CityLife

Adrian Mitchell and Paul Taylor

 As the poetry punters arrive at the Whitworth Art Gallery, a trombone’s muffled tone fills its chambers.  The lungs behind the horn belong to Paul Taylor, the first poet on the bill, who intersperses his poetry with blasts from the instrument, also using it to counterpoint the lyricism and humour of his lines; be-bop prosody about things passing – pubs and cornershops and the good stuff of life.

Adrian Mitchell graciously asks Taylor to accompany him on a couple of his own poems, filling the spaces between stanzas.  Coupled with the low lighting and decor, it creates the perfect environment in which to relax and let the poetry play.

Adrian Mitchell is a veteran campaigner of poetry and peace and, despite the fact that he kicks off the reading with a sick note, he has lost none of his verve, the twinkle still very much in his lines.  Mitchell was the first journalist to interview The Beatles and 60’s energy infuses much of the words as he melds poetry and politics – a tricky but essentially important endeavour.  The poems are lucid and concise but come alive with the performance, which is fabulously physical, skirting from a translation of Brecht… to memories of Ivor Cutler (a unique man my brother was lucky enough to befriend, through working at the Poetry Library)… to beautiful love poems to his wife.  The poems seem ultimately to merge with the introductions, like verses between choruses, so much so that you want the reading itself to spill into the evening, perhaps decanting into a nearby hostelry, so the conversation can continue.

At the heart of all of Adrian Mitchell’s poetry is an essential positivity and humanity, underpinning the thoughts and infusing the words.  Maybe, after everything, all we do need is love.  And all of the stuff that we can get.  It’s a message Adrian Mitchell is taking to children, as his work is now unapologetically devoted to young people and their education – what he describes as weaving poetry wool to keep them warm.

He ends with his most famous poem and its most famous invocation to “tell me lies… about Vietnam”.  Somehow it doesn’t scan so well when you switch Vietnam for Iraq.  Perhaps we live in arrhythmical times; perhaps people are more prepared to listen when we call it “spin”.

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