East End Review

Tag: Phoebe Cooke

Wave Caps: Former hack turns poet

Wave Caps is the debut collection of poetry and short stories written by former Hackney Gazette journalist Miguel Cullen and designed by artist Alix Janta-Polczynski.

Here the avant-garde poet talks to Hackney Citizen about his Argentine roots and the breadth of his references – from the dust of Agrippa to black Nike golfing gloves – as well as the performance instinct of poetry

Spanish sounds and words fill Wave Caps. Could you tell me a bit about your background, and the influence of language on your work?

My father comes from Argentina, he moved over in the 1970s to work as a live-in Freudian psycho-analyst in a commune in Gospel Oak. My family out there are from the Provincia de Buenos Aires, and much of my writing is taken from my life out there, working when I was younger, during a difficult personal period for me. I was born and grown here in the UK, but studied Spanish at university and have been bilingual since birth. I read a lot in Spanish and talk a lot with my dad in Spanish, who loves reading.
I’m not native Spanish, but I think and write in Spanish, and in poetry, the natural voice speaks lines or fragments of lines to me very lucidly.

You used to write for the Hackney Gazette. How is it different writing poetry?

Yes I had a brief time at the Hackney Gazette, after longer work at other local London papers. I find that news writing is very much a discipline, but with poetry you have to be just as true to the facts of your reality as much as a news writer is true to the facts of the story.

What is your day job now?

I am arts editor for the Catholic Herald, in Moorgate. It’s very different from the rest of the free-lancing I do, which is for culture publications like Vice and Wonderland, and elsewhere, as well as being a full-time poet.

In ‘Gravediggaz – Niggamortis’ you write: “We are all sepulchred on cypress hills, tombed/ Like fingers in black Nike golfing gloves.” Could you try and describe juxtapostion between modern idiom and ancient civilisation in your work?

There’s a performance attitude to my writing, so when I mention people wearing one Nike black golfing glove, which was a trend at drum & bass raves, it’s part of my references, just as Agrippa returning to Rome in ashes, which I do later in the poem is, which I took from a Turner painting at the Tate Britain.

Equally the performance instinct in poetry, which may provoke harsher juxtapositions, is just as real an instinct as the description of ‘everyday truths’ that are prevalent in contemporary poetry. I’d definitely say I’m in the ‘avant-garde’ bracket of contemporary poetry, and this leads to images that are utterly opposite, to the point of being incomprehensible – I think I’m being led vaguely in that direction now.

The narrators of your poems often have a wistfulness for Argentina, but also a love of London. Does this reflect in some way your own displacement between the two?

Yes – indeed some of the love I have for reggae, drum & bass and hip hop comes from a love of minority cultures that I have through my lack of connection on a basic level with one of my mother countries.

My brother and I have always gravitated towards music that is exciting, vibrant, more kinetic, like hip hop, reggae, dancehall, reggaeton, all that, perhaps because we’re drawn to it through that. My last poem ‘Citoyen Des Deux Mondes’ talks of the “Talkers that step out of the hand” of the King, the talkers who were created by the way the British Empire took us. We’re Spanish, but the African and Asian diaspora still talk to me. As the sample in the book, the audio element, which is taken from Hackney then-pirate radio station Kool FM, goes to show.
The book, designed, bound and with collages by Alix Janta-Polczynski, is published by Odilo Press, a poetry platform founded by the two. odilo-press.com/shop/wave-caps

‘Graduation’

The dad’s eyes were withered like fingerprints spurting out of control
His nose was like a hard-on through a stocking hat
His round frames were dodecahedrons clicking into place
Like the Terminator or the missing suspension of a psychotic

He looked like an Iranian living in High Street Ken

And his daughter, with skin like leaves
And lipstick like the small type of nipple-colour

We were graduating in the class of BA Hons 2014

We were my brother.

So now I understand, the place where the daughters of the rich
Middle-class people go. They go where we go.

It’s boring but it’s what I thought.

Being classless is being out of control of being out of control
About being like you,
Like you, and everything that is outside you that isn’t me and isn’t you
Doesn’t kill me yet, because today I’m with you.

August 13, 2014
There’s a Monster in the Lake – review

Spoken Mirror production company: (L-R) Tara Postma (standing), Hugo Nicholson, Cressida Bonas, Zoe Stevens (sitting top), Zena Carswell (sitting front) and Florence Keith-Roach (standing) Photograph: Adrian Sherratt

Nothing is sacred from health and safety checks in this surreal production by Spoken Mirror at the Rosemary Branch theatre, featuring a headache-prone devil, two squabbling sisters and an out-of-shape wolf played by Cressida Bonas.

