‘An Opera in Baghdad’ Porthcawl & Swansea performances

Two performances are to be given by Robert Minhinnick and Tracy Evans, with live music by Peter Morgan.

‘An Opera in Baghdad’ is a long poem, published in Minhinnick’s recent ‘New Selected Poems’ (Carcanet). It concerns a visit he made to Iraq in 1997, between the first and second Gulf Wars.

“This ‘opera’ is a lively and very musical dramatic poem”, says Robert Minhinnick. “It commemorates some of the extraordinary people I met on the visit.

“Entering and leaving Iraq meant arduous journeys across implacable desert. The experience has had a major effect on my writing, especially the visit to a deserted Babylon”.

“I was helping make a film about uranium, and hope scenes might be screened during the performances.”

Details:

Friday, April 5, 2013, 8pm.

Robert Minhinnick & Tracy Evans perform “An Opera in Baghdad” at the Green Room, Sustainable Wales, 5, James St., Porthcawl, CF36 3BG. £3. Open mic follows. Details: 01656 783962robertm@phonecoop.coop

Thursday, April 11, 2013, 7.30pm.

Robert Minhinnick & Tracy Evans perform “An Opera in Baghdad”, Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea SA1 1RR Details 01792 463980.

Clueless Dogs by Rhian Edwards

Rhian Edwards is the winner of the 2011 John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry and Audience Prize 2011“An astounding Welsh poet with performances that get you in the emotional gut…” – Ian McMillan on The Verb, Radio 3.Clueless Dogs is the first collection of poetry by Rhian Edwards. Already a noted performer of both her songs and poetry, this book confirms her startling talent.Poems like ‘The Welshman Who Couldn’t Sing’ chronicle a fraught childhood in Bridgend, south Wales, where the sensitive child escapes through imaginative games of ‘Playing Dead’ and ‘Broken Lifeboat’. Full of verve and humour, with a spiky syntax featuring hard-edged consonants, her language has a winning honesty and intensity. Later poems chronicle teenage lusts, student rivalries, damaged peers and tense situations. Although the author doesn’t flinch from ruthless depictions in which we are often implicated by her use of the second person ‘You’, there is an underlying sweetness, an elegiac thread most evident in the poems of maturity, like ‘Back to Bed’ ,’Safe’ ,’The Wrong Season’ full of both the sensual rapture of love and a clear-eyed realization of its inevitable disappointments. Witness the poet in performance and it is impossible not to hear her distinctive tones when reading her work. Clueless Dogs is a brave and beautiful first book.