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Buxton is colloquially described as a place where winter arrives early and summer arrives late. On a freezing November Thursday evening an audience arriving in coats and scarves were testimony to the fact that winter had arrived. However it became immediately apparent that Henry and Jan were not going to allow low temperatures to lower the mood for a glowing evening of warm humour, poetry, comedy and wry observation.
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I had seen them both before at the Morecambe poetry Festival where they were equally outstanding. Neither reprised their sets from just a few months ago, such is the breadth and depth of their material.
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It was an intriguing pairing. Normal is a distinguished and veteran multi published author with an impressive string of writing credits, including on television: Mrs Merton, the Royle family, Gavin and Stacey. He is an omnipresent broadcaster.
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Dubliner Jan Brierton will have been largely unknown to the bulk of the audience. Her first book ( “What day is it?” Who gives a fuck) only came out in 2021. She has been making up for lost time ever since and read extensively from her second book: ”Everybody is a Poem” Midlife in Rhymes.
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A fashion stylist with a penchant for jump suits, she describes herself as an accidental poet, and excels at rhythm and rhyme and anything that rhymes with fuck. She is more John Cooper Clarke than Coleridge or Yeats. A touchstone for mid life women- and a spokesperson for men who have to deal with them.
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She is also very funny. Memorably she was once described as “not leaving a dry seat in the house”. Her knack is to write simply about everyday things that all can relate to, whether it be the humour of sea swimming, or the poignant, achingly beautiful poem to her deceased brother, “The last Conversation we never had” – An Everyman piece for anyone who has ever been bereaved. She doesn’t write in her voice. She writes in our voice.
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Henry Normal is a master of literary sleight of hand. His esoteric style complimented Brierton’s earthy fare perfectly . You and I see the moon, Normal sees the same moon that Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King espied. He produces, and reads from, poems on scraps of paper as if he had hastily prepared them in his lunch break. He hadn’t. They are carefully prepared, crafted, drafted and rehearsed.
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He opened the evening, then allowed Brierton to close the first half. For the second half they inverted that order before closing with a call and response “poem off” alternating as they sat on adjacent chairs- a sublime culmination to a fine evening.
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Normal’s preparedness to give space to Brierton demonstrated a commendable lack of ego, and a justified confidence in his own material. Both prospered as a consequence.
Garyswordz 