Activity: Poetry recital
Host: Moray House Trust
Date: Thursday 4th February 2016
Poetry is often seen these days as an abstraction. It need not be so. Sometimes, an audience connects very vitally with the poems and we realise that poems speak to us of life.
On a Thursday evening in early February, an appreciative audience enjoyed as wide-ranging a performance of poetry as is likely ever to take place under the auspices of Moray House Trust. The ‘two gentlemen’ in question, Francis Quamina Farrier and Captain Lloyd Marshall, recited psalms, speeches from Shakespeare’s plays, poems by Martin Carter, Ian Mc Donald and A.J Seymour and much more.
Both gentlemen also performed a suite of their own poems, many of which dealt with subjects and places familiar to the audience. Francis Quamina Farrier offered a memorable ode to a destitute elderly lady who lived beneath a tree on the Avenue of the Republic and a wonderfully ‘dub’ paced tribute to a community pastor, “Father Monty”.
It was a bravura performance. One member of the audience was moved to comment on the prodigious feat of memory exhibited by both gentlemen and to ask for ’tips’.
Apart from being a journalist, Francis Quamina Farrier is a playwright, actor, radio personality (as well as a husband and father). And, at an age when most would have hung up their gloves, Uncle Francis, as he is sometimes referred to, continues to blaze a trail that is the envy of many. He continues to write and has won many prizes and awards along the way. This event is one of many Francis has undertaken “777/77 Year” which ends in May 2016.
A self-taught classical guitarist, Captain Marshall loves writing, reading and performing poetry and is a professional pilot who has been in the aviation industry for the past 50 years. He has taken part in three recitals at the Theatre Guild in recent years.