{"id":212,"date":"2009-04-18T15:48:42","date_gmt":"2009-04-18T15:48:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=212"},"modified":"2014-02-11T23:00:15","modified_gmt":"2014-02-11T23:00:15","slug":"jane-draycott-at-manchester-central-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=212","title":{"rendered":"Jane Draycott at Manchester Central Library"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNoSpacing\" style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';\">Yesterday my wife and I heard Jane Draycott reading from her new collection, <em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">Over<\/em> . We\u2019d gone because I so admire the metrical skill and the strong yet subtle and delicate rhythmic and phonetic texture of <em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">The Night Tree<\/em>. I was hoping to hear some of the poems from that volume (particularly \u201cBecause tonight the beach\u201d). That didn\u2019t happen, but it was a marvellous occasion. The new work is clearly very good and the poet\u2019s reading style was a fine combination of a measured clarity that respected and reflected the metrical strength of the poems&#8217;\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';\">composition with an almost conversational lightness of touch that made them communicate very directly and intimately with the listener. Too often poems are spoken in a way that\u2019s either too highly cadenced, subordinating their contents to their form, or they\u2019re dramatised too strongly, with the result that they both lose shape and seem pushed at the listener, rather than spoken to him or thought aloud in his company. In this reading I felt that the quality of the performance both showed the sensitivity of Draycott\u2019s attitude to her audience and reflected the sensitivity of the verse itself. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNoSpacing\" style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;\">\n<p class=\"MsoNoSpacing\" style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';\">As we left, my wife wondered why we haven\u2019t heard Draycott\u2019s name in connection with the laureateship. We should.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday my wife and I heard Jane Draycott reading from her new collection, Over . We\u2019d gone because I so admire the metrical skill and the strong yet subtle and delicate rhythmic and phonetic texture of The Night Tree. I was hoping to hear some of the poems from that volume (particularly \u201cBecause tonight the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jane-draycott"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1443,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions\/1443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}