Bridging Connections – Poetry of romantic passion

Tags

Anar, Bridging Connections, Michelle Leembruggen, Poetry, Siri Gunasinghe, Vikram Seth

I make no apologies for getting back to romance, which is after all the very stuff of poetry. This week I will be dealing with passion, not sexual passion as on a previous occasion, but romantic passion.

The simplest account is by Michelle Leembruggen, whom I recall contacting me rather shyly to confess that she wrote poetry, and would I comment on some of her work. I knew her then as the glamorous actress who had contributed so much to English theatre, though by the time I returned she performed less frequently.

She had married Graham Hatch, and the two of them were seen as the senior members of the group of youngsters who had revived English Theatre in the seventies. They were a glamorous couple, and though by the eighties their marriage was breaking up, they got on well enough and continued to work together well. They appeared together in ‘Death Trap’ I think, where Michelle stole the show as the mad medium, even though she had to compete against both Graham and Richard de Zoysa. She was also marvelous opposite Richard as Evita, in a performance Graham directed, and I think I saw her last on stage as a heartwarming Griselda in ‘Cats’ – until, if my memory serves me correct, we managed to persuade her back to play Clytemnestra in Rudi Corens’ British Council garden production of the ‘Agamemnon’.