ED2011 Book Reviews

Robin Robertson

By | Published on Friday 26 August 2011

Robertson advises his audience, for their own safety it seems, that the event they are attending is not World Of Happy. He tends to mention this before he reads poems about, say, someone eating a mouse in two mouthfuls, or a cat dying of cancer, or a man strapped to boards and set afloat in order to be dive-bombed to death by gannets. (These birds can reach a speed of 100 kilometres per hour and have devilishly sharp beaks. World of Happy, this is definitely not. Perhaps this is why Robertson chose gannets instead of, say, boobies.) Robertson’s sonorous voice adds menace to the most innocuous imagery, and even his “uncharacteristically cheerful” poem causes shivers instead of laughs.

Spiegeltent, 20 Aug, 10.15am (11.15am), £8.00 – £10.00, bfpp27.
[tsr]



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