Jean Toomer's Cane adapted, Bloomsday, Alison Brackenbury, Museums in lockdown
Jean Toomer's Cane adapted, Bloomsday in Dublin, poetry from Alison Brackenbury, Museums during lockdown
In 1923, African American author Jean Toomer published the novel Cane. It wasn鈥檛 a best seller at the time but is now held as a modernist classic and a central work of The Harlem Renaissance. A new radio adaptation is to be broadcast on Radio 4. We speak to playwright Janice Okoh and score composer, soul singer Carleen Anderson.
Today is Bloomsday, when Dubliners celebrate James Joyce鈥檚 Ulysses, the novel about Irish newspaper advertising salesman Leopold Bloom wandering round the city. As Ireland is emerging from lockdown events are moving online and for Zoomsday actor Se谩n Doyle is MC-ing a Joycean Punk Cabaret with an alternative presentation of extracts, songs, poems as well as Joyce鈥檚 saucier love letters. Se谩n joins us from Dublin just before the event begins.
Lockdown came quickly and affected arts organisations around the country with barely any warning. Venues closed their doors and hung up the 鈥渃losed until further notice鈥 signs. But what鈥檚 happening behind the closed doors? We speak to Joanna Meacock from the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow and Anna Renton from Penlee House in Penzance.
For one week only Alison Brackenbury is Front Row鈥檚 poet in residence. The colsure of museums during Coronavirus has inspired Alison to write new poems about some of those she has visited. Every day this week we will be hearing one of her Museums Unlocked poems. In today鈥檚 Alison takes us to Aghanistan via a painting in the Museum of Somerset in Taunton Castle.
Presenter: John Wilson
Producer: Julian May
Studio Manager: John Boland
Last on
Museums under Lockdown
School is Out, 1889
Oil on Canvas, 105 x 119 cm
, Glasgow
Carleen Anderson
颁补苍别听is on Radio 4听as part of the Electric Decade season on 20 Jun at 3 pm
Alison Brackenbury
by Elizabeth Butler
Credit: Tate
Alison Brackenbury, Poet in Residence at Front Row this week, reflects on how she came to write her听Museum Unlocked听poems, one of which she will be introducing and reading each evening.
The horse's mouth听
Her blistered
muzzle skims dry ground.
Tongue lolls
past bit.听 Cracked hooves have found
the baked path
to the fort.
The rider鈥檚
leather palms grip round
his
pommel.听 He has dropped the reins.
Scarlet sash
swings, silk鈥檚 battered skeins.
One red eye
rolls, his dead pile plains.
One man, not
caught.
The men who
clatter through the gate
are also
mounted, smart and straight.
The General鈥檚
grey, in fear,
or puzzlement,
lets fine head tilt.
The rider in
the red skull cap,
rough Afghan
sheepskin on his back,
does not part
lips.听 Though his voice cracks
they will not
hear.
To shaded
rooms, on a tape鈥檚 loop
a young voice
from the present troop
speaks level,
calm, on course:
鈥楩or me, it鈥檚
Queen and Country!鈥櫶 Scoop
the sagging
man.听 How, in such heat,
can Queen or
country beat retreat?
Ask
Generals.听 Ask recruits鈥 torn feet.
Now ask the
horse.
Bloomsday Festival
Photo credit: Bloomsday Festival
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