Few poets could so comfortably fill a venue as grand as the Dome’s Concert Hall – but then few share the stature of poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy.
More of a performance than a recital, the Glasgow-born poet had vast swathes of the audience creasing in their seats with her acerbic wit.
A singular talent, her words engage on a visceral level as she reimagined myths and fables, often taking a put-upon wife’s perspective.
The irritable Mrs Aesop reluctantly endures her husband relentless moralising over trite observations.
Mrs Midas can no longer be intimate with her king husband after he gets his wish that everything he touches turns to gold.
And Faust is reshaped as a modern parable of capitalist greed, consumerism and spiritual emptiness.
After plenty of uproar, Duffy’s delivery breathing life into the most mundane of set-ups, she ends with a poignant poem to her late mother, a bereavement which said left her deaf for two years.
The heart-breaking Premonitions saw her recollect the terminal decline in reverse, undoing the terrible pain of bereavement and focusing on her vitality, humour and life.
Duffy’s tremendous Brighton Festival reading was followed by an enjoyable performance from LiTTLe MACHiNe, a three-piece band which lovingly put the words of Byron, Shelley and Shakespeare to anything from folk to electronica.
Five stars
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