The Corn Hall hosts a perfect collaboration

Posted on 18th March 2023

The Hosepipe Band is no stranger to collaboration, having previously worked with the poet Martin Newell, but their latest outing is with Blake Morrison, whose Shingle Street collection has inspired the composition of original music to accompany his readings. Shingle Street depicts the perennially eroding landscape of the Suffolk coastline – a perfect match for the melancholy of the bittern boom footbass or the tingling of the ghostly dulcimer.

Before the band took to the stage, however, Morrison shared his thought on his latest book, Two Sisters, an unflinching account of the lives of his sister and half-sister. It comes thirty years after his ground-breaking And When Did You Last See Your Father? and looks to be equally absorbing. Morrison spoke movingly of troubled sibling relationships, the torment of alcoholism and bereavement. This was a fascinating insight into the process of memoir writing, not least due to the forensic and fearless questioning from Terence Blacker that burrowed deep into Morrison’s motives and methods.

After the interval, Morrison returned to recite his poetry, initially accompanied by just the keyboards of Cara Park, before the rest of the band joined them on stage. Simon Haines was master of ceremonies, playing, as he put it “all things you squeeze”, while Val Woollard added bagpipes, saxophone and countless other instruments into the mix. Layers of sound were employed to bring texture to Morrison’s ruminations on crumbling coastline of Covehithe, Sizewell, and Dunwich. Occasionally we branched out – visiting the Billiard Room, Isabella from Wuthering Heights, and Reasons to be Cheerful – but I felt the performance was at its most resonant when focusing on the local, be that the Muntjac deer, picking your own, or nothing more than a lost glove in the forest.