Tim Dalling has collaborated with a poet before: his CD Blossom centres on settings of the poems of Louis MacNeice. But it's one thing to set the works of a dead poet to music, and quite another to work with a writer who is not only living, but living across the road. In these circumstances, collaboration might be a matter of compromise, of holding back in the interests of good neighbourly relations.
Sudden Blossoms (at the the Cumberland Arms on May 25th 2004) was not this sort of collaboration. It did nothing by half measures. Not only was the venue sold out, the owner had to come upstairs to request the return of seats to the other bars.
The session began conventionally enough: Julia read some poems from her collection Sudden Collapses in Public Places, Tim played some songs from his CD "Blossom". The contrast between the contemplative tone of the poems and the exuberance of the songs was unexpectedly effective, generating an energy which swept the audience along with it. By the end of the evening, Julia was playing percussion on what looked like an orange, and the entire audience was singing along to Don't Get Your Name in the Book (a rousing celebration of those aspects of the human spirit that even the workhouse could not destroy, though it tried).
The fruits of another collaboration were in evidence in arrangements of Julia's poems Rendezvous Café and Twin Lighthouses, written in response to paintings by Emma Holliday.
In fact, the evening was a demonstration of the city as a community of creators for which Julia's Manifesto was written - and it felt entirely appropriate that that poem should be read to this audience. There was a sense of creativity actually happening, of work in progress, which gave some hope that Tim and Julia might repeat the experiment - and next time, at a larger venue!
On other pages: How To Behave With The Ill, Inside Out, National Poetry Day 2004, The Manifesto For Tyneside Upon England, The Great British Public, The Lost Birds of England, Attachments, Cold Calling, The Writer's Choice, Personal Belongings, The Last Post and Posties, Doughnuts like Fanny's and Eating the Elephant.
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Last updated on 17 June 2004 by Roger Cornwell.
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