Ents: Arts

Review: Opus and Word Life

By Kaja Franck
Published: 05/11/2009

Opus and Wordlife make poetry cool. Poetry is not dead language to them. The evening opened suitably enough with a poem from Joe Kriss, one of the original founders of Wordlife, about Yorkshire and Sheffield. He delicately trod the line of clichés and precise observation to create an evocative piece of poetry.

Following him was A F Harold whose work stems from the absurdist tradition. The majority of poems were short with tight rhythmical patterns that leant themselves to his hurried performance. Poems were recited then discarded. There was an exciting moment of audience interaction with a new poem being made by shuffling existing stanzas printed on pieces of card.

Byron Vincent’s poetry contained an immense amount of vocabulary while his performance style was violent oratory. His take on the fast-food culture was particularly fresh: all burgers should now be called ‘awful offal falafels’. At times though he seemed better suited to stand-up comedy rather than poetry, as his biggest laughs came during the introductions.

The final poetry set came from Mark Gwynnes Jones whose performance included an impressive amount of gurning. His physical presence through the pieces leant itself to the story-telling aspect of his poetry, including a brilliant poem about the perils of sat-nav set in the Star Wars universe. It was however a brave choice to do a series of poems mocking stereotypes of performance poets at a night of performance poetry.

It became clear after only one song how much Louis Romegoux loved, and was influenced by, poetry. His vocals were deeply affecting and his songs had a ballad-like quality. The guitar playing was elegant and understated allowing his beautiful voice to soar over the silent audience.

The evening was just a little too long. This style of poetry is more effective in explosive instances reminding us that language remains original and relevant when played with by innovative performers such as the ones on Saturday.

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