Herzog, Margins and the Makar - a typical Friday in Glasgow!

What great Friday night in Glasgow. Started off going to see The Cave of Forgotten Dreams as part of the the rather fabulous Glasgow Film Festival. I am a big fan of Werner Herzog and for fans of his work you will not be disappointed. Beautifully shot, beautifully lit and, as usual, he manages to track down some extra ordinarily quirky interviewees. I think his skill is that he likes to operate in areas that are unique or on the edge ( or should I say Margins!) and these tend to attract people with true passion, some might say obsession, and as a result their enthusiasm comes across as engagingly quirky in an increasingly bland and homogenized world. Herzog's commentary is oddly riveting and delivered in his trademark monotone that always promises more. The music was rather dronaly fabulous even without the contribution of the late Florian Fricke, so all in all a joy to watch in a very full cinema.

But – and it is a very big but, the film is 3D and so I was double glazed with a pair of Buddy Holly specs on top of my own bins in anticipation of my first filmick experience of 3D. I can only describe it as dreadful. Its not my first experience of 3D having watched a rugby match on the TV rendered though an interface that frankly reminds me of the give away 3D pictures that would occasionally be given away in breakfast cereal packets as a kid.

Blurred at the extremity, unsettling as prominent features go out of shot but, more than anything else, really headache inducing. Now, being a glasses wearer I am familiar with the experience of collecting a new pair of glasses with a changed prescription and the somewhat unsettling drunkenness that occurs as your eyes become accustomed to the new lenses. Your eye balls ache as they strain to settle and frankly it is not an experience I like. Well watching 3D was much the same. Ultimately it was so distracting and uncomfortable I simply took them off and watched it without the 3D and you know what – it was better.

As a glasses wearer I am very comfortable with a bit of blur so the film frankly seemed entirely acceptable to me. I have actually seem 2D films badly projected look a lot worse. The maximum blurring comes on the exterior long shots and, as these were not the main revelation of the film, it really lost nothing. The cave paintings themselves looked no different, or if any change was perceptible the lighting was better without glasses.

Great film but Werner, hear me, 3D sucks - big time.

So onward and upward and after a bag of chips from the legendary Blue Lagoon on the way to my next appointment Margins festival at Stereo in Renfield Lane. Fantastic venue and great event. Margins – for those that don't know - is the brainchild of the founder of Gargo publishing Mark Buckland and he deserves a great deal of praise for his vision and persistence in making it happen.

Now we at TESCAPE can only be excited about a spoken word event and this did not disappoint. Coming in the run up to Aye Write I think of this more as a Wee Speak. I was late, well crowded and hectic schedule, and arrived too late to hear Annelliese Mackintosh but if the rest of the show was anything to go by she would have been great. I caught Alan Bissett – fantastic and finely observed reading very well received by the audience. Top of the bill the wonderful Liz Lochhead – Scotland's very own Makar. She was sensational, with the Newly Married miner being my particular favourite.

Margins is still running till Sunday and for a £1 entry its not to be missed. To really top it the bar man looked strikingly like Rufus Sewell – maybe he is resting at present – and I swear he was replaced at some point in the eventing by Juliette Binnoche. Maybe my eyes deceived me, maybe it was the effect of those darned 3D glasses, maybe I was just having too much fun.

Ans so on to a late supper with a few friends – you know with Fridays like this living in the city of Scotland with Style is pretty damned good.

Treasure Island

Apparently Andrew Motion – the former Poet Laureate – is to write a sequel to Treasure island. How fantastic. I, like many , love Robert Louis Stevenson's book and have read it any number of times, carrying with me many abiding images and characters from it. Blind Pew and the Black Spot, the Admiral Benbow pub, Ben Gunn and of course Long John Silver – the archetypal pirate. No doubt it will become a talking book in good time and whilst it is unlikely that it will be a TESCAPE book I feel sure it will be a fine piece of work, not least because Andrew Motion will certainly produce so me delightful material for reading.

