Mornings and Midnights – Rommi Smith at the Ilkley Literature Festival, Oct 2007

The poems are taken from Rommi’s book of the same title (ISBN 1-900715-95-3 Peepal Press 2006 £7.99) and based around a loose narrative of a performer, Gloria, moving in early jazz and blues circles, following her emotional journey through to a realisation that the only person who can tell her story is herself.  Particularly evocative are poetic moments based on Gloria being falsely reported as dead (just as Peggy Lee was in real life).  ‘It’s a shame it take a death, to make you mindful there was love’.   The work abounds with rich similes and imagery – ‘taxi-dancing’, ‘you looked like Christmas in a cocktail dress’.

 The message of finding a voice and having the courage not to quell it is nowhere more pronounced than in a poem depicting how Bessie Smith fended off the Klu Klux Clan by singing back at them.  ‘She said she would see them for what they were – laundry… white-sheeted arrogance’. 

 The audience were in addition treated to new work, written specially for ILF, based on Rommi’s trip to Gambia, earlier this year, drawing upon links with the slave trade and the bi-centenary of the introduction of the first laws moving towards ending this.  This work represents the fruit of a collective between Rommi, Ed Heaton, Si McGrath and Matt Lazenby, and involves stunning screened visuals, especially of river images.  The culmination comes in ‘Voices of Black Atlantis’, about slaves who drowned on their captive journey.  ‘Waves became the bed in which you sleep … the afro-shoal of thought.’

Overall this performance was a very rare blend of both delightful and deeply disturbing. 

Helen Shay, Oct 07