Sophisticated Boom Boom



The writer hadn't attended voiceworks (showcase of new music for voice) before. For several years this initiative, coordinated by Birkbeck Contemporary Poetics Research Centre with Guildhall School of Music & Drama, has been performed in association with Wigmore Hall - London's major international venue for song.

"The girls were wearing formals, the boys were wearing ties" in the words of Shadow Morton's song written for The Shangri-Las.

2011's performance in May featured seven songs including texts by poets SJ Fowler and James Wilkes. The writer had only just posted "Nature Boy" to this blog when Mr Wilkes explained all about an Urban Physic Garden plant project he was curating poetry contributions towards.

Delighted with possibility of designing new "nature poem" present writer plumbed for caraway plant - perhaps because this was first spice consumed by writer as small boy tasting his grandmother's caraway-seeded cake.

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us sequence