Poetry : Sun 20 Aug
After an early stint at the Pleasance Dome, I caught a bus up to the other side of Edinburgh to see Sclavi at Aurora Nova - I don't know how the cast managed to give so much energy at 11 o'clock in the morning at the end of the second week of the Fringe, knowing they have not only been performing, but also performing and busking on the Royal Mile every day. Get a ticket if you can ... but it is getting difficult! Their show contained one of the most moving pieces of drama I have ever seen on stage - a simple and simultaneously profound short scene which involved laying an impromptu table with an embroidered linen cloth in preparation for a meal. It inspired the following poem.
bread broken
words swallowed
words spoken
Later, after having seen Dudley Sutton put on a show which explored - in a much more text-based way - an equally moving range of extremes to the previously described performance I'd seen, I revisited the topic that's been lurking at the back of my mind about the decoration of food and person ... and here's what I've come up with so far. The project is still very much a work in progress.
Comes without any leanings towards ostentation
A peach stone wears a juicy coat
with fuzzy finish, but doesn't gloat;
A banana's clothed in smoother skin
To keep its tender flesh within;
A passion fruit is harder than these
Its insides tender tend to please
Those with exotic minds
At least in these cold northern climes.
And inspired by a flyer thrust in my hands as I leave for Crunch, a show at the Pleasance Courtyard about apples - I go off on a creative journey exploring the possibilities of linking the external appeal of an apple with the result of its awakening the instict for Adam and Eve to clothe themselves.
The winner of yesterday's daily Pleasance Poetry Competition out of 29 entries on the topic of 'Favourite Food' was Rebecca Buchanan, whose poem was one of the best entries received across the competition so far in my opinion.
My favourite ingredient is not stocked in shops,
But I know it when I see it.
It's in a bowl of cherries left on the stairs for me to find
It's in the peanut-butter-on-toast cut into the shape of a house,
complete with tree and gate and smiley sun.
It's in the February family picnics in a car up a mountain
in Yorkshire, sleet slapping the windows steamed up
with not one, but TWO types of soup from ageing Thermos flasks.
It's in a surprise dinner party with friends on mis-matched chairs
who bought matching plates specially for the occasion.
It's in cups of tea at crucial moments and radish flowers and
grapefruit peel curls and bags of flying saucers bought with an
"I thought of you."
It's in all the homemade birthday cakes I've ever had,
the "caravan," the "pond," the cheesecakes and iced writing
and the lemon cake smuggled in by bicycle that became
breakfast and dessert and snacks for weeks afterwards.
It's in all the cooking with many hands and blunt knives and no money and
paper hats and not enough forks saved at the eleventh hour by a bottle
of wine bought with a fiver found down the back of the sofa.
It can be found in shared leftovers and midnight kebabs and the perfect
melon and emergency chocolate supplies and can make magic of the myriad
mediocre meals in restaurants.
And it comes, abundant and free and precious, from all the people in my
life; my family, my friends and you, dear heart, from you.
And I am grateful,
For without it, this favourite ingredient of mine,
without it, I could feed my body, but what about my soul?