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“The Poet Busker” CD by Kiersty Boon, a review.

There has been a tendency in the past to think of performance poetry as a separate and somehow less serious or valuable mode of expression than poetry printed on the page. This collection of eighteen poems performed to music puts that idea finally and firmly to rest. It is impossible to disentangle the intelligence from the emotion, the poems from the narrative, the craft and skill in the making from the emotional effect on the audience. It takes the listener on a unique and irresistible journey through a carefully observed, immaculately crafted landscape created through the exercise of a unique imagination on the modern world.

From the joyful celebration of verbal virtuosity that is Tiddly Om…

“Now some scholars may
get quite upstropulous,
if you bling up their
well thumbed thesauruses
with colloquialised
conjured up meaning”

to the fierce strength of a poem like “Fairy Steps”

“The trailer’s being towed for a blowjob on Sunset Strip
by a whore who pays her clients with her husband’s credit card,
While the begging question rolls in with the angry sky,
Just who IS paying for this crap?”

…you will be engaged, entertained and moved.

It is part of the responsibility of the modern poet to create an audience for poetry. This CD is a completely independent production, made using freely available technology and software, yet the production values are indistinguishable from commercially manufactured products. The collection is engaged in reconnecting contemporary poetry with an audience without compromising depth, range or complexity.

With all its intelligence, humour, courage and craft, “The Poet Busker” by Kiersty Boon represents, in so many different ways, the future of poetry.

And you would be foolish not to go and purchase it right now, here.