iainfisher.com
Playwrights => Steven Berkoff discussion => Topic started by: Iain Fisher on February 16, 2010, 05:31:15 PM
-
You can read a Berkoff poem here
www.stevenberkoff.com/poem.html (http://www.stevenberkoff.com/poem.html)
"Some months ago an English journalist went to Tanzania and gratuitously killed a baboon, for no other reason than satisfying his morbid curiosity. This is Steven Berkoff's response."
Some interesting rhymes (attuned and baboons).
-
and here you can read about the slaughter that inspied it
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/eating_out/a_a_gill/article6882183.ece (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/eating_out/a_a_gill/article6882183.ece)
AA Gill, a restaurant critic, wrote in The Sunday Times, 25 Oct 2009:
"I shot a baboon in Africa, last Wednesday, just after lunch. Shot it dead....
So I’m in Africa, in a hat, with dark intentions and a truck full of guns and other blokes in hats. Josh the hunter said: “Why don’t we shoot a baboon?”...
So, I said, why not? Just a little one. I can handle it; I’ll be a recreational primate killer.... I took him just below the armpit. He slumped and slid sideways. I’m told they can be tricky to shoot: they run up trees, hang on for grim life. They die hard, baboons. But not this one. A soft-nosed .357 blew his lungs out. We paced the ground. The air was filled with a furious keening of his tribe. Two hundred and fifty yards. Not a bad shot....
Showing off your expressive and judgmental eating skills is far harder than blowing away a monkey....
Some frogs, a pig, a chicken, a cow and a baboon all died in the writing of this column"
-
There are now more poems on the site.
-
There are now five unpublished poems:
Beast
Some months ago an English journalist went to Tanzania and gratuitously killed a baboon, for no other reason than satisfying his morbid curiosity. This is Steven Berkoff's response.
Train Murder
A memorial to student Tom Grant who was killed on a train in 2006 as he came
to the aid of a stranger.
Wimbledon
A celebration of the Wimbledon final in 2009 between Roger Federer and Andy Roddick.
Big Game Fishing
An indictment of those who boast of ending the lives of beautiful creatures.
Uprising
A Memorial to the Heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on the Sixtieth Anniversary,
-
Another poem has been added
For Her Without a Nose
"When this picture was published in Time Magazine of a woman, mutilated by her boyfriend, the shock was so great that almost no words could describe it. This poem is a modest attempt."