The way I see these posts and pages now, today, they are much more like installations, happenings, songs, dramatic monologues, circus acts – even cartoon strips, events, games and graffiti rather than ’poems’. Why should that be?
If you look at just a few of them a theatre influence will soon become obvious. But then I ran a successful experimental theatre here in Soho for many years. When I split from that, around the time of a marriage break-up and divorce, these little ‘productions’ increasingly became the focus of my creative output.
And don’t be wrong-footed by what is, for me, a natural desire to give a completely different style of expression to each of these individual entities; these animals, these virtual states of play or odd-ball experiments. Working with plays and players in such tiny spaces certainly left me with a hat-full of voices, attitudes and perspectives but most of all it was the intrinsic uniqueness of persons and pieces that in getting up close often became revelations.
Yes, I trained for the stage and threw myself into directing stuff. Even so I am not particularly a theatre fan. I love what actors can sometimes do – their grace and skill, their acts of Shamanism, their death-defying leaps. Equally though I love painters, great films, a handful of poems and poets and songwriters and increasingly the wonders of a shamefully threatened, natural world: anything in fact, that makes my hair stand on end – while I’ve still got some…
IN THE MEDINA
Here are a thousand and one smells
in twenty-thousand combinations:
here the stunning scent of fresh oranges,
and there heaps of steaming donkey dung;
as the foul stink from the tanneries
marches past the promise-filled kitchen
The fresh and dried figs, the mint
the olives of every size and tint,
the heaps of heady coriander, dill,
fragrant fennel and parsley grapple
with the mountains of cardamoms, garlic,
aromatic cinnamon and ground nutmeg.
There’s sawdust from the wood-turners,
the distinctive reek of live poultry
in vertically stacked tight cages:
staring bleakly from the kiosks
at the procession of un-caged beings.
In these cornered and cobbled ways
it must be the very stillness of the air,
the narrowness of the mazy streets
that emprisons each blend of scents
so that any sightless beggar instantly,
by nose alone, knows just where he is
and in which direction he is facing.
Each overwhelming sensation
jostles for pride of place against
its pungent or exotic neighbour.
The stench from the hammans
- annexed to the ancient Mosques -
the wool-rich, rainbow of odours
from the carpet emporiums mix
with the sweetness of pristine leather
and the acrid, strange chemicals used
by the engravers and the metal workers.
A thousand saliva-inducing ovens
groan with the intensity of Ramadan,
and as wreathes of purple fumes
slowly swirl aloft or straddle the shafts
of sun and hang like B-movies projected
through smoky, courtyard cinemas:
there’s no relief from this seasons’ fixation.
The burning carcasses, the cous-cous,
the breads, the cakes have gripped
everyone in torment until sundown.
For everybody that passes through is taut
as the rebab’s strings; as sappers, or assassins.
It is all more ardently sensual and real
than any chronicler could ever indicate.
And as the serene, whey-faced Holy Men
stroll forth, at peace with unfilled stomachs;
and the vendors, the artisans, the crowd,
and the hordes of non-comprehending infants,
(invariably in waterless tears), the never-ending
throng of passers-by, are ALL fasting.
All food for the disruptful, disreputable
urchins of the streets as they jeer,
taunt and scrap; creating their artful
counterpoint of utter havoc as they mug
the stones, the stalls, the eternal present
with their infectious, helpless laughter.
The Tannery, Fez. Photo by Miyyassah al Thani.
