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hi Warmest Regards STEVE HALLIWELL
I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn
Hi, I&ssional network on LinkedIn. - LiTTLe Accept: https://www.linkedin.com/blink?simpleRedirect=3gMcjkTdP4Qe3gQc3oVejwRejkZh4BKrSBQonhFtCVF9DsOh6F5gShPfnBBiShBsC5EsOpQsSlRpRZBt6BSrCAZqSkConhzbmlQqnpKqiRQsSlRpORIrmkZpSVFqSdxsDgCpnhFtCV9pSlipn9Mfm4CszcJempOdmhLd6AJr6JQcmtUbjRBfP9SbSkLrmZzbCVFp6lHrCBIbDtTtOYLeDdMt7hE&msgID=I5958996066316623872_500&markAsRead= You received an invitation to connect. LinkedIn will use your email address to make suggestions to our members in features like People You May Know. Unsubscribe here: https://www.linkedin.com/blink?simpleRedirect=szcJempOdmhLd6AJr6JQcmtUbjRAqmkCi64JdTFxrAJkcARNhT9MiD9Fc4NdpQhcm3hcjmxEp6Z4tllRpAp8cSZjsk5Ld5dFr5p7oSxxuAZLjSFyiT9lgk51tQATgShBmCx7kAV6kk4Zp6BLr2pQsSlRpRZBt6BSrCAZqSkCkjoPp4l7q5p6sCR6kk4ZrClHrRhAqmQCrDlIfngCszcJempOdmhLd6AJr6JQcmtUbjRBfP9SbSkLrmZzbCVFp6lHrCBIbDtTtOYLeDdMt7hE&msgID=I5958996066316623872_500&markAsRead= Learn why we included this at the following link: https://www.linkedin.com/blink?simpleRedirect=0Ue3sQfmh9pmNzqnhOoipQsSlRpRZBt6BSrCAZqSkCr79lpmdFtD9BkT9BrmZQsTlzfm4CszcJempOdmhLd6AJr6JQcmtUbjRBfP9SbSkLrmZzbCVFp6lHrCBIbDtTtOYLeDdMt7hE&msgID=I5958996066316623872_500&markAsRead= © 2014, LinkedIn Corporation. 2029 Stierlin Ct. Mountain View, CA 94043, USA
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Check out LiTTLe MACHiNe
You shared your email with LiTTLe MACHiNe and they've sent you this invitation to like their page on Facebook Famous poems set to music - “The most brilliant music and poetry band I’ve seen in decades.” Carol Ann Duffy332 likes · 14 talking about this LiTTLe MACHiNe To sign up for Facebook, follow the link below: https://www.facebook.com/n/?r.php&oid=115327165597&medium=email&mid=HMTYwNTczMTg0Ojc2NHd1ZmlmdEB0dW1ibHIuY29tOjEyNA&n_m=764wufift%40tumblr.com To view the LiTTLe MACHiNe Page, follow the link below: http://www.facebook.com/L1TTLeMACH1Ne
LiTTLe MACHiNe playing Yeats's The lake Isle of Innisfree live at the Humber Mouth Festival
LiTTLe MACHiNe playing Dartington Hall at the Ways With Words festival. Artworks by Paula Cloonan
LITTLE MACHINE EPK from LiTTLe MACHiNe on Vimeo.
LITTLE MACHINE EPK (x 5 songs)
WenlockMediocrite.wmv from LiTTLe MACHiNe on Vimeo.
My Movie.wmv from LiTTLe MACHiNe on Vimeo.
wal3_HQ.mp4 from LiTTLe MACHiNe on Vimeo.
April 23 - Shakespeare's birthday, also the day he died (1564-1616)
Fear No More The Heat Of The Sun (Cymbeline) Fear no more the heat o’ the sun; Nor the furious winter’s rages, Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages; Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney sweepers come to dust. Fear no more the frown of the great, Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke: Care no more to clothe and eat; To thee the reed is as the oak: The sceptre, learning, physic, must All follow this, and come to dust. Fear no more the lightning-flash, Nor the all-dread thunder-stone; Fear not slander, censure rash; Thou hast finished joy and moan; All lovers young, all lovers must Consign to thee, and come to dust. No exorciser harm thee! Nor no witchcraft charm thee! Ghost unlaid forbear thee! Nothing ill come near thee! Quiet consummation have; And renowned be thy grave!
