The next outing for the gesamtkunstwerk that is our live version with audiovisual accompaniment of Three Men is January 18th at the Electric Kool Aid Cabaret of the Spoken Word held at Blu(what used to be Blaises) in Middlesbrough. More details soon.
My colleagues of the underground, Andy Croft and Paul Summers, are currently back in Moscow contacting translators and publishers for the next stage of the Myetro project: its possible appearance in Russian. Either that or they've gone to the Canary Islands and haven't tweeted me.
They've chosen to go at a time when the weather in the North East so closely resembles that of Moscow (give or take 10 degrees) that they don't have to change their outfits. (It's not clear that Andy actually can change out of that bloody jacket.)
No doubt we'll have news on this latest trip soon enough or indeed slightly later. In the meantime, the stubborn refusal of the squirrel meme to hibernate means that the stanza on the possibly-not-entirely-real station for the possibly-not entirely-there 'Squirrel Hills' demanded a successor:
Bronze panels show in Belichiy Gory
the war between the Greys and Reds --
Yeltsin's high station tells the story
that left ten million squirrels dead.
One side were Celto-Scythian rebels,
the others sleepless, alien devils:
Prince Nutkin, Tuftsky, Sasha Cheeks,
Tsar Timfy Tiptoes -- through these peaks
from birch-top fought to floor of forest,
while Greys made famine from Red's glut,
for every tree, each twig, each nut.
Why was this iconised by Boris?
While oligarchic fat cats feast,
democracy is for the beasts.
As real as Hollywood’s Ninotchka,
this station is an empty hoard
of bottles drunk by a red belochka –
stare all you want, they’ll still stay blurred.
A six foot squirrel, stark and raving
that none can see but those, half-shaven,
half-drunk, who wake in hotel rooms,
in snowdrifts, metros, Lenin’s tomb.
It tells you fables from an era
when men pissed vodka, wives shat eggs
and flies had four delicious legs.
It whispers, ‘You’re the true chimera,
a beast that thinks he knows he thinks?
No wonder wanderers turn to drink!’
Showing posts with label Paul Summers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul Summers. Show all posts
Sunday, 5 December 2010
Tuesday, 6 May 2008
Vichod
This year (2008), from St George's Day (April 23rd) through the Orthodox Easter(April 28th), May Day and up to the election of Putin's successor (May 3rd), three British poets went on a short trip round and round the underground. This blog charts the results: notes, photos, sounds, drafts, links and factoids.
*
The Moscow Metro offers a singular perspective on the Russian psyche. Constructed over thirty years, largely during the Stalinist period, to provide transport, shelter, warmth, and a peculiarly Soviet grandeur, these 'People's Palaces' are at once stunning feats of architecture - packed with the minutiae of period iconography to the point of kitsch - and fascinating temples to the quotidian, where all Muscovite life rushes before you.
Its stations are named after the central principles and events of Russian society; they are named after its great writers, artists and scientists. They are constructed using marbles and materials from all over the vast hinterland of Mother Russia. The Metro is at once a microcosm of Russia itself, and a symbol of the infernal and purgatorial circles through which the Russian people have passed.
In the year of yet another significant transition in Russian life, when Putin officially hands over the reins of power to his successor, Medvedov, this project by three British poets will attempt to circumnavigate not just Moscow, but the cycles of cultural history which the Metro represents and continues to evoke.
This is a project which, like the Metro itself, combines multiple levels and appeals to a broad audience. The structural principle of the journey allows for both individual vignette and continuing narrative. The successive layers of the Metro, floor beneath floor, is echoed in the transition between forms - history, non-fiction, drama and poetry are all represented.
Andy Croft, Bill Herbert and Paul Summers variously write, edit and translate poetry ; they make films and public art; they are reviewers and anthologists, critics and cultural historians. They are also completely out of their depth, idealists abroad, babes in the abyss. Like their predecessors in that boat on the Thames (Jerome K Jerome’s novel is known as трое в лодке in Russia), these three Brits are adrift in a very foreign medium, and their collective response - poetic, comic, political, dramatic - will offer a unique insight into a culture poised between retrenchment and convulsive change.
*
The Moscow Metro offers a singular perspective on the Russian psyche. Constructed over thirty years, largely during the Stalinist period, to provide transport, shelter, warmth, and a peculiarly Soviet grandeur, these 'People's Palaces' are at once stunning feats of architecture - packed with the minutiae of period iconography to the point of kitsch - and fascinating temples to the quotidian, where all Muscovite life rushes before you.
Its stations are named after the central principles and events of Russian society; they are named after its great writers, artists and scientists. They are constructed using marbles and materials from all over the vast hinterland of Mother Russia. The Metro is at once a microcosm of Russia itself, and a symbol of the infernal and purgatorial circles through which the Russian people have passed.
In the year of yet another significant transition in Russian life, when Putin officially hands over the reins of power to his successor, Medvedov, this project by three British poets will attempt to circumnavigate not just Moscow, but the cycles of cultural history which the Metro represents and continues to evoke.
This is a project which, like the Metro itself, combines multiple levels and appeals to a broad audience. The structural principle of the journey allows for both individual vignette and continuing narrative. The successive layers of the Metro, floor beneath floor, is echoed in the transition between forms - history, non-fiction, drama and poetry are all represented.
Andy Croft, Bill Herbert and Paul Summers variously write, edit and translate poetry ; they make films and public art; they are reviewers and anthologists, critics and cultural historians. They are also completely out of their depth, idealists abroad, babes in the abyss. Like their predecessors in that boat on the Thames (Jerome K Jerome’s novel is known as трое в лодке in Russia), these three Brits are adrift in a very foreign medium, and their collective response - poetic, comic, political, dramatic - will offer a unique insight into a culture poised between retrenchment and convulsive change.
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