Monday 16th<\/sup> October, 2017, Manchester saw a red sun and dust blown from Africa, not to mention gale force winds and a few overturned wheelie bins. But somewhere, somewhere deep in the midst of all this chaos a separate storm was brewing. In a dark (and purple) backroom of the Martin Harris Centre two poetic forces were on course to collide: two intensely different poets writing from intensely different places. And what an evening it was!<\/p>\n Tara Bergin began proceedings. Reading from her second book of poetry, The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx<\/em>, a book threaded front to back with characters and colours and returning motifs; a flower, for example, woven as an echo, popping up when you least expect it. Tragic Death<\/em> was recently shortlisted for this year\u2019s Forward Price for Poetry, and Bergin, rather fittingly, opened with its first two poems, \u2018The True Story of Eleanor Marx\u2019, and \u2018The True Story of Eleanor Marx in Ten Parts\u2019. They were the perfect way in to a topic Tara explained had become somewhat of an \u2018obsession\u2019 in the past few years. She read them as if they were a single poem, an opening statement if you will.<\/p>\n (A quick side note: later in the discussion, Tara talked of writing process, citing her PhD in translation as a major influence on both her poetic voice and her new book, \u2018I was particularly interested in the effect translation has on the translator\u2026it felt like I was writing a defence of forgery\u2019. In fact, it was while researching for her PHD in Russia that Bergin discovered the story of Eleanor Marx. So, the poet\u2019s scholarly research and poetry writing, are in many ways joined at the hip, born from the same time period and experience. For this reason it might be particularly interesting to look at The Tragic Death <\/em>as a thesis of sorts, but not one of chapters and footnotes, a thesis crafted instead as a character, a voice, a living Eleanor Marx breathing in Tara Bergin\u2019s words, and brought absolutely to flesh and bone on stage at The Martin Harris Centre on a windy October night.)<\/p>\n \u2018I\u2019m not going to tell you anything…I will not stand up to him…There are ten parts to this story.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n If the first poem posed an argument, then the second poem visualised this argument like a map on the page. Tara speaks this map like a spell, not once breaking eye contact with the audience, a humming metronome to her words as she counts up, ticks the clock \u2013 \u20181, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, On Tuesday: Fire\u2019 \u2013 a slight dip of the shoulder \u2013 \u2018God of suicide\u2019 \u2013 hands clasped \u2013 \u20187\u2019 \u2013 a pause \u2013 \u2018And of the women who knew\u2019 \u2013 she blinks, takes a breath \u2013 \u2018And of the chunk of poisoned apple\u2019 \u2013 another pause \u2013 \u20188, 9\u2019 \u2013 up we go until\u2026 \u2018Her tears are dew and she crushes nothing\u2019 \u2013<\/em> Bergin closes her eyes, smiling \u2013 \u201810: nearly all of this is true.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n And with this, the poet\u2019s metamorphosis was complete, her destination reached; Bergin had transformed.<\/p>\n Be it \u2018Talking to Anne Marie\u2019 or \u2018Making Robert Learn Like Susan\u2019. Be it the dance of voices in \u2018If I Love One I Can\u2019t Love Two\u2019; each change of tone, each subtle dampening or a coy look the other way propelling the poems into total performance: \u2018When I\u2019m with x I have no thought of y…But then y takes and takes\u2019. Be it the list of flowers in \u2018Strange Courtship\u2019, the timbre, pure spell, Bergin\u2019s tone wavering, slowing as she adds ingredient after ingredient, constantly playing with the possibility of sound, \u2018Mint, maybe, or laburnum.\u2019 Bergin never looked down at her pages. She didn\u2019t need to. These poems are a part of her now, and she recalled them like memory:<\/p>\n Silence \u2013 \u2018These are the rules\u2019 \u2013 the audience waits. Somewhere near the front row a man coughs and instantly regrets it \u2013 \u2018White lilac means\u2019 \u2013 Bergin purses her lips, sinks one way \u2013 \u2018I am falling in love-\u2019 \u2013 then the other \u2013 \u2018-with you\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n Colette Bryce read mostly from her new (and outstanding) Selected Poems<\/em> that came out in March of this year. The book is a truly remarkable set of poems. Any lover of poetry will be hard-pressed to find a more complete poetry book, full to the brim despite its slim spine. A book one can just fall into. Sleep in for a while. Forget the world.<\/p>\n Bryce opened with a joke about her age: \u2018We all know what a selected poems means…it means you\u2019re getting on a bit.\u2019 And this joke epitomised the difference between the two poets, Bryce a lot more conversational in her approach, giving insight and explanation where Bergin launched off, more concerned, as John McAuliffe noted, with the threat and doom of the immediate thing.<\/p>\n Colette\u2019s first poem was \u2018Derry\u2019, or the first section of it; a journey through a childhood littered with \u2018the sounds of crowds and smashing glass\u2019, of \u2018suicide and rip tides\u2019 and \u2018a teacher\u2019s daughter\u2026afloat in the looking-glass.\u2019 Already the air in the room had changed. The nostalgic tracking of memory and rendering of shapes so familiar, \u2018the way the grey cathedral cast its shadow…, cool, as sunlight crept from east to west.\u2019 And, as she finished reading the poem she promised \u2018to come back to later\u2019, we were somewhere else entirely. No longer with Eleanor Marx but in Ireland, maybe a salt breeze coming off the Lough; Derry, Bogside; the banks of the River Foyle.<\/p>\n Next up was \u2018The Republicans\u2019. A surreal poem that ends with a meal scene: \u2018Mince. Potatoes. Peas or beans. They light their fags and inhale, deeply.\u2019 After finishing Colette looked up at the audience and chuckled to herself: \u2018It\u2019s a weird ending isn\u2019t it? I\u2019ve always thought it\u2019s a weird ending.\u2019 Cue laughter from everyone in the room.<\/p>\n Again Bryce\u2019s conversational charm maintained as she spoke this time of a more serious topic, asking the audience, \u2018What is autobiographical poetry?\u2019 This question would go on to frame much of the debate when the floor was opened up to questions. She linked the suggestion to \u2018The Analyst\u2019s Couch\u2019, a poem from Rain-Doomed Universe<\/em> with two voices. <\/em>This was Bryce\u2019s turn to dramatise, and the poet directed the italicised lines, largely questions, to John Mcauliffe in the front row, \u2018Who took his weight\u2026?<\/em>\u2019 The poem flowed with a lovely rocking motion as Colette swung between each voice, back and forth, her words building to a resonance when the final question hit, \u2018Am I making this up<\/em>?\u2019 And her initial challenge of the autobiographical became clear, \u2018You think you\u2019re writing about something and then you realise you might be making it up.\u2019 Clever stuff.<\/p>\n Colette then treated us to two new poems featured in the most recent edition of Poetry Review<\/em>, \u2018Perfect Smile\u2019, and the hilarious \u2018Needles to Say\u2019, the latter a pun on needless that the poet was more than keen to point out.<\/p>\n Then came an older poem, a favourite of mine: \u2018A Spider\u2019, from Self-Portrait in the Dark<\/em>, a \u2018border poem\u2019 according to Bryce, \u2018All you need to do is look up at the great migrations going on at the moment\u2019. This poem, full to bursting with guilt and claustrophobia resounded around the four walls, dying in the wake of its silence, \u2018I trapped a spider…I meant to let him go but still he taps against the glass…a circumstance I know.\u2019<\/p>\n Colette\u2019s penultimate poem of the evening \u2018Asylum\u2019 is the final poem in her Selected Poems.<\/em><\/p>\n should the shadow of a cross, afloat on the water, pitching an effortful course through the buffeting gusts.\u2019 <\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n This is Bryce\u2019s poetics at its best; transformative, transnational, deeply moving: the heron arriving like a cross on the water, bringing with it the scent of home, its shadow passing between countries, borders, over great divides. And in a second the dark room in Manchester was a beach on Iona; blue ocean for miles and a flat horizon where the shape of Ireland might loom on a clear day,<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Literature Live: Colette Bryce and Tara Bergin, Martin Harris Centre, 16 October 2017. Monday 16th October, 2017, Manchester saw a red sun and dust blown from Africa, not to mention gale force winds and a few overturned wheelie bins. But somewhere, somewhere deep in the midst of all this chaos a separate storm was brewing. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[16,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nbuffeted by the wind,<\/p>\n
\nmirror the flight of a pilgrim<\/p>\n
\nand home, the sweet district of Ireland.\u2019<\/div>\nThe Manchester Literature Festival<\/a> continues until October 22 in venues across Manchester. This piece also appears at Chapter & Verse<\/em><\/a>, the Manchester Literature Festival blog.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"