“Her Jazz” for Pussy Riot

I recently wrote a poem to show support for the Russian artists Pussy Riot. Russian translation is by Cat Paronjan.

You can buy the eBook “Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot” or a beautiful print-on-demand version. 

I read this poem at a Manchester Poems for Pussy Riot reading. It’s at the end of the reading, (about 11 minutes).

 ”Her Jazz” for Pussy Riot

Sonic temples blasting out sound’s whiplash
across time and space; up close to the speaker stacks
at Manchester Boardwalk in, when was it, ‘93?
Listening to Huggy Bear play ‘Her Jazz,’
like a slow fuse burning across land and ocean,
bouncing off the satellites –
into a different consciousness, where the worst
a girl can do is pick up a guitar, put on a hood
and thrash our her version of her jazz –
under the unguarded eye of Mother Russia,
for music has the right to have children
and there they are, Riot Grrl prodigy,
rebels without a pause, waking up this morning
in a jailhouse-rocksteady-all-my-colours-
wop-bop-a-lu-bop-white-riot-kick-out-the-jams-
verse-chorus-verse                               silence
silence, but the noise outside is deafening.

Её джаз для Пусси Райoт

Храмы звука хлещут отголосками
по времени – пространству, прямо у колонок,
на улицах Манчестера, году, – когда же это было? – где-то в 93-м?
слушая, как Хагги Беар играл “Её джаз”.
Как медленно-горящий фитиль по суше и по морю тянется
и запускает спутники с земли
в сознание совсем другого рода, где в худшем случае,
девчoнка, нахлабучив капюшон, возмет гитару в руки
и выбьет из неё свою интерпретацию “Её джаза”,
под тем беспечным взором Матушки-России;
ведь музыке разрешено потомство,
и вот, они, талантливые дети Рaйот Гррл,
бунтари без передышки, сегодня просыпающиеся
под тюремным-рокстеди-все-цвета-мои-уоп-боп-а-лу-боп-белый-бунт-выкинь-коленца
куплет-припев-куплет                          тишина
тишина, а снаружи-то шум оглушительный.

Audio: Playing Solitaire for Money

“Playing Solitaire for Money” was launched at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester in January 2011, alongside JT Welsch’s “Orchids”. Will Carr, from the Foundation introduced us, and kindly recorded the performance. It lasts just under 20 minutes and is available to listen to or as a podcast download (To Download: click on Info, then on the collection name, and this will take you to the Soundcloud site, and the down arrow allows you to download and save the file.)

1. Anthony Burgess (unpublished)
2. My Monster
3. Frontier
4. The Death of the Grand Gesture
5. Late Love
6. The Maze
7. The Hidden Species of the Foja Mountains (unpublished)
8. In the Harlequin (unpublished)