The Dug-out (Siegfried Sassoon)/ Anthem for Doomed Youth (Wilfred Owen)
We found the recording of Siegfried Sassoon reading 'The Dug-out' (recorded by a Dennis Silk) on the Poetry Archive web site, and edited it onto the opening of our arrangement of the Owen's 'Anthem'. It was a perfect pairing but obtaining permission from the copyright holders involved some detective work. After some inquiries we got a call from Diana Silk. Her 80 year old husband was busy trying to get a bonfire going in their Somerset garden but wished her to tell us that he was very happy for us to use his recording on our album. She said that her husband, as a schoolboy cricketer, had been introduced to Sassoon by another great World War One poet and memoir writer, Edmund Blunden. She explained how Dennis became a professional cricketer, and bought a tape-recorder from Alec Bedser -- another famous figure from long ago. Every time Dennis visited Sassoon at his country house he tried unsuccessfully to get him to read his poems into the microphone until one night Sassoon said, ' Go and get your infernal machine' and this marvellous reading was captured -- it sounds as if it is coming from beyond the grave. This extraordinary conversation was like getting hold of the end of a thread that reached right back to a heroic age of war and literature, to Blunden, Sassoon, Graves, and of course Owen.
WORD OF MOUTH
Jubal, ancestor of lyre players, lived in the Land of Nod, east of Eden, according to Genesis. We’ve been trying to track him down since last Autumn and look like doing so for the foreseeable future .. as we humans spend 25 years of our lives asleep we don’t have much time to find Jubal, extract his secrets, and spread by word of mouth the good news about LiTTLe MACHiNe. But we are doing our best.
From Crystal Palace to York, Covent Garden to Dartmoor, Cambridge to Ledbury, we speed to the next concert: in mid March to the Chagword Festival in the tiny town of Chagford on the edge of Dartmoor, under fire from weather Gods all the way, thunder, hail, deluge, to a terrific response in the packed-out Jubilee Hall, where we saw our audience clearly – who they are – young, older, old; lovers of poetry, bad jokes and jumping music. (Apparently Chagford has the most radioactive toilet in the world, due to the vast amount of Radon seeping up from the granite. Perhaps that explains the radiant response). We have so far avoided the sort of crowd blues poet Son House encountered when playing juke joints with Robert Johnson, “Guys would fight all the time, kill up each other”, but one thing we knew in advance about Chagford residents was that they sometimes shoot poets.
The Royalist poet and MP, Sir Sydney Godolphin, was shot in the porch of the Three Crowns during the Civil War. He haunts the pub but maybe we laid his ghost with our settings of poems designed to resurrect the dead. (There is an Italian saying, about the tree from which a violin is made, ‘When I am alive I am silent, when I am dead I sing’. This is what we do for those long-gone poets whose work we try to enliven with music).
In York for the Literary Festival, crossing the snow-buried steppes of the Midlands to get to the Theatre Royal by 2pm to set-up for a performance with Carol Ann Duffy. As we were completing our preparations Ms D appeared silently from the wings, and we took up our conversation with her as if the months since Keele last year had been a few hours. She directed us to, “Play the new one” and so, in an empty auditorium, we sang the love poem ‘Valentine’ to its author, and it was the best live performance of it we had given. Later the Laureate (who never wears Olympic laurel) gave her usual relaxed, powerful and enjoyable reading and then introduced us, “I am the warm-up act for LiTTLe MACHiNe”, and we laid 55 minutes of music and poetry on the 500 strong crowd.
