Tuesday 22 September 2009

 

First Diverse Deeds: Sean Bonney, Grapefruits & John James, September 24

explore innovative poetry and music in performance

roughly monthly at Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London E8 3DL

doors open at 7.30; start at 8.00; end by 10.00; £6 (£4 concessions) entry

The inaugural event for this new series of poetry and music performance events matches Sean Bonney and John James, two of the most exciting and energetic readers/performers of innovative poetry, with the new improvising duo, Grapefruits.

Sean Bonney has acquired a totally justified reputation as a poet and performer. His work is urban, political and therefore angry. The diverse voices of the streets and alleys of London come through in glorious waves of creative language, affirming through its rejection al nice acceptances. “Like getting a telephone call from the barricades, the Paris Commune.” That important! Most recent books: Baudelaire in English (Veer Books, 2008) & Document: Poems, Diagrams, Manifestos July 7th 2005 – June 27th 2007 (Barque Press, 2009). Sean Bonney runs yt communication with Frances Kruk and lives in London.

Grapefruits is the improvisatory duo of Oliver Barrett (Bleeding Heart Narrative) on cello, and Max Bondi (multi-instrumentalist and Tartaruga Records founder) on piano. Occasionally utilising a variety of percussion and electronics alongside the core of cello and piano, Grapefruits create extended improvisations that drag fragments of melody from swirls of sound and texture. building up cities of sound to live within: compelling listening.

John James has been writing poetry since the 1960s. You can get most of his work in his Collected Poems (Salt, 2002). John James is a legendary poetry performer: direct, energetic and totally alive. His writing combines quick witted and ever alert verbal invention with a masterful relaxation and humour, and political and cultural passion. Sometimes urban, sometimes rural – always full of actual, delightful and obstreperous human life. This a rare London reading from the Cambridge-based poet.

“John James is an extremely enjoyable and charismatic poet. His work is like a vigorous breath of fresh air, full of variety, humour and surprise. It has a strong sense of lyricism and energy, a striking mixture of the experimental and the immediate that brings to mind the work of Mayakovsky or the New York poets of the 1950s and 60s.” The Guardian.

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