Holly Pester’s Hoofs

Holly Pester, Hoofs: Poetry and performance scores (Manchester: if p then q, 2011), 80 pp, £8.00

Published October 2011

Hoofs is the first full length book of Pester’s “performance scores.” Pester’s work occupies a common ground between the disciplines of poetry performance, song and new media art. Hoofs is concerned, almost obsessively, with minute modulations and subtleties; slight variations and homophones: “He sits he / is seated / sitting in a room / sitting in a room / In a r(uh) / Inna r(uh)”. This hypnotic procession is sometimes ruptured, violently, by a spurt of wit. Hence the monotony of ‘I RAVEN THEE’ is punctured by ‘I Raven Thee Cont.’, an interview which “took place immediately after” the previous work. The book has extreme restraint coupled with a wistful exuberance. There are moments of solemnity too: specifically the rather wonderful ending to ‘HAROLD PINTER’S NOBEL PRIZE ACCEPTANCE SPEECH’:

“Imagine language only lasts for twenty minutes, but it could go on for ever like a torturer getting more and more bored. Not like an itch, more like an arm scratched right off. Imagine all the different ways of saying what is true and what isn’t true lasting exactly as long it took for them to assure us that it was true. / ***buzz / It was not true”

But why the title? “Well, primarily from hearing a Beckett radio play, Embers, every so often the main character shouts the word ‘hoofs!’ and there’s the sound of horses hooves. Also, the pronunciation varies… nobody knows if they’re saying it right, but as long as they’re making a sound – It’s right. I also like that it’s somewhere between an onomatopoeia and a nonsense word.”

This poetry is meant to be read aloud. Indeed, throughout the collection there is a sense that the full force of the work is lost by remaining textual; but this can be remedied simply, by checking her website (http://www. hollypester.com/) for recordings of her idiosyncratic readings. The website also has some critical writing, and earlier drafts/versions of some poems.

Hoofs is available on the if p then q website (http://ifpthenq.co.uk/). Pester has a previous collection, Interview Pieces, published by Regolith Works. Her next big reading is on at Serpentine Gallery in February 2012.