Monday 30 May 2011

Kaleidoscope

Yesterday's Nine Arches Press reading at Warwick University, as part of the Kaleidoscope conference, was just that bit different to any reading I've done before.

After Jane Commane had talked about how the press uses colour in the design of its books and chapbooks, Roz Goddard, Matt Nunn, Maria Taylor and myself took turns to talk a little about how colour figures in our work, and why we used particular favourite colours, before reading poems that, hopefully, illustrated what we'd mentioned.

To be honest, I really enjoyed the preparation for the event. It's very strange going back through your own work in detail, and I found myself noticing a couple of themes, and more than a couple of stylistic tics, that I hadn't really noticed before. When I get a bit more time, I'll post some of my notes on here, maybe.

There was a small but very responsive audience, and it all closed with a discussion of what we'd just read that I only wish could have gone on longer. Lots of food for thought.

My set was:

Crash
Glass
Halcyon
Yellowhammers
Poem
Kilter
Azul

3 comments:

Caroline Gill said...

Perhaps I've failed to read something correctly here, Matt, but perhaps you could explain whether this was a set you were given or a set of Leitmotifs in (perhaps) your body of work ... Thank you. As someone who dabbles in paint as well as with words, I am fascinated by colour and colour theory.

As it happens, the theme in my poetry group for May was ... 'colour', and we share our poetic offerings next week.

Matt Merritt said...

Sorry, only just seen this. No, they were just poems of mine that I picked to fit in with the general theme. I'm going to write up my notes for the reading later this week and I'll post them on here so you can see what I mean.

Caroline Gill said...

Thank you!