Afterwards much interesting planning and ideas for future work with Carol Ann. Several of the crowd eagerly buying CD’s were from York University. One, Mr Nicholas Moody, wrote this review of the show for the Yorker magazine, another remarked that she wished she’d learnt about poetry “That way” at school .. once again the limitations of confining poetry to rarely read books and fear-inducing exam syllabuses were apparent. We want to make poetry sing as it did when the poet was writing it and chanting the lines to their four walls. Not a ‘Lament for the Makars’, (in which the poet Dunbar mourns long forgotten, dead poets of his time, ROWLL, STOBO, WINTOUN, BLIND HARRY, MERSEUR, TRAILL) but a celebration of poems, enabling them to sing for themselves anew, (though I doubt even LiTTLe MACHiNe could make these formidable names live again!)
At Chagford we were seen by Chris Mullin, MP and author, two enthusiastic ladies from the Arvon Foundation, and we have recently been seen by and chatted with Mimi Khalvati and Julia Bird of the Poetry School too. We realise our most effective strategy for getting gigs is to do gigs: WORD OF MOUTH does the rest, which is appropriate considering WORD OF MOUTH is what we do. When Festival organisers consider booking us they wonder, ‘Is it a band? Is it a bunch of poets? Is it music? Is it poetry?’ But when people actually hear and see us they immediately ‘get it’, and spread the good news – the gospel of LiTTLe MACHiNe – even in this cold Lent and Eastertide.
Chris 28.3.13
To make God laugh tell him your plans for tomorrow.
Manchester Literarature festival October 6th 8pm: in a room resembling a small gothic church, within the gigantic cathedral of Manchester Town Hall, Carol Ann Duffy’s playful, generous imagination lets us and two hundred others in on the thoughts of Mrs Tiresias, Mrs Faust and Mrs Midas. Then, having shown complete control of her material and her audience, the laureate turns to us sitting, slightly apprehensively, in the dark by the stage,
Well it’s my great privilege to be the warm-up act for LiTTLe MACHiNe. You’re in for such a treat. It's a long time since I heard something so exciting in poetry; I think the last thing that excited me as much was the "Poems on the Underground", which seemed a wonderful way of delivering poetry, and this band are THAT. They are available for bookings in schools and gigs throughout the country so please see them afterwards - LiTTLe MACHiNe!
Follow that! We managed it, much helped by a sympathetic sound engineer, and an attentive audience – great review of the show at http://manchesterliterature.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/nectar-for-ears.html
Carol Ann reads as if without taking a breath, because her poems follow the natural rhythms of English speech, and you don’t notice the breaths someone takes when they are talking to you. Breath is another pulse, a beat. The first thing we do when we separate from our breathing mother is take a deep breath, then yell .. our breaths join to hers, hers to her mother’s, all the way back to the first breath. The iambic pentameter is said to be the natural line in English verse because it takes one gentle exhalation to utter .. and sung lines are also controlled by the requirement to take a breath, and then a breather.
Just like a dead man laying about don’t wanna fall short or turn inside out (‘I Don’t Wanna Lose, Lose You’, ZZ Top)
Iambs, dactyls, trochees – it depends how you say or sing these lines by Don William Gibbons – but, however you deliver them, each line is a breath: songs and poems follow the same rules. It is no accident that Saint Cecilia is the patron Saint of poetry and music.
Returning to the Underground: Orpheus gets past all the barriers into the underworld with his lyre music - his lyrics. He charms Hades and Persephone into releasing his lover Eurydice with another sung poem and only his (understandable!) doubts about the trustworthiness of the Deities of the Dead prevent him from resurrecting her. Eurydice is the beautiful buried poem that LiTTLe MACHiNe tries to bring into the light, using Stratocaster, Martin, electric bass and keyboards, instead of a tortoise-shell and sheep-sinew lyre. (But see ‘Eurydice’ in ‘The World’s Wife’, in which Eurydice is very reluctant to rejoin her self-obsessed poet, with his images, metaphors, similis, octaves and sextets, quatrains and couplets, elegies, limericks, villanelles ..)
