A Day at a Time in Rhyme

Jane Clifton resolved to write a poem every single day across a year.  And she did.  Her show is based on the published anthology of those poems.  First joke: ‘I’ll now read to you all three hundred and sixty-five poems… Lock the doors.’  We laugh – and she’s got us. 

Elegantly dressed all in black, this veteran performer – Pram Factory alumnus, rocker, ‘Margo’ in Prisoner, writer of crime fiction, painter - is rather stately now, but relaxed and confident.  Experience shows as she confides in us and moves between a big red leather chaise longue and a little table where she enacts the process – not always easy – of writing all those poems.  Sometimes a glass of red is necessary.

It’s an intimate show, at times almost a confessional, part autobiography, at other times made of wry observations of the world – as she sees it – and of her world.  There are tiny pieces of linking narration but otherwise the poetry flows, mostly in couplets, with ingenious and striking rhymes.

For us, there are laughs – also wry – and there is heartfelt emotion, bursts of anger – and frequent irony.  Solemnity is undercut by jokes.  But no sentimentality, no self-pity, even when acknowledging getting older and missing not performing so much anymore.  After all, she can still sing – and she proceeds to prove it.  Memories are stirred.  The poems acknowledge the seasons of that year of writing the poetry, and we discover that Jane dislikes the summer heat and dreads its return.  There’s a lyrical and vivid description of sneaking into a neighbour’s pool on a sweltering summer night.  But she also reacts to the real world, the world that comes at us from our radios and televisions, over which we have so little control, as it careers on from fiasco to disaster, from triumph to defeat, farce to tragedy.

The poems are enhanced by a constant video projection on a big screen.  There, changes of topic and the passage of the seasons are announced with text over iconic images that complement the poems.  The program notes aren’t entirely clear as to who’s responsible for this (maybe Justin Gardam) but it is, like everything else here, strong, nicely judged, glitch-free – and somehow not distracting.

But please note: A Day at a Time is not a poetry reading; it is an assured performance.  And whether or not the poems were written for performance, they are not the sort of poems where you get lost and miss bits and you’d rather read them than hear them.  That’s not to say that they are simple, tummty-tum cute verses; they are complex, subtle, allusive but clear.  And all delivered with clarity as well.  Fans of Jane Clifton – and there are many from her different spheres – will enjoy this show immensely – but so would anyone who’s never heard of her.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Darren Gill