"Riddling" by Mary Dalton and Eric Rose

"All the Clubs from Holyrood to Brigus #31, Avondale, Conception Bay"
By Scott Walden (2006)
Artist retains rights

Like I was saying, Poetry Scores has a live premiere of a new poetry score on Saturday, May 30 at the Schlafly Tap Room in downtown St. Louis.

We scored "All the Clubs from Hollyrood to Brigus," a twelve-poem sequence of "fictions, ruminations and riddles," according to its subtitle, about the taverns and social clubs that line a 16-mile stretch of one of the oldest highways in Newfoundland.

Close to the end of the sequence - poem ten of twelve - the poet Mary Dalton poses a riddle and even titles the poem "Ridding."


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Riddling
By Mary Dalton


How is a club like a story?

One may beget the other;
atmosphere is all;
the light is a transforming one;
in the shadows are symbols and myths;
the characters are gathered against the storm;
time stops or expands or shrinks;
epiphanies abound—or fail to occur
the narrator is unreliable.


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With twelve separate poems to work with, we offered them to different songwriters for a compilation-style score. Eric Rose volunteered for "Riddling."






Eric is based out of San Francisco, where he runs a company called Right Brain Consultants. He played in the Washington University campus band scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the guys who would eventually found Poetry Scores: Matt Fuller, Chris King and Elijah "Lij" Shaw. Eric and Matt formed half of the legendary Wash U campus band Butt of Jokes that first pulled Chris into the campus music scene as a fan and inspired him to start the band with Matt and Elijah (Enormous Richard) that eventually evolved into Poetry Scores.

"Riddling," after all of these years, is Eric Rose's first contribution to Poetry Scores, though we hope it will be far from his last.

Eric Rose (stretching) with Butt of Jokes, ca. 1989.
Future Poetry Scores cofounder Matt Fuller is on drums.
Stomping on his bass pedal is Ben Herzon, soon of The Bishops.

The other songwriters on "All the Clubs from Holyrood to Brigus: Nick Barbieri, Mark Buckheit, Robert Goetz, Ann Hirschfeld, Michael Martin, Joe Thebeau, Three Fried Men, The Lettuce Heads and Mike Stuvland.

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The original announcement of the May 30 show with more details.

The series of photographs by Scott Walden, also titled "All the Clubs from Holyrood to Brigus," that inspired Mary Dalton's poem.

Mary Dalton

Mary Dalton has published five volumes of poetry, most recently "Hooking" (2013), "Merrybegot" (2003) and "Red Ledger" (2006). Her work has been widely anthologized in Canada and abroad and won many awards.