Paul Perry & Jane Yeh In The Green Room

It's festival time again. This was taken just before Jane Yeh's reading with Michael Longley, at the Poetry Now/Mountains to the Sea Festival in Dún Laoghaire. They made an interesting contrast.

I think Jane referred to her poems as pessimistic and I suppose they are, with their sinister dystopian sci-fi scenarios (robots, ninjas, etc.). But in another sense were as bright as her clothes, very jokey, faux-naive and postmodernish. And she reads them very straight, almost flat (somewhat robotic in fact, which may well be deliberate). Worlds away from Longley's elegies, poems like rich, ruefully humorous, elaborately plainspoken sighs.

In any case, Jane was a delight to photograph, much more animated than the others, touching her hair in the mirrors, interestingly self-conscious, laughing and restless, moving through a variety of poses.