When Bernard won the top poetry gong last week, it was a validation for performance poetry – and for the poet’s inquiry into the 1981 fire, told in a constantly evolving poem
The awarding of this year’s Ted Hughes prize for new poetry to Jay Bernard could be seen as a step-change in the long running, and increasingly sour, debate over the relative value of poetry for page and stage.
The 30-year-old Londoner, who uses the pronoun “they”, won the £5,000 prize with a moving and timely multimedia sequence exploring the unresolved issues arising from the New Cross “massacre” – a fire at a 16th birthday party in south London in 1981, which killed 13 young black people.
We are facing an adjectival crisis, as much as anything else. How do we speak? And from what position?
Continue reading...
