Also available from Rhyme and Reason, Sheffield's independent bookshop: [email protected]
Tel :0114 2661950
''Who else could breathe life so originally and respectfully into these extraordinary stories of women who refused to be tamed? With the effortless ease of a trapeze artist each poem somersaults through history unravelling her performer's incredible achievements.'
Joy Keywood
A chapbook about women circus artists brings paradox and magic to Chloe Balcomb’s, Upstart Jugglers. Genuinely spectacular, they are both ‘artist and art’. Under constant scrutiny, they must ‘keep the personal private’, fight for equality and be caught but never, ‘captured.’
Nicky Hallet
Joy Keywood
A chapbook about women circus artists brings paradox and magic to Chloe Balcomb’s, Upstart Jugglers. Genuinely spectacular, they are both ‘artist and art’. Under constant scrutiny, they must ‘keep the personal private’, fight for equality and be caught but never, ‘captured.’
Nicky Hallet
Buying more than one copy? Please use contact page to access more favourable postage rates.
Are you involved in Social Circus? Would you like to use 'Upstart Jugglers' as a stimulus? Are you interested in accessible and fun writing workshops for your users? Please contact me via contact pages to see what I can offer you.
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Performer Ruby Blackwood meets the original Degas' painting of Miss La La and below as Miss La La in 'Female Funambulists'
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Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando
They call me Black Venus, La Femme Canon, have me pose by the side of my iron dog. ‘Strong above average of womankind,’ I am their Amazon, an African princess escaped from slavery. They crow of my ‘unnatural gifts’, the shining bit clasped in my jaw that holds three men. Such tales sell tickets but it is my sister’s name I bear, she who died before I knew her. I never met the famous artist but heard, like me, he is no pureblood, his Creole mother long since dead. They say he studies the female form, is in love with keyholes, considers us animal. Exploits his dancers the way some men exploit horses. Four nights, he sat there sketch book open, gazing limply, while I whirled above him and my audience gasped. Poor xenophobe. Poor earthbound sop! I liked his sketches well enough – he chased perspective with persistence but such a man will never fly. Miss La La German born, Olga Kaira, the dual heritage, high earning, immensely popular, circus aerialist and strong woman caused a sensation in Paris in 1879. Immortalised by the painter Degas, her incredible feats included hanging from rafters 70ft up and suspending a 200lb cannon from her teeth! |
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Images courtesy of Vanitas Arts