Just What is a Poetry Brothel?
An intrepid HIP reporter went to investigate
I should admit to being rather a virgin when it comes to Poetry Brothels. To be honest, I had no idea what to expect. The event, at The Beacon Arts Centre high up on West Hill, on a cold and windy Thursday night, proved to be quite extraordinary.
In a darkened, candle lit room, an expectant audience waited amid a hubbub of chatter for what was to be Hastings’ first experience of poetry in stockings. What unfolded was a long way from a dreary set of poetry readings; rather it was essentially one beguiling performance told by six exotic players.
CREDIT: Louise Whitham
The chatter of the crowd was brought to a silence by the emergence from behind a velvet curtain of the impressively tall figure of Bibi Synthe (aka Debra Watson). Bibi was, in a way, the madame – clad in a hugging burgundy bodice-jacket and stockings, she took control. (I discovered afterwards that she was the creative director of the whole mysterious cabaret.) There was no introductory chit chat: instead, Bibi launched straight into her poem Spiral: a strange, hushed piece about interior space with “doors that don’t open” and “staircases to nowhere.” And somehow the spell was cast; we were now in thrall to a subversive and sensory costume drama, sewn together with words. Each reading a new emotional scene.
Behind the antique piano sat a ghostly young man with Byronic locks and an odd name: Blackbird, (aka Paul Shine.) His dark and moody piano playing provided a kind of plaintive soundscape for the wandering words. His own compositions were intriguing: situating lives trapped in the “same old movie” with odd moments of tenderness which just might be enough to “get us through December.”
Whilst most of the poets were happy to have their work buoyed up on Blackbird’s expansive piano chords, Galina (aka Jude Montagu) opted for raw unsupported space for her sung pieces. There was something undoubtedly powerful about her naked voice – not to mention the bizarre silver antennae on her head. But in some ways the drifting piano, and Henni’s expressive violin, formed a sort of thread through almost all of the poems and indeed the whole evening. Probably the most overtly political poet was Aflo.the poet.com. Intriguingly, the piano accompaniment to her rather angry poems was quite gentle – a counter-intuitive device that worked to fantastic effect. Her flow of words sprayed around our contemporary “burning” world: the sorry sad world in which “Sarah did not make it home.” Her whirl of words ultimately, and deliberately, devolved to a question Marvin Gaye asked many years ago: ‘What’s Going On?’ It may be an old question, but somehow it feels even more urgently in need of an answer.
Ms Naomi Wood, appeared to be something more like the Queen of the Fairies, as if the brothel was now somehow in in the deep, dark forest. Much of her work was about what she called the wisdom of the earth: the mystic lessons and gifts of nature that we are, of course, too clever to hear.
At the end of the evening, it was still hard to know what just happened. Bibi later explained that the concept of a Poetry Brothel originated from New York about a decade ago. This gig was actually the first major Poetry Brothel since the lockdown anywhere in the UK. Normally punters can request, and pay for, an intimate one-to-one reading but this particular aspect was not present on Thursday night, because of concerns over Covid. The key twist, however, as Bibi explained, is that “we sell our souls, not our bodies.”
Maybe there is an affinity between prostitutes and performers: Freddie Mercury once commented that he was “only a musical prostitute, dear” Poets are, I suppose, in some ways naked with their clothes on; or in this case with a few clothes on. But the parallels only go so far, of course. This programme draws more upon Moulin Rouge than modern slavery.
However one thinks about it, the evening definitely had a superb sense of pace to it: gradually picking up a little anger as it accelerated. There was maybe a feminist pulse behind that, but it was very far from being limited or defined by that. The people of Hastings (who had turned out in impressive numbers – for a cold midweek night) certainly seemed ready to go with whatever it would be. There will be more of such events: and judging by this crowd, the people of the town are more than ready to pay for it.
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