Inspired by playwright Tallulah Brown’s four months working with Mira Hamermesh towards the end of the Polish filmmaker’s life, the Lily Ashley-directed play flits between a bland, uncompromising care home and the wooded mental refuge of the ageing Kazek, with songs delivered by Kazek’s daughters and a clutch of unseen sirens.

“I want to die…let me die!” utters Kazek at the outset, played with tremulous, stubborn vulnerability by Zoe Stevens. To the audience’s relief, the statement does not trigger a play-long debate on life versus death, but rather a thoughtful meditation on memory, story-telling and making amends.

Kazek’s carer (significantly named just ‘Nurse’), is executed with wonderful impassivity by Tara Postma and provides necessary injections of humour into the narrative. Her straight-laced and unsympathetic – though not unkind – method of care is sharply contrasted to Kazek’s daughters emotional coming-to-terms with their father’s ageing process.

Esme (played with wide-eyed impetuosity by Florence Keith-Roach) is the idealistic daughter, excellent with their father but absent when it comes to the gruelling practicalities of his decline – which her more pragmatic sister Mari (Zena Carswell) has to take on. Brown deftly describes the fraught sibling interplay, universal to those who have had to deal with poorly parents.

There’s A Monster In The Lake is perhaps most poignant when highlighting the helplessness felt by those faced with the impending death of themselves or loved ones. “He’s my dad, not my child!” Mari says sharply to Nurse. The hints that Kazek was not always the perfect father also combat the romanticisation of the father-child role and add depth to the fantasy-fuelled vignettes.

The care home scenes are the best drawn, but the woods also have a charm, with Cressida Bonas playing a sprightly, health-and-safety-obsessed wolf, springing across the stage with alacrity, whilst the lecherous, maladied devil (Hugo Nicholson) nuisances his way through the dark undergrowth.

A child-like wistfulness persists throughout the play, a thread of fantasy and hope which challenges the idea of age equating to wisdom, and sensitively explores what it means to care and be cared for.

There’s A Monster in the Lake is at the Rosemary Branch theatre, Shepperton Road, N1 3DT until 19 July.

July 16, 2014
Your guide to the East London zine scene

Shelf life: Ti Pi Tin art book shop in Stoke Newington is well stocked with zines. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval

“What’s a zine?”, people venture, confusion mingling with apprehension, as I begin that tricky task of explaining my enthusiasm for an obscure, self-published leaflet in the age of live-feeds, tweets and ubiquitous internet domination.

Punk, feminist, anarchist and eco zines have been an integral facet of counter- and sub-culture since the 1970s, particularly prominent in New York and other US metropoles. Short for fanzines – named for their dedication to one subject – zines are lo-fi, usually black and white (though often with colour covers), photocopied, self-published booklets that tend to have a print run of less than 100, and are often created by just one person. They are rarely profit-making enterprises, nor do they feature any advertising.

You’d think that the advent of the internet and the corresponding increase in e-zines might have negated the impact of DIY zines, but if anything people seem to appreciate the rare pleasure of holding actual paper in their hands. The internet has also facilitated like-minded members of zine communities to swap notes (and zines), and to spread the word on workshops, zine fairs and distribution.

In fact, I discovered my first zine fair through an internet stumble – and turned up one day at QZFL (Queer Zine Fest London) last December at Space Station Sixty-Five in South East London with no idea what to expect. A veritable mecca for DIY publications and an incredibly tight-knit, yet friendly community awaited: hundreds of zines and their makers showcasing their work on a variety of themes, including break-ups, transgender identity, mental health issues, zine-making, and meditations on feminism, identity, sex and love. Alongside homemade cake and quiche, zines were on sale for between 50p and around £4 (some for free), with free workshops and talks running all day.

Since that fair, nursing a long-harboured idea of creating an alternative publication for new writing as a kind of antithesis to women’s magazines, I have cautiously made my own first entree into zine-making. It doesn’t matter that I did not grow up with zines, that I don’t know much about how they are made. Zines are experimental in their nature, to played around with and adapted. There is something calming about sticking, pasting, collating and re-connecting with some basic creative modes.

Zines themselves, as well as zine fairs and festivals, are often quite transient, and so can be hard to keep track of. Since QZFL I’ve visited a great zine fair in Kilburn, organised by small-press OOMK – One of My Kind. London College of Communication, along with the Women’s Library, houses an excellent collection of zines which are well worth checking out.

In London, I can recommend Housman’s political bookshop in King’s Cross; Freedom Press bookshop in Whitechapel, founded in 1866 and still retaining its anarchist credentials; the small but zine-rich Book Art Bookshop, also in Shoreditch; and Ti Pi Tin in Stoke Newington for a more art-based zine selection. There are countless more which you will discover for yourselves – The London Bookshop Map is great for searching for different types of specialist bookshops.

