As part of the Off the Shelf Festival of Writing and Reading, the Caffeteria, Leopold Street, held an evening of poetry performed by the Saga Lout and Twirly Bird.
In reality the Saga Lout is John Turner, a professional and performer with 30 years of experience. The Twirly Bird is Felicity Skelton, also a published writer. Both are Creative Writing professors at Sheffield Hallam University. This was their first outing as a duo. Their poetry dealt with issues facing the over 60s. The evening started with the poetry after which there was a discussion about the performance.
It was pleasant to see, on entering, the Caffeteria for the recital that it was well lit and the audience affable. This attitude towards performance poetry was reflected throughout the evening.
None of the poems were introduced by name but instead started with brief interaction between the performer’s alter-egos. The use of dress and gestures reflected their individual personas: the Saga Lout wore a cap and Wayfarer style glasses while the Twirly Bird wore comfortable shoes and clearly visible, skin-coloured knee-highs.
These personas were useful in exploring the ideas of age although at times they seemed overdone.
The first two poems in the set explained the meaning of the names Saga Lout and Twirly Bird. The Saga Lout is, apart from a play on the phrase ‘lager lout’ and Saga magazine, an older man who does not seem to have grown up.
The Twirly Bird is a moniker relating to the Senior Citizen bus pass. It can only be used after 9.00 am otherwise you are ‘t’early’. It was pleasing to see during the ‘Twirly Bird’ poem that the reference to ‘the student who had been out all night’ was not followed by a negative judgement. Ageism was not on the agenda at this event.
It was pointed out during the discussion following the performance that there was a specific audience for this poetry.
Understandably, a 23-year-old student was not part of the target group. However, the audience that were there enjoyed it a great deal and there was much head-nodding in agreement with the points being made by the performers.
Much of the poetry was set to music which meant that there was room for audience participation which was very well received.
My one criticism would be that this exploration of age tended towards cliché. There were repeated comments about reaping the rewards of sensible monetary decisions. Yet the numbers of pensioners who are currently living in poverty was not mentioned.
Equally, there was no mention of mortality, the number of older people who are full-time carers or suffering from age-related diseases.
The most affecting poem was the one that contained the most cutting observation. It dealt with the Saga Lout’s mid-life crisis: the comments about his quoting Hegel to impress young women and writing a paper about his increasing depression at the onset of old-age were precise and specific to a university professor.
This particular poem revealed more about the difficulties of re-affirming one’s identity as you age more than a poem about having a senior moment.
It was, however, an amusing evening and certainly a gentle introduction to performance poetry.
It suggested the potential poetry has for dealing with difficult issues without patronising the audience and was a fitting event for the beginning of literary festival.