Saturday 26 May 2012

Big Lit Day in Gatehouse of Fleet

I've just been to Big Lit Day.  
It was great!  Full marks to The Bakehouse and D&G Arts Festival.  The poetry pamphlet market was friendly and full of marvellous finds, and eventually I had to stop myself buying things.  Although HappenStance were most helpfully selling pamphlets for £1 on the day, thus tempting you to buy lots.  Leonard McDermid was there with Marigold Press, with which I am much taken.  Everyone should buy 'Ten Sad Songs'. Subtlety incarnate, and a thing of beauty too.  I also succumbed to a beautiful pamphlet from Controlled Explosion Press called 'The Ruin of Poltalloch' by Graham Fulton.
Out on the street folk were happily arrested by John Hudson's installation SHED by the public gardens.  It felt very real, very poignant.
Then I went to hear Katrina Porteous read her new work 'Horse'.  It was inspired by the 3000 year old Uffington Horse in Oxfordshire.  Woven into the poem are threads connecting the nearby hill where St. George slew the dragon, and also Weyland's Smithy on the Ridgeway.  The work is intrinsically connected to a soundtrack created by Peter Zinoviev, which is based on the metallic, roaring physicality of a Cornish chain ferry.  The combination sound and voice and poem was absolutely mesmerising.  Katrina was marvellous, making the reading a drama, completely engrossing.  

Picture my disappointment then, it has not yet been published!  Publish it someone - complete with CD! I drove home, remembering too little, but with fire, chalk, hammer and hill still in the bloodstream.