A Poetry Reading: Judith Barrington

by Margaret V. Doran

Saturday, April 16, 2005, Portland poet Judith Barrington presented a reading of selections from her newest book, the 2004 Horses and the Human Soul published by Story Line Press, Ashland, Oregon, at the Mt. Angel Performing Arts Center in Mt. Angel, Oregon. The event, Sponsored by the Silverton Poetry Association, was semi-formal with a buffet reception following.

Barrington is a tall woman who walks with confidence, poise and grace. Although she has lived in Oregon for about twenty years, she still retains a slight, disarming British accent from her native England. Her stage presence is salient, her voice well-modulated and her manner of presentation pulls the listener into her poetry, creating images, drawing them out, then letting them go. Her poetry is sparse in words, rich in image. This evening was an engaging performance and the audience was genuinely involved with her reading.

Many of the works in Horses and the Human Soul have won individual awards and I was thankful that I was able to listen to Barrington read them. Her time on-stage was limited and I felt she chose her selections carefully in order to provide rather an overview of the book, linking the milestone changes of her life and at the same time read her own favorite poems from it. When presenting poems of WWII England, her accent heightens the honesty and relevance of her words in a way that reading alone would not.

She began with Photograph, Scotland, Circa 1950 which introduced us to a lonely child, one who seemed to be misunderstood and seeking love. In speaking of her mother, one line of the poem stood out as achingly poignant: "our skins pretend they are strangers." It made me want to reach back in time and hug the little girl. In Walking North, the girl has become a woman and looks back with more sympathy on her mother, pondering living longer than she had. "Think of your life as a beach you can walk alone," Barrington says. The woman has come to terms with the loneliness of the child.

My favorite poem of those Barrington read was Ineradicable, about the loss of memory that comes with age. "Faces float away from their old history," for an old man who rails against the loss. One poem Barrington herself seemed to like best, since she took time to explain part of its creation; she introduced it as part of a larger, themed work about a persona, The Dyke with No Name, whom she created a number of years ago to speak to her own acknowledgement and acceptance of being a lesbian. She did not say how many of the Dyke poems are included in this book, but she read The Dyke with No Name Thinks About God. The poem is not long and the most engaging aspect of it is that it does not draw conclusions, place "blame," or give editorial comment, but just states simply what she was thinking, drawing images that are wonderfully vivid, "the seductive light of a thousand candles," and recognizing that feelings are universal.

The reading was the nicest of several that I attended. The audience lights were dim, the theater seats well-padded and comfortable. There were soft spotlights on the reader and a microphone that amplified the voice just enough for the entire audience to hear well. The effect focused the audience on the poetry in a very tangible way, encouraging them to be quiet and allowing Barrington to take gentle command without distractions.

Margaret Doran lives in rural Oregon, writing poetry (whenever there is a free moment) about what she lives and sharing it freely via her web site: http://www.thestorypage.net