The third East London Comics and Arts Fair is taking place on Saturday 14 June at Oval Space, with exhibitors of graphic art, comics, zines and a host of talks. It’s as good an introduction to the scene as any, with talks on comic strips, sustainable self-publication, binding methods and much more. Take a look at their website, and you may never look back from the cut-paste world of small-press publication.

To find out more about Phoebe’s Seven Deadly Sins-themed zine series, email undine.zine@gmail.com.

June 11, 2014
Wuthering Heights – review

Heathcliff (Jack Benjamin) and Cathy (Lucinda Lloyd) on the wild and windy North Yorkishire Moors

Emily Brontë’s tale of unyielding, wilful love is familiar to many, but this new adaptation at the Rosemary Branch theatre breathes fresh Yorkshire gales into the 19th century novel and sharply evokes the pain of Cathy and Heathcliff’s self-thwarted love.

Cathy (played by Hackney-based actress Lucinda Lloyd) is tempestuous, provocative, child-like – a delight and a nightmare. She haunts the play and Heathcliff, himself conveyed by Jack Benjamin with exactly the right blend of hang-dog forlornness and rough jealousy.

A necessary anchor to the story, loquacious housekeeper Nelly Dean provides the human bridge between different narrative times and strands, conveying the extreme passions of those she cares for. She is both a narrator and a player, as essential to the story as Cathy, or Emily Brontë herself. Emma Fenney is fantastic in this role – sympathetic, busy-bodying and far-sighted.

Cathy and Heathcliff’s at times fraternal, at times sensual (though unfulfilled) love and its increasing elements of jealousy and possession is captured by the moans and jangles of the Yorkshire moors – music composed by Ben Davies especially for the production, which flits through the narrative like the ghost of Kathy and the shadow of Heathcliff’s resentment.

In the book the reader’s sense of time is distorted as Nelly narrates the story through up to three different speakers, going back and forth between her present-day conversation with Lockwood and the past of the Heathcliffs, Lintons and Earnshaws. The continual reinforcement of Wuthering Heights as a story is conveyed in Helen Tennison’s production by the emphasis on reading – as a catalyst for the love of young Catherine and Hareton, a prop in the simple, yet dramatic choreography, and an acknowledgment of the text’s faithfulness to the original.

The sense of time winding onwards, and the intricate interweaving of the family’s fates, seemingly inevitably, often catastrophically, is complemented by the cast changes – George Haynes and James Hayward play up to four characters each, whilst Helen Watkinson doubles up as Isabella Linton and young Cathy.

A story like Wuthering Heights could easily become claustrophobic in the close confines of theatre, but Tennison’s production keeps us engaged through the haunting play of light and shadow, jangling music and the portrayal of Cathy and Heathcliff’s raging love.

Wuthering Heights is at the Rosemary Branch, 2 Shepperton Road, N1 3DT until 27 April.

April 14, 2014
Eldorado – review

Eva Feiler as Manuela, Michael Colgan as Anton and Amanda Hale as Thekla in Eldorado at the Arcola Theatre

Eldorado’s cryptic depiction of emotional breakdown amongst the bourgeoisie, played against the backdrop of war, scoops us into a world of undefined destruction and well-delineated interior turmoil in Dalston’s spacious but intimate Arcola theatre.

German playwright Marius von Mayenburg’s play – which premiered ten years ago at Berlin’s experimental Schaubühne theatre – alludes to the european myth of El Dorado, a lost city of gold waiting for discovery by an adventurous conquerer, or as so many an exploitative European conquistador supposed.

Director Simon Dormandy’s adaption of the play, translated by Maja Zade, rids us of context and does not allow the audience the satisfaction of knowing exactly what is going on.

The war could be Iraq, or perhaps Afghanistan. Fear and claustrophobia haunt the stage, and sometimes the distant thunder of war seems only to embody the characters’ inner disturbance. Aschenbrenner (literally: Ash Burner) opens with a foreboding monologue on a darkened stage.

As helicopters whir threateningly overhead, he paints a scene of futile destruction – animals escaped from the zoo and “refugees’ voices ringing out from the oval concrete,” before ending on a property sales pitch for his company, a narrative that will thread the showcase of broken relationships to which we are party.

Those relationships are the mainstay of the production. The tortured love between Aschenbrenner (Mark Tandy plays a wicked, vivid and intensely humorous harbinger of destruction) and his naive, puppet-like employee Anton (Michael Colgan); that of Anton and his newly wed, neurotic pianist Thekla (Amanda Hale), and the one with her ebullient, infuriating mother (Sian Thomas) and toy-boy husband are sharply, unforgivingly drawn.

Like characters in an Ibsen play, we observe, enjoy (or are distressed by) their interactions, but ultimately are held at arm’s length.

