I meandered down to my first poetry gig for a long while tonight, mainly because good old Tim Hamilton (drzero) was featuring at the Spinning Room. He was as amazing as he ever was, and possibly even more so, with the new pieces about Paris and some of the Minor Arcana series that I’d heard less frequently being stronger than the old favourites.
At the same time I heard some amazing new voices, not least of which were Neil McCarthy, a stunning Irishman with a powerful way with words who’s featuring there next week and Josephine Rowe, a 21-year-old powerhouse of a bright thing who already knows her work off by heart, speaks with a semi-American accent although she’s only ever lived here and whose web site is filled with flash and fabulousness.
I read one version of the Minstrels and Mischief cycle and the poem I wrote for Tim and Jonathan and was very flattered to be called back and then read the pantoum I wrote for Grandma, which isn’t actually online yet, but is very appropriate since I’m heading to Sydney this weekend for her 90th birthday bash. Enjoyed hearing Cam read again (and thanks for the wine) and meeting Antoine, yet another guy from Lyons living in Australia (apparently it’s a minor invasion).
I find Josephine intriguing, in a sense my first encounter with this new generation as adult. What I mean is that Kyle and Alix, Jacinta’s kids, both have slightly American accents, partly due to television and partly due to Mum’s accent, and Tal, Georgia’s step-son has a semi-American accent, acknowledged as mostly due to television, and here is this 21-year-old saying, yes, I think my accent is just from television. And her clear facility with the web site, in the way that my ease with desktop publishing must have frustrated and amazed those 15 years older than me and still doing paste-up back in 1991…
So, this is what intimations of age are…