The Polish Tramp

Earlier in the week, I’d gotten me two front teeth snapped off in this very hall by an errant knee. Eager not to miss the main event, I was back for more…

After a torchlight parade through the night (where my lack of dragon-bearing prowess had accidentally singed the jacket arm of a local trumpet player), and after four hours of vibrant polkas with young women of all ages, the party was understandably sagging. The host orchestra, and the assembled visiting musicians, plus the local village wedding band had all exhausted each other’s repertoires. The Gardzienice theatre troupe singers’ last song had been sung. But there remained yet life in the old legs. Alone on the floor and unwilling to stop, one veteran of the evening trod on. Slapping the floor with my feet; plugging away at a standard jig rhythm over and over. Throwing in mild variations, but keeping the beat and the energy of the floor, I spoke to the needs of dancers everywhere. Gradually the band came back to life, picking up the rhythm of my tramping and throwing in their improvisations until the floor once again filled with dancing bodies. It was a triumph for the ancient conundrum: Which came first, the dancer or the dance?

*****

Bembo Davies’ linguistic choreography may seem haphazard: he clearly doesn’t follow steps. Rumour suggests that he writes as he dances, with a sly grin on his face. Conveying the temperature of the events cited has required his best moves: dancing rhythmically, asymmetrically with words. Nodding to tradition, he still allows himself to wallow in dazzling fresh twists; irrepressibly gurgling with glee at his own invention, while shaking loose the joints of language as one must that wonky knee.

The book is out:
available for a ridiculously low sum of €12 : printed in at your command in Canada, UK, France, Australia, India or the US.