular. I think it’s what’s missing from popular poetry these days.
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December 20th, 2009
or wiggling your toes in time to the meter
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