Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Poetry is not everyone’s cup of tea. To some, perhaps misguided, possibly even consciously ignorant of the form and its turbulent history, the seismic revolt against strained form and stiff suited underwhelming development that shook the world post World War Two, is nothing more than pretension, a dip into the ocean without a bathing suit or a pair of trunks to hide the soul and yet arguably poetry has never been as popular now in the 21st Century at any time since the days when Allen Ginsberg tore apart convention at the Royal Albert Hall and delivered the 20th Century standard bearer, Howl.
Rhymes, Rock & Revolution: The Story of Performance Poetry highlighted the effect that The Beat Poets had on the psyche of the long delivered poem, the daring of escape from the rigid boundaries imposed by some of the Victorian and Georgian poets in their infinite wisdom, and what it means to the children, the inheritors of Ginsberg’s Albert Hall wrath.
Poetry is seen by some as a lesser form of communication, compared say to the novel or the concept album with more cow bell added for charm and the musicians adding in layers of complex arrangements to truly get the message across, however, as the documentary sought, and ably succeeded, to prove, Performance Poetry is a God unto itself, it is the maker in many cases of legends whose names both straddle the power of the written word but also the exuberance of the Rock and Roll delivery.
Ginsberg’s metaphorical step children have shown since that humbling day when 7,000 people crammed into The Royal Albert Hall, that performance poets and their words are as every bit vital to stressing the actions needed to get the message across that the world is forever teetering on the edge of a movement that doesn’t allow the freedom to be creative and in which the vanguards of old, the forever enlightened poets such as Roger McGough, Brian Patten, Adrian Henri, were joined by those to whom the Rock and Roll lifestyle seamlessly merged, Gil Scott Heron, Patti Smith, Dr. John Cooper Clarke, Phil Jupitus, Attila The Stockbroker, Benjamin Zephaniah and Murray Lachlan Young and the grandchildren of that initial performance to whom the 21st Century opens up like a flower surrounded by the austere concrete of the times; all forever owe gratitude to, as fans of the art owe them for their conviction.
Is poetry the new Rock and Roll, Rhymes, Rock & Revolution: The Story of Performance Poetry does much to convince the viewer that it is, in the end though whatever your thoughts on poetry, there really is no substitute for bringing the words of a poet to life, it was an art lost to the Victorians and like many things that a more enlightened world has bestowed upon us, one that should not be returned to. The freedom, the power that the spoken word has upon the soul should always be lauded.
Ian D. Hall