After the performance a young Greek woman surprised Wal with,
μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί᾽ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾽ ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ᾽ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν 5οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, Διὸς δ᾽ ἐτελείετο βουλή, ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.
the opening dactylic hexameters of the Iliad in the original Greek, which all Greeks learn at school. Wal in turn surprised her with, Sing Goddess of the anger of Peleus’ son Achilles and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians, hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished since that time when first there stood in division of conflict Atreus’s son Agammenon, the lord of men and brilliant Achilles
which he knows as they are the opening lines of our show EPIC, a mad dash through three thousand years of poetry, from Homer and Sappho to Larkin and Duffy. We put this on at the Herne Hill Festival recently, to a packed house of all ages – to say it was received with enthusiasm (suitably Greek – the entry of the God) is an understatement.
Somewhere, during a busy October, delectable and decadent MADAM LIFE made her appearance, with Apollo Kitharoidos, God of Music and the lyre, on the cover. Meet her at our performances and on Amazon. Here is what theartsdesk thinks - http://www.theartsdesk.com/new-music/cd-little-machine- From the Manchester Literature Festival with the English laureate back up the M1/ M6 to play at the party at the end of the Birmingham Book Festival, with the Scottish ‘Makar’, Liz Lochhhead, and Liz Berry. Before that we ran our first FREE THE POEM WORKSHOP: (Sometimes it seems poems are imprisoned inside books. We try and release them so they reach people in a different way. Bring a poem and we will work together to find music that gives the words a new life). We did not know what to expect but Julie, Roz, Annette, Roy and Liz Lochhead herself all turned up with more than enough poems and ideas. From the moment Roy got off his chair, knelt down and started reciting his extraordinary, mysterious verse, followed by ballads, sonnets, and Liz improvising a refrain to her poem Listen, we were on a roll. We improvised different sorts of music for all the poems, and filmed them being performed – once all is ready these will be sent to the poets, put on YouTube and, hopefully, completed. In the evening, after engrossing, beguiling, moving readings by the two poets – one in strong Scots, the other in rich Dudley - we got up and played a long set in a big, high-ceilinged, echoing room where apparently once custard was made. The sound was far from yellow and soggy but sharp and silvery. We began with Liz Lochhead on stage reading ‘My Way’, then we played our version, and Liz showed us how to move to the steady shuffle groove we laid down. Writer Joseph Sale wrote a wonderful review of the Birmingham show on his blog.
How many sandals did Alighieri wear-out in the course of his poetic work, wandering about the goat-paths of Italy? The step, linked to breathing and saturated with thought. (Osip Mandelstam on Dante, quoted in ‘On Poetry’ by Glyn Maxwell). Dante’s – and Shelley’s – Terza Rima twists and coils down the page in a recurring pattern – like breath. We don’t wander (shuffle?) about the goat paths of the midlands but race back and forth in Sappho, our big Ford, propelled by diesel and the collective pointed boots of Billy, Dusty and Frank. Keele and Sheffield next, more M1/ M6, then the Roxy in Borough, EPIC at Emmanuel College , Cambridge (with Carol Ann Duffy), the British Library + full wallets, and a couple of evenings with the great John Hegley to finish the year with a riff, a poem and a joke ..
As I sd to my friend, because I am always talking, - John, I
sd, which was not his name, the darkness sur- rounds us, what
can we do against it, or else, shall we & why not, buy a goddamn big car,
drive, he sd, for christ’s sake, look out where yr going.
(I KNOW A MAN, by Robert Creeley)
CHRIS.
Have Mercy Miss Percy
Rocketing from one performance to the next fuelled by ZZ Top's La Futura:
October 6th, at Chiddingly in dark deep Sussex, we played the Poetry Festival at the 6 Bells, in a space so small we took up as much space as the very appreciative audience, and could hardly see each other through the forest of oak pillars holding the roof up. Martyn Barker on percussion for the first time, he was all set up and ready to go by the time we arrived and his steady playing made a lot of difference to our sound ..