Poets have that touch and it was interesting and encouraging to hear about the popularity of poetry programming on some overseas broadcasters on last nights Front Row on BBC Radio 4

Finally we hear the the Times and Sunday times will be charging for web access from summer. Who really cares? Terre are many better alternatives available on line, certainly more balanced and non Murdoch ones!

Shun the frumious bureaucrat!

After such a positive and happy previous post about the joys of poetry recitals it is sad, but not entirely surprising, that this time I feel forced to report that there are those out there that clearly don't share my enthusiasm. Or at least cant rise above their own petty bureaucracy to embrace the joy of spoken word.

Apparently a poetry group meeting in the Royal Standard pub in Ely have been forced to suspend their meetings as the local council - East Cambridgeshire District Council - have decided that whilst the pub has a license for music this does not allow it run spoken word events.

This raises a number of points not least the idea that you can have a license to put poetry to music but this does not allow for you to speak the same lyrics unaccompanied. The absurdity of this position is clearly lost on the spokesman for the council who tries to defend the idea.

On a broader issue, from my perspective, is the question of why you should need a license for a spoken word event for anyway. Stealth tax perhaps?

More details of this case can be found here.

There are times when you have to fear that a country run by such small minded nongs really has gone to the dogs. I'm off to the pub for a beer to drown my despairing disbelief, but I wont make a joke with the landlord or anyone else at the bar because they may not have a comedy license.

One small note of good cheer, I did notice from the article that the poetry group was getting some Lottery Funding- huzzah!

Poetry please

I have always loved poetry, even the stuff that doesn't rhyme! Learning poems by heart and being able to recite them out loud was something that we would do at junior school and the practice was part of the schools annual Eisteddfod. It was good for memory, good to develop confidence of public speaking and, for the more dramatically oriented, an opportunity for an early performance.

Whist I cant claim to have a huge back catalogue committed to memory there are still a few that stick with me and it is fun to be able to trot them out as a bit of a party piece. They have served me well at various Poems and Pints nights where an impromptu recitation has been rewarded with a drop of something from the bar. Interestingly enough when I suggested to a group of friends this was something everyone should be able to do, recite a poem that is, I did get some rather blank looks and I fear it was another of those opportunities for them to reinforce their view that perhaps I am a bit odd! On reflection most of these friends were considerably younger than me and we, as group, had just ridden a long way across Cuba on push bikes, so perhaps it was not a typical sample.

So imagine my surprise and happiness when I discovered that the BBC were running a competition called Off By Heart for school children aimed at introducing them to the joys of poetry memorized and recited out loud. The wonderful selection of poems has some enduring classics, The Way Through The Woods - Kipling, The Listeners - de la Mare amongst others that I recall from school, and some more contemporary stuff from the likes of Benjamin Zephania. Championed by the wonderfully named Daisy Goodwin this is surely one of those initiatives that is so welcome, so sensible ye and so entirely obvious it rather makes you wonder how it ever needs to be revived at all.

The BBC have the ability to shoot themselves in the foot sometimes and to be sure it is not the institution that it once was and thsi is to theri proudest week, but on this occasion I applaud them, and Daisy of course!

Poets and Mystery

Much excitement in the last couple of days with the discovery and release of recordings of Agatha Christie discussing some of her work, and an announcement that recordings of a selection of the United States most important 20th Century poets are to be released.

The sound quality of the recordings, from what I have heard, is not of the highest standard, but there is such magic in hearing their voices that it makes any quality issues entirely secondary. Hearing how the poet felt their work should be performed, and understanding a little better the thinking of one of the most succesful writers are just two examples of how spoken word can add to the enjoyment of the written word. There is a richness in that transaction, yet at the same time the spoken word has an intimacy that video fails to capture. At the risk of using a tired cliche from the arena of knowledge management, I can say more than I write, and I know more than I can say.