Eldorado is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, Dalston E8 3DL until 3 May.

April 10, 2014
The Nine O’Clock Slot – review

Poster for The Nine o’clock slot. Courtesy of Ice&Fire

“Welcome to the low-budget slot, the low frills, low grade, high shame, 9 o’clock slot,” intones the hospice chaplain John, having beckoned us from the edgy and industrial Red Gallery bar, through an ante-chamber of trees, soil mounds and angels, and on to the theatre, walled by versatile, but non-descript looking cardboard boxes.

The Nine O’Clock Slot is impressively conceived: the audience begin as an (unusually large) crowd of mourners, gathered unwittingly for a paupers’ burial. In a Brechtian move we are forced to confront the play’s themes head on, not allowed to hide behind the veil of disengagement that often typifies theatre.

Hannah Davies and Annecy Lax’s production with human rights theatre company ice&fire weaves through the lives of four individuals, all very different from one another, but who end their lives in the same way – an anonymous paupers’ burial.

Margaret, an articulate old lady mourns her husband Clive: talks, dances, drinks, plays cards with her beloved husband who is no longer there. This is a particularly strong performance from Anna Barry, who lights up the stage with her quick wit and jaunty liveliness. Whilst Margaret carries her own story compellingly, you can’t help but feel that it doesn’t fit in with the other interlocking narratives, though perhaps this is the point: loneliness, and isolation is all pervasive, and what typifies these individuals’ very different backgrounds and experiences.

Not all the acting is as sharp however, and the post mortem analysis by the mortuary assistants is not only gruesome but also does not ring true. They are talking to the audience partly, sharing insights: “Black pepper lungs tells me he lives in the city…Office monkey? Disaffected data hacker.” “This man was 278204 – the body of an unidentified male,” one mortuary assistant adds, as he peels back the skin of the imaginary body before him. The cruel anonymity of death in London’s underbelly is drawn to our attention, but the acting here is crude, though the lines well drawn.

Chu Omambala shows great versatility, playing chaplain John, the laddish Marcus, and finally a didactic auctioneer, peddling graves to the sombered audience. The number of parts played by a few of the actors also emphasises the anonymity of those passing under the city’s radar.

A highlight of the performance was a heated argument between John and carer Kay (Thusitha Jayasundera) about how to treat someone towards the end of their lives. This debate achieved that fine balance of narrative and didacticism – informative without being preachy, which some of the other scenes on occasion veered into.

Connor (Gary Cargill) is a charismatic, ebullient drunk who held up a persona that was angry, witty and lonely.

“None of this wanky, good practice, tick box bollocks”, he says to his carer Kay when discussing the end of his life. This relationship between carer and patient is raw and touching, highlighting the struggles not only of those whose lives are ending, but those who are tending to those ending lives

The play makes for uncomfortable viewing. Melding video, dance, music and acting, sometimes you feel a simpler set-up would be more effective. Scene changes and some performances could be sharper, but its message resonates loud and clear: thousands of people are dying on our streets, left for uncared for and untended in life and in death, and we prefer to turn the other way. The Nine O’Clock Slot urges us to do otherwise.

The Nine O’Clock Slot is at The Red Gallery, 3 Rivington Street, EC2A 3DT until 19 April.

April 10, 2014
Wuthering Heights – preview

Cathy and Heathcliff embrace in Wuthering Heights. Photograph: Andy Barker

Kate Bush is not the only Wuthering Heights fan coming to town. Helen Tennison’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s haunting tale will be performed at the intimate Rosemary Branch theatre for a three-week run this month.

Director Tennison is a long-term collaborator with the Rosie and has been central in designing the set, which evokes the wild Yorkshire Moors where Cathy and Heathcliff’s tragic love is played out.

“Like all the best directors, Helen has a particular vision,” says the Rosemary Branch’s artistic director Cecilia Darker.

“The set is so designed that you’re not sure whether you’re on the inside or the outside – it’s overgrown and covered in moss and lychen.”

One of the challenges of this production, Darker says, was adapting the play to very different spaces – from their six by six metre stage to the vast space of Shrewsbury’s Theatre Severn where the play will head to later on its tour.

But Tennison is excited about this challenge and says the strength of the acting combined with Brontë’s universally applicable story means it can resonate wherever it is staged.

“Brontë’s asking questions about how we love; I think that’s what draws people to it. We’re drawn to it because Cathy and Heathcliff’s love is so passionate, so raw and so all-encompassing.”

Cathy is played by local actress Lucinda Lloyd, one of the six actors in the young cast, some of whom play up to three parts.

Wuthering Heights is at the Rosemary Branch Theatre, 2 Shepperton Road, N1 3DT until 27 April.

April 10, 2014