By Basil Bunting

Review by Marina Funcasta

Having never heard of Briggflatts, hearing it described as a poem on the scale of The Waste Land and its author placed alongside T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound certainly raised my expectations. Markedly Modernist in tone, the mythology surrounding Basil Bunting’s autobiographical epic is fascinating; the poem itself, however, occasionally falls a little flat.

This is no fault of performer Simon McBurney, whose command of pace and movement carries the audience through even the poem’s densest passages. He and the presumed director, whose name is not included in the program, clearly share a strong rapport. The production’s early sections bring our unnamed director into the performance as interviewer, excavator and symbolic instigator, though I occasionally wondered whether these interruptions hindered the flow more than they enhanced it.

But not all additions were disruptive. Bringing audience members onto the Coronet stage created an intimacy that suited both the venue and the poem. Even when Briggflatts disappears into its epic digressions, the production reminds us of our shared presence in the room. Bunting emerges as a poet deeply connected to his audience.

Concerned with the extent of biographical relevance, what the production does less successfully is engage with the darker elements of our poet’s life and indeed writings. Bunting’s treatment of Penny can feel uncomfortable, and while he compares favourably to some of his anti-Semitic and fascist contemporaries, his own reputation was far from spotless. Dead Poets Live is not designed as biography, but given its early engagement with questions of interpretation, I found myself wishing for a less mythologised portrait of the poet.

Even so, hearing this remarkable poem performed before such an attentive audience was a privilege. In a literary canon crowded with familiar names, there is always pleasure in discovering a new and moving gem.

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