Poetry reading: Angela Gardner and Keri Finlayson, 10/11/09, National Library of Wales

Keri Finlayson and Angela Gardner's poetry reading was held under the title 'Other places'. 

Keri read poems from her collection Rooms, exploring an incident  in her grandmother's past in which she had fallen in love with one of a visiting cinema crew.  The poems are rooted firmly in the place and landscape of a Cornish fishing village, while playing with concepts of freedom, art and reality.  The between poem narrative was  simpler and clearer than the poems, which at times became exercises in polysyllabic reference.

Angela drew her poems from Views of the Hudson, and art gallery notes (from  Foame ) and new poems from a recent stay in Ireland.  Lacking the strong narrative of Keri's work, these proved more diffuse in effect although more perceptive and analytical.  Her re-told fairy tales from Perrault are deeply troubling - a Freudian nightmare.