A Life Less Audenary

Yeah check it. One two one two. You’ve gotta check yaself before ya wreck yaself. I’m here wid my main man, Mister Double-you Haitch Smith.

Or to put it another way, I’m just back from the British Library-hosted readings of poetry by WH Auden, today being the centenary of his birth.

Well the great and the good, or in this case a multitude of pale faced and serious looking people, crammed into the Shaw Theatre in various states of balding (men and women)
and beardage (men and women); there was a yarmulke, a couple of Pinter hats, an elderly lady with a magnificent Bardot style reddy coloured bouffant hairdo and big vintage 70s style glasses, and a fair smattering of homosexual couplings and Americans in exile.

Well I’m afraid to report that it was all very Audenary.

Whether it was the heat in the packed theatre, or the soporific torporous tones of the first couple of readers, but when the lights went down, I just could not keep my eyes open.

Things improved with the next two readers, though whether it was the sudden blast of cool air con or the improved diction of the readers I could not say.

Things then went back downhill as people’s mobiles went off (in a poetry reading oi!) and speakers mumbled.

Added to all this is the fact that I find listening to poetry not the easiest thing to do – you can’t re-read a line and any lapse in concentration and you are lost. Added to this Auden (as read here) is not the easiest poet anyway. The poems which worked best were the jokey sing song ones with nice rhymes.

In the end I found it best to stop trying to process the words, and just to listen, as though to a piece of music, and let it wash over me - the better readers managed to convey a sense of what I would call educated melancholy.