Patience Agbabi at Poetry on the Water
April 10, 2012Poetry on the Water, Greenwich Yacht Club, Friday 4 May, 7pm. Patience Agbabi our star guest. One of London�s best-kept-secret venues - the river on all four sides. Sit with a drink, see the evening darken and the occasional barge pass.
I�m slim as a silver stiletto, lit
by a fat, waxing moon and a seance
of candles dipped in oil of frankincense.
That�s the beginning of �Transformatrix�, last poem in Agbabi�s eponymous collection. A dangerous sex session with the Muse, a sonnet as sharp on stage as on the page. Almost a manifesto. Agbabi is a rarity - a poet and sonnet obsessive who is also a performer. I don�t just mean she reads well, she�s a professional. She blends traditional forms and subjects with new ones, from rap to� the problem page (her last book, Bloodshot Monochrome, has a set of prose sonnets: distressed famous sonnet-writers each get 8 lines to ask for 6-line advice from an agony aunt). The result is poems that are funny and/or fierce, zinging with energy.
In Greenwich Agbabi will read, at least in part, from The Canterbury Tales Revisited, her new project:
Roger on the mike
host, take a hike
bards, on yer bike�
Her agent says: �Roger of Ware meets the Reveller; The Wife of Bafa meets husband number five; the contract killer meets his match. This is contemporary Chaucer: gritty, funny, upbeat, below-the-belt. But who tells the best tale? You decide��
The Wife of Bath has already appeared in Transformatrix as Mrs Alice Ebi Bafa, a Nigerian trader:
My father had four wives
so I�ve had five husbands.
I cast a spell with my gap-toothed smile
and my bottom power.
Three were good and two were bad.
Agbabi has written a bit about the Canterbury Tales project on her blog. I think the Greenwich event may be the first time she�s trying the new tales out on an audience. That will add to the excitement� What�s more, my poachers�/poets� diary says there will be �a fat, waxing moon� on 4 May - only two days short of full. So come to Greenwich Yacht Club, watch the sun set behind the river and the moon rise, and enjoy Patience Agbabi�s seance.
Transformatrix and Bloodshot Monochrome are published by Canongate. There�s a good Agbabi interview (with Roddy Lumsden) at booksfromscotland.
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