South Bank Centre

Daisy and Pearl Lowe put on a show at Vintage at Southbank 2011

Mother-daughter dynamo team, Pearl and Daisy Lowe, were back again to show at the Vintage festival which was this year held at Southbank. The pair unveiled their latest Autumn/Winter 2012 collection for Peacocks on Sunday, taking guests on a journey over the past two decades. Their vintage-inspired range paid homage to the 1920s and was brought to life thanks to a troupe of professional ballet dancers who twirled down the runway.

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Reflections by Anita Sethi « Literature & Spoken Word Community ...

The wonderful thing about the London Literature Festival is that fragments of poetry, or ideas that have been triggered, linger long after the festival is over.  Here’s my first reflection on a variety of such moments:

Poetry was a strong presence at the festival, with powerful readings including the “Poetry and Place” event with Owen Sheers, Nick Laird, Kate Clanchy and Toby Martinez de Las Rivas.  I caught up for a chat with Owen Sheers after his event where he discussed his versatility in working in multiple forms – poetry, prose, plays, journalism, television, and the film adaptation of his critically acclaimed book “Resistance” is forthcoming this autumn.

“a citizen of the world”

His own work aptly reflects the journey of his life, ranging far and wide throughout the world, filled with imagery of maps and bordercrossings.   Born in Fiji in 1974, he left when he was 2 years old, grew up in Wales, and has travelled widely.  Although he aspires to be “a citizen of the world”, he describes his “deep connection” with Wales, expressed in his recent play The Passion.

 ”the moment”

We discussed how  “the moment” is relevant across these different genres. “I was drawn by poets like RS Thomas who has an incredible gift for striking metaphors but is also very drawn to narrative poetry that tells a story”.  Sheers’ own poems likewise compellingly capture the moments of life  yet also the broader narrative of life, with a forward and backward movement and even characterization.

He reads an incredibly haunting new poem inspired by a funeral which uses the subtle changes in nature to reflect profounder insights into the human condition.  Speaking about how moments of life spark literature he says:  “As a writer you’re attuned to those quite lucky intersections, those fortunate coincidences and then it’s a question of what you do with them. It is about a moment and it’s also opening up to an awareness of literary heritage and showing how landscape can find the words we don’t”.

 ”hurt into writing”

Some of the poems he reads out have powerful imagery of both physical and psychological pain and I wonder which medium best deals with that: There’s a famous quote, “hurt into writing”, describes Sheers, “you’re not always hurt into writing but quite often it’s a space where you do work our your troubles; sometimes you say things in poetry you wouldn’t even do in prose; it’s intimate yet also performative. I do think of the page being a stage and the poem an actor so the first person is and is not the poet; it gives you a license and also a shelter…You’re controlling the pain rather than it controlling you”, explains Sheers. “I’m about to do a project with Theatre Royal Haymarket working with people from Afghanistan; all who have been wounded either mentally or physically.  I’m interested in what I’ll find in the language of that world”.

Fifty Strong

Naum Gabo, the constructive idea : sculpture, drawings, paintings, monoprints : a South Bank Centre Exhibition : Oxford Museum of Modern Art, 13 December 1987-7 February 1988 ....

The Quick and the dead, artists and anatomy

Braque, still lifes and interiors : a South Bank Centre touring exhibition, 1990

Joan Miró, sculpture, a South Bank Centre touring exhibition