Poetry Preview

Like it or not, the lines are drawn. To the West, primed with coffee, pastries and goodwill, rests the Edinburgh International Book Festival. To the East, rabid and unpredictable, is the Fringe. The former does spoken word; the latter, performed poetry. Who will win? What will sell? And what is this poetry thing, anyway? The schism is a fictional one, of course. While the Book Festival’s biggest draw, Tony Harrison, possesses generation-defining oratorical gifts, The Fringe theatre has its share of the dead and the textually canonical: Shakespeare and Marlowe through to Dylan Thomas and W.S. Graham: all have their time this year.

But there is a difference. Whereas the zenith of the poetry fringe so far has been Luke Wright’s weekend-long Poetry Party, containing mostly wheeling and rhythmic routines without a book in sight, the Book Festival is happiest with Simon Armitage reading loyally from a new version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or Carol Ann Duffy doing her thing.

It is almost too easy to part the genres and compartmentalise the rising phenomenon of performance poetry – it’s in a separate galaxy to the written word, the purpose and effect entirely different – but to do so is to risk rendering one or other as conservative and culturally ossified. The book, for example, struggles (although it is a gallant struggle) to hold the attention of the crowd, the laypeople. Performed poetry typically puts it's audience first, it's art second. It is full of crudities and little of it is lasting.

These are the preconceptions we have to deal with,. The diversity of this year’s poetry events, while not exactly breaching the gap between the book-before-bedtime and the competitive slam, go some way towards arresting the complexities of the word ‘poetry’. Kat François’s Seven Times Me is a mad assortment – slam poetry, dance, comedy – and all performed by one woman. All very Fringe – but the words, sometimes rapped, sometimes melodic, are more subtle than the detractors of competitive slam would have it. Her work is sexually frank and politically poised, and as self-biography it is the most defiant statement of self I have seen on the circuit.

She is also very funny; so is Murray Lachlan Young, another performance poet who this year is bravely manning two poetry shows – one of them for children, possible the most honest and potentially baneful audience of them all. The man is fearless. In an instant, he wins over a tent’s worth of the soaked and freezing with a ditty on the ignoble death of Keith Richards: “If you’re gonna go Keith/Go, Keith, go./But No! Keith!/Don’t do it like that Keith!/No!” Briefly famous in about 1996, Young is better than ever: frank, naughty, and capable of charming a granny.

Over at Camp Book, Ian Duhig, Robert Crawford and Michael Rosen are a few of the many poetry stars troubling Charlotte Square’s firmament in the next week or so. To point out that these people are performing seems obvious, even if they occupy an alternative sphere to François and Young. I draw attention particularly to Duhig, whose gravelly Anglo-Irish detains the mind whilst colliding such sundry subject matters as Lent and herring, with results that are funny and educative.

It is difficult to pick out a mainstream and a subverse here. While certain poets might sell more books, I know who my poetry-fearing mum would prefer, and it is no bad thing that there are poets to cater for the instincts of those that, for whatever reason, don’t read.

While Charlotte Square Gardens are full of murmurs and laughter, the Fringe is shrieking and occasionally sets itself on fire.

There is room for both and there is room for you, too.