That was a lot of fun! We had a fantastic poetry improvisation workshop on Tuesday night, led by Robin Vaughan-Williams (who visited the SWC from London).
Those present extemporized cyclical, shared poems – modulating and changing direction like a flock of starlings. Our only regret is that we were unable to film the finale: members spoke in an invented language while their partners translated, spontaneously, into English.
Some spectacular results ensued: “The Warrior Horse Song”, from Ingrid Lees and Ruby McCann; the perils of cooking tribal dinner with a nasty dog(!), as enumerated by Frances Corr and Larry Butler. The illusion that people were communicating without a known language was so strong as to be irrefutable, giving rise to as many anthropological and psychological questions as literary.
Intriguing and unforgettable.
