3 bodies and brains, 3 particular shuffles and coat sizes and 3 imaginations that transform wood, bricks, hessian sacks and egg cartons that trap sound in the studio space where Red Room poets are now recorded into and in.
Space transformed by each frame and frame of mind that walks into it and waits for the hand wave that means ‘speak poem now and speak poem meaning’.
With little to do but watch the lips behind the window move, I sit on a small stool picking dry skin off my thumb and re living the Occasional Poetry evening.
The meeting and greeting was similar for all poets so far – Pam, Claire and Adam. Each of their feet stepped up the steps into the studio space (that is a neat wedge into a building on the edge of an edgy city back street) Each poet foot then lifts up over the door floor and stands in the room faced with a rack of leads for instruments and digital magic making equipment. Then each poet nudges to their left and is ushered into a smaller room with large glass window, behind which each of the poets stand and delivers their poems or, today with Pam, a Mineslec.
Curse! Far too much um. But .. how else to contain so many questions in a single breath. Don’t suggest silence as it can suggest closed ears and wandering into another atmosphere whilst the body stays behind. If it wasn’t for um a person would be so caught up with words that they would be unable to pause and without pause there would be no thought in what anyone said. This is, at least, my Tuesday afternoon excuse for why I Um and Sttt and MMM so often whilst asking questions, a strange coo at concepts and ponderous confusion at answers not expected and not fully answered, until the next poem the poet rights perhaps.
