Word Life: Theatre in the Mill, Bradford. Reviewed by Katie Beswick …
When does Bradford feel like New Orleans? – No, that’s not the opening to a hilarious Bradford-baiting witticism, but an actual rhetorical question that I will answer later, in an attempt to give some symmetry to this post. But first, I’ll have a rant about words, which are the meat of the feast that is Word Life. A monthly celebration of poetic talent held at Bradford’s Theatre in the Mill, the most recent of which, held on Saturday 22nd September, I went along to in my role as reviewer of all things cultural for Culture Vulture.
Urban ‘Yoof’ culture gets a lot of stick for its philistine illiteracy. This is probably down to things old people don’t understand, like txt msg spk and street slang, which leads them to view those under thirty as members of a generation of spiritually bereft illiterates. I’m generalising, obvs; but there is an air of generational snobbery about words and intellect, as illustrated by the comments threads of the Guardian and Daily Mail websites during the GCSE English furore over the summer, which I followed with some amusement.
I love words, and I’m (just about) under thirty. Of course, I’m exactly the type of person who should love words: the eldest child of English teacher parents, lengthy education, shelves full of books. But I’ve also grown up in a socially mixed circle, and I can report that mine is a generation that reveres words; even if those words aren’t Shakespeare, Byron, Blake, or similar. Wit, metaphor, rhythmic stanza – these are all very much central to culture of contemporary youth. My first boyfriend and his mates were obsessed with garage music and used to listen to pirate radio stations where the highlight was hearing MCs freestyle on subjects ranging from horse-racing to the State of Palestine; my brother has read only two books in his life (one of which, Harry Potter, he denounced as ‘too far fetched’, before giving up reading all together) but gets lost in rap music on a regular basis. I’ve eulogised about rap at length in my own blog so I won’t get into that here, other than to point out that rap is one of the most popular contemporary art forms, and to argue that the genre contains, regardless of whether the literati respect it or not, some of the most powerful poetry of the last century.
Word Life, an event curated by performance poet Joe Kriss, celebrated exactly the kind of passion for language that embodies the spirit of what I like to think of as my generation; though I should probably point out that age-wise it was a mixed affair. The open-mic section of the event offers a platform for anyone to get up and have a go at performance poetry, spoken word or to show-case song-writing talent. I was quite glad that I hadn’t mentioned this to my companion before hand, because she was keen to get up and read her own poetry, and I might have (figuratively) died of embarrassment and then been forced to write about it here. To my relief, she stayed sat in her seat, which meant that I got to witness a whole range of emerging talent, anxiety free. And the open-mic certainly evidenced its worth as part of the programme, by producing the most memorable line of the night, as the spunky rhymer Darwin offered these words: ‘live underground and never surface/if you’re gonna life your life live it on purpose.’
The headline acts included poets Ed Reiss – whose claim that his work was better on the page than in performance was modesty which only served to enrich the understated, self deprecating humour of his delivery – and the delicious Bogdan Piasecki – whose sharply spat Polish poem was my unexpected favourite of the night. Proving that one doesn’t necessarily have to understand words to enjoy them.
The star of the show however was Leonie Evans, a singer with such vocal dexterity that she rendered the concept of the trumpet solo redundant. You know how sometimes you witness talent that makes you feel like you might as well give up any hope of achievement because some people really are just touched by God, even if you don’t believe in Him? She was that talent. Her bluesy, soulful voice and that painful presence that only the most brilliant possess are difficult to depict in a sentence, despite my belief that language can capture just about anything. I will answer my opening question in an attempt to sum up the experience though. When does Bradford feel like New Orleans? When Leonie Evans sings there.
Word Life runs monthly at Theatre in the Mill throughout term time, the next Word Life performance takes place on Saturday 3rd November 2012. You can check out the Word Life website for more details of the organisation’s work and events.
*Image courtesy of freeimages.co.uk