Now in their fourth year, poetry collective GOBS are well on their way to building a new generation of Notts verse-makers. This time, they're taking things to a global scale...
Nottingham is a city with a beating heart, bristling with life and filled with an abundance of talent, which is clear to see at work in GOBS Collective's latest show.
It’s a Saturday night and by the time EARTH starts I have been awake for 15 hours - but all that is forgotten as the house lights dim. The intro tells us “each word you hear is an invitation”, and from then on you know you have arrived at more than just a poetry reading. Developed by the absolutely formidable Bridie Squires and Cara Thompson (who opened the show with her brilliant Open Wide) in a short space of time with the guidance and support of East Midlands legend John Berkavitch, EARTH is a beautiful piece of ensemble theatre with poetry at its core.
It’s a Saturday night and by the time EARTH starts I have been awake for 15 hours - but all that is forgotten as the house lights dim. The intro tells us “each word you hear is an invitation”, and from then on you know you have arrived at more than just a poetry reading. Developed by the absolutely formidable Bridie Squires and Cara Thompson (who opened the show with her brilliant Open Wide) in a short space of time with the guidance and support of East Midlands legend John Berkavitch, EARTH is a beautiful piece of ensemble theatre with poetry at its core.
You can tell...that something is going incredibly well in the spaces these poems are being written.
Early doors in the show, I'm wowed by the poetics of Rachelle Foster, who tells us of her Earth, breaking it down into core, mantel and crust with three beautiful cantos about love, how its nylon jumper is itchy on the skin. Jennifer Brough's Weathering is a piece of poetry I’m sure I will be revisiting, with the line 'a smattering of stars explode/The darkness, as warm as the inside of a mouth' among other similarly brilliant visuals. You can tell when someone who has never read a poem on a stage before has the audacity to say something as beautiful as 'a boot bites the first of snow, while the sky disappears under steel grey' as Emma Price does, that something is going incredibly well in the spaces these poems are being written. The show is ended by the fantastic Grit by Cassie Bradley, who feels so at ease on stage delivering a marvellous poem that has 'Born In Notts etched through its core like Skeggy Sticks of rock'.
Each of the poets on this line up deserves much more than I am able to write in this short review for how they have taken the theme of EARTH and weaved their life through its meaning.
The cast of this show are a group of poets, some of whom have never read a poem on stage before, who have come together to embrace what it means to be on this planet - to be dizzy with gravity and have to put your energy somewhere. After I left, I wanted more, and this morning I get to sit with a copy of the beautiful zine of all the work that was performed last night, flicking through, remembering and reading and knowing there is something special happening in this city - as a very brilliant collective unfurls itself and produces something magic once again.
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