"Rebecca Althaus at Voices on the Edge, Dark Kernow @gwithianchapel , 27.01.24. A poet. In this hushed place of reverence, a poet stands, holding her words. The voice, and nothing more. Except there are words and body. The voice raises the words of the body and the body of these words. The audience dissolves and I am listening, caught in the tempo, textures and pitch contours of the poems. I am suddenly with words, threads of sound, deliberately woven, drawing me closer to love, sex, illness and death, and to the earth that quietly holds and embraces bodies. This is not a story being told. I am not being told a story. I am, for a moment I feel, witness to the specificity of a unique encounter between two people that loved and desired each other intensely. I see the man the woman loved. I am brought to the liminal space between life and death; I sense an abyss of loss and a place that, whilst immense, remains hidden from the ideologies of life, and life only. I realise that love and loss coexist. The words relinquish me and I feel incredible love and respect for a woman I don’t know but whose words are presence, absence and affect. Thank you @rebeccaalthaus for your wonderful performance of these poems." D. Ferrett (photo by Rosie Hadden)
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