Feb Swoosh

Dear Doris,
Well February has just swooshed by while I’ve been jousting with footnotes, but I thought I’d better bring some of the news from Vienna.

At the beginning of the month I was pleased to be special guesting at the monthly Cafe Kafka Open Mic. And a whole school class from Baden Baden was there and one of the students read some poetry before they all had to dash of to their hostel. They were in Vienna for the weekend and had read that the open mic was on and just came by. Bob Hewis did a tandem with Dieter Berdel to commemorate Burns – in “Scotch” and “Wienerisch”. This from the main event a little earlier in the year. Bob also performed his translation of an excerpt from Schiller’s Don Carlos. Wolfgang Glechner brought a hilarious piece about a Viennese Al Kaida kidnap, and I read my first story in German and got good words from the locals. It’s interesting how identity changes with a change of language. Nathan was a terrific emcee, a performance of its own.

Then it was off in the snow to Sankt Poelten for an evening of Darwin – pix and talks. Martin Huxter curated and explained why the title of the exhibition, God: The Fossil Record had to stay in English. (Calling God “eine alte Schallplattte” was just not on.)

Then last night there was a taste of India with the film, ‘Cityscapes’ by Ankur Roy Chowdhury, a poetry recital by Toby Fischer ‘Cal 13’ and Peter Waugh ‘Mandára’, as well as Indian music by Daniel Bradley (sitar) and Laura Bradley (tanpura).

And this morning I managed to defeat those darned footnotes by relegating them to the end of the opus. Now I can get on with my spring cleaning …