I was invited to MC this gorgeous event on Friday evening at the Crescent Arts Centre, by its instigator and mediator, Natasha Cuddington. It was a lovely event, and a pure pleasure to introduce it.

Art emerges out of the background of a life, in a way that is similar to how a signal emerges from noise. All of us are shaped by chance encounters that mediate and channel our voices into different expressions of sound and meaning. The full title of the event Correspondences: Collaboration, Noise & Innovative Poetries gives a flavour of the mix and its integration. The performances evolved from the background noise of the artists’ lives through the chiming of correspondences that transformed the original soundings into signal works of art that shimmered with new valence.

Matt Kirkham read from his latest collection  Thirty-Seven Theorems of Incompleteness (Templar, 2019), as well as new work. He was followed a collaborative poetry performance by Zara Meadows and Alanna Offield. Their work referenced pop cultural moments, particularly those associated with social media, in a perceptive and irreverent fashion. That was followed by the performance of a recent collaboration by Eilish Martin and Natasha Cuddington, entitled “Didn’t get round to Nick Cave’s Carnage”. As well as being inspired by Nick Cave’s album, this collaboration was also suggested to Natasha by book “Hearing”, a listening-in between Lyn Hejinian and Leslie Scalapino, that explores “ongoing existence in a phenomenal world”. Finally, we had the pleasure of “Correspondences”, which is a soundscape and piano composition by Shannon Kuta Kelly, that performs Eilish’s and Natasha’s collaboration both vocally and musically.

The work and its performance had evolved beautifully out of the background noise of the artists’ lives through the chiming of correspondences between them. As audience, we had the pleasure of absorbing how the original soundings had been transformed into signal works of art that shimmered with new valence.

Many thanks to Natasha, Eilish, Shannon, Alanna, Zara & Matt. Also to the Crescent, and particularly the technical staff who ensured everything ran smoothly; and of course to the audience whose attention and appreciation helped bring the performance of the work into its full expression.

Shannon Kuta Kelly rehearsing “Correspondences”, which is a soundscape and piano composition (with accompanying visual).