Ivor Cutler - A Wet Handle Ivor Cutler

The later period of creative production from Ivor Cutler saw poetry have an increasingly high profile in his repertoire: typically short cryptic pieces which can take several listenings to begin to digest. But there is no guarantee of certain understanding. Never knowingly understood was one of Ivor's self-descriptors (an alternative reworking of the John Lewis department store's guarantee Never knowingly undersold), and although some pieces may be relatively straightforward - even curiously devoid of figurative language - others have oblique or incomprehensible allusions. This was his style. And to the extent that he spoke about this work at all, he would only speak of the sound, the music of words, rather than meaning or metaphor. