Extract:
“In Townsend’s compelling performance, it certainly can. He glides through Muldoon’s torrent of wordplay and allusions, before slowing to a low growl of fury with his lover for her refusal of medical treatment in favour of herbal remedies, through a sense of fatalism: “The fact that you were determined to cut yourself off in your prime / because it was pre-determined has my eyes abrim.” The rush of tiny memories that catch him off-guard, the snatches of music from their shared past, the truths about the ways in which they could hurt each other – all flash across his face as his deep voice falters. He captures the one-step-forward, two-steps-back experience of grieving, its iterative nature reflected in his physical process of creating the rows of shapes, imprinted on paper.
With its recapitulation of the poem’s lines throughout, and in voiceover at the end, this performance beautifully suggests that the processes of printmaking and of composing the poem have become one. Here the poet salutes the artist, both of whom have their “ink-stained hands”, and the production becomes a celebration of the ways “art can be made” from pain”
How my heart speaks 