Description
Francois Villon addressed them: ‘You singers singing what you like without compulsion, ribald and laughing, joyous in deed and word.’ Murray Edmond locates himself among them, a singer of fables, atonements, regalings, capers and encomiums; ribald and laughing, sharp-eyed master of the neighbourhood tragicomedy, scatter-brained student of apocalypse. My arsehole worked like a dream, he says, and ‘How can you make a thick soup / without riches and laughter?’ FARCE has it all: the busrides, campfires, homages and détournements.
—Michele Leggott
When we launched our theatre company, Indian Ink, 20 odd years ago, the smartest thing we did was to get Murray Edmond on board as our dramaturge. We strapped him to the crow’s nest as we navigated many a treacherous stretch of blank page. He warned us of rocks and pirates and icebergs and mermaids. Without him we would have been shipwrecked long ago. There’s a strong alliance between theatre and poetry and Murray evokes it magnificently in this wonderful collection. Of course he does—both art forms are in his bones.
—Jacob Rajan & Justin Lewis
The poetry is blunt and sharp, like an old razor. Murray Edmond wields it with lackadaisical rhyme, foam, spit, blurt and fantasy. A reader comes out with pleasantly bald legs.
—Nick Ascroft
Dead hobbits, A4-isms, eradication plans for feral poets in Titirangi, capers and encomiums, blue bottle blues, swirled together in the bottom of the glass. In questionable taste and all the better for it, in turns rude, sardonic, reflective, witty and mercurial, FARCE shows an unfashionable disregard for contemporary pieties. Murray Edmond is back on the night shift, striding across the arsehole of the world in his squeaky crocs.
—Victor Billot