Next morning we were at Keats House by 9am, where Maureen made us very welcome. What a place to play our settings of ‘Bright Star’ and ‘We'll Go No More A' Roving’. Cold sunshine in the garden and silence in the rooms, where we sang without amplification. For me it was a powerful experience - Keats is there, just as he is in the room over the Spanish Steps, and in the Protestant graveyard in Rome, next to a Roman general's pyramid tomb. 'Here Lies One Whose Name Was Writ In Water'. We spent several hours recording, with Brenda Emmanus from BBC London TV News, relaxed and charming, expertly putting us at our ease. Clips appeared at 1.30 and 6.50, curiously different to each other .. we are really hoping Maureen will get us back to Keats House for a possible evening with John Hegley.
Shorty and Slim standing on the corner, trying to work out how to make another quarter – at least that's what Billy Gibbons might be saying, hard to be sure from that rasping Texas drawl .. if LiTTLe MACHiNe doesn't work out we are going to turn into a ZZ Top covers band. Blew down to Cheltenham and back in record time, Wal and Steve rolling in the front seat to the swampy churning sound of overdriven humbuckers and one note bass lines. We were a bit nervous about whether we were going to pull a crowd, so didn't ask about ticket sales until just before the gig when we were told 100 people were expected. The Studio, the venue we were in, was a large, chilly, marquee but we warmed it up OK. Carol Ann Duffy introduced us by telling the audience, who had never heard or seen us before, that we were the 'Best poetry and music band in the world' .. so we had something to live up to .. The response during and after the set, when we were approached by a lot of fascinated poetry lovers waving bank notes in exchange for CD's, indicates we did it. Gillian Clarke was delighted with our setting of 'Overheard In County Sligo'. After we had played that, and Liz Lochhead's 'My Way', the formidable Ms Duffy, sitting in the front row enquired, 'Where's my one?' and we obediently did ' Mean Time'.
A good review of the CD from Mark Edwards in the Sunday Times
Which encouragingly had a 'BUY' link at the bottom pointing to the Amazon download (available to buy on Oct 14th).
...but I like this, from Erica Wagner's FOOTNOTES in the Times, Saturday October 6th:
How did you spend National Poetry Day? We spent some of it listening to the new CD by LiTTLe MACHiNe - Carol Ann Duffy's called them 'The most brilliant music and poetry band I've seen in decades'. Rock out with Adam Lay Y’bounden (Anon c1400), float away with the harmonies on Dylan Thomas's Do Not Go Gentle Into That Goodnight. Try it: you'll like it. little-machine.com
We all searched the paper and failed to find this, but my daughter in Adis Ababa read it online. She loves the CD, so LiTTLe MACHiNe is there, 6000 feet up in Ethiopia, too.
We have been thinking of various extended metaphors for what we do, prompted by the idea that we are rescuing famous - but rarely read - poems from imprisonment in books, schools, Universities, the 'Canon': most people make a brief, puzzled acquaintance with poetry in a lesson and then, like Maths and Chemistry, it is respectfully forgotten. One image we like is that our music is a kiss that wakes the sleeping beauty that is the poem. At Keats House Brenda asked whether we thought poetry was the 'Cinderella' of the Arts - beautiful but downtrodden and poor, compared to say cinema, TV, or even the novel. If poetry is Cinderella then yes, she does go out at night, loses her shoes, and other things, but she doesn't need a prince to help her find her belongings, nor does she have to be back by midnight. Or maybe she is 'Philosophy's sister, the one that wear's makeup', (American poet Jennifer Grotz), and glass slippers and lipstick, and in her bag a hip flask and a crown shaped like the new moon .. not at all shy or retiring, she wants to get out there to be seen and heard – and that’s where we come in ..
I’m Fingering My Big Black Shiny Nine!
CHRIS
Bright Star (by LiTTLeMACHiNePoetry)
Bright Star - 'The Last Sonnet' by John Keats (1795 -- 1821) From the album 'Madam Life' by LiTTLe MACHiNe www.little-machine.com The poem was written in 1820 on Keats's winter voyage to Rome when he knew he had left England and his beloved for ever. A haunting plea for immortality in the arms of his love from a man who would die of Consumption at the age of 25 a few months after completing it. Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art-- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-- No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
EZRA IN VENICE etc.
Went to Venice, to finish off an exploration begun some years back. We looked round the Jewish quarter, the original ‘ghetto’,(a Venetian word for iron worker). This is in Canareggio, a quiet, beautiful area of canals, lanes and the three oldest synagogues in Europe. Venice, especially at night, is like being in Othello or Romeo & Juliet, (there is a bridge in Dusodoro where the youths of rival families used to meet regularly to fight, watched by the locals): quiet, narrow alleys, no cars or scooters, dim lights, shadows, footsteps, and the tall buildings, hundreds of years old, crowding in.. Off the main island lies Isola San Michelle, the cemetery island. Here we found Ezra Pound’s grave, after much searching. Pound was mute for most of his last years, it seems he lost his voice as the shame and remorse for what he said on Italian radio during the war overcame him. There is no doubt that he supported Mussolini’s Fascists, because he thought they would introduce a new economic system doing away with ‘usury’ – lending money at interest. Pound had many weird preoccupations and this was the most dangerous one because it lead him to, or connected with, his anti-semitism. Eliot also makes repellent remarks about Jews in his writings, but Pound’s were broadcast during the holocaust, and many Jews were deported to the camps from Italy, mainly after the Italian capitulation and the subsequent German take-over – see Primo Levi. This makes Pound an awkward character for poetry enthusiasts: his enormous energy supported imagist and modernist artists such as Eliot, Ford Madox Ford, HD, T.E Hulme and many others. He was also a great poet himself, though he wrote too much and his range of style is bewildering: from the fin de siècle symbolism & aestheticism of his early poems in ‘Personae’ and ‘Ripostes’ to the impenetrable (to me) avant-garde ‘Cantos’. My favourite works by Ezra are the semi-translations of Chinese (mostly Taoist & Buddhist) poems in ‘Cathay’. He has been attacked for inaccuracy by sinologists, but his versions are real, beautiful, poems, unlike the no-doubt correct but laboured efforts of (the great) Arthur Whaley.
TAKING LEAVE OF A FRIEND Blue mountains to the north of the walls, White river winding about them; Here we must make separation and go out through a thousand miles of dead grass.
Mind like a floating white cloud, Sunset like the parting of old acquaintances Who bow over their clasped hands at a distance. Our horses neigh to each other as we are departing.
Back in London the fine new CD is here, 7 boxes of them. Sending them off to Poetry Editors, Magma, Poetry Review, the North etc, hoping for a review, maybe bookings at poetry events they are involved in etc. And also sending the required copies to the organisations that manage the Estates of Philip Larkin (Faber), Dylan Thomas (David Higham) and Sassoon (Barbara Levy) – whose work we use on the CD and who are credited on the cover. I also sent a copy to Dennis and Diana Silk, who allowed us to use Dennis’s recording of Siegfried Sassoon. I hoped, in my letter, that this charming, helpful and very respectable couple would not be offended by our efforts – or Larkin’s expletives. Nothing beats sending a $20 bill to New York for the rights to use ‘Red Wheel Barrow’ on our first CD though ..
We sold copies of both the two CD’s at our Sunday afternoon (23.9.12) performance in Bristol, the opening event of the Bristol Poetry Festival. A long drive there and back in a deluge but very enjoyable playing in the Cox and Baloney tea rooms + clothes & book shop.
Even the 17 year olds celebrating a birthday seemed, while a bit non-plussed by our setting up and singing and playing right next to their table, to like our music – as did the rest of the audience. Next up – Chiddingly, Cheltenham, Manchester ...
A friend of mine, who is a great walker, came to see us play and bought a CD: he will be passing by Sassoon’s grave with some fellow hikers soon and intends to stop, and play ‘The Dug-Out’ and ‘Anthem For Doomed Youth’ to Siegfried, down there in his trench.
Chris. 24.9.12