tenby

Tenby born poet Simone Mansell
Broome was joined by guitarists Richard
Ellin and Paul Uden at a packed Caffe
Vista for an evening of sparkling and
engaging poetry and music.
Poetry read out loud can be a risky
business. For one person to hold the
attention of an audience throughout
the course of an evening requires
poetry which makes an immediate
connection and then never lets the
audience go. Simone judged the mood
of her audience perfectly. Her poetry is
thoughtful, ingenious, fun.

Her response to life's contingencies is less analytical, more emotional,
and she writes of herself, her family, and those who surround her with
insight and warmth. Observation and description are vivid and
detailed, the pace quickly moving, and the poems infused with great
vitality and immediacy. Simone took us through the sadnesses,
excitements, joys, and disappointments of family and social life as
refracted through such happenings as the discovery of a departed
relative's diaries, a wedding, lunch party, love affair, funeral, and
certain other poignant moments out of the times of growing up and of
growing old. All this spiced by the frequent presence in her poems of
the opposite sex, if not lust itself, and continually enlivened by
humour and wit distinctively her own.

The music of guitarists Richard Ellin and Paul Uden provided an ideal
complement to the words. Together they contributed a discreet
musical background to several of Simone's spoken poems. In one, the
suggestion of flamenco underlay a poem of Spanish subject matter. At
other times the two played by themselves, wordlessly without Simone.
Their music is skilfully improvised, a musical pattern-making intricately
interwoven by the two instruments, and always highly enjoyable.
There was in the music an element of the minimalism of Steve Reich
or, in visual terms, the variations and repetitions of a Bridget Riley
canvas. It wasn't at all difficult to sense on the part of the audience
a desire to hear more of them. The evening was, in more ways than
one, an occasion of fusion, and of great fun.

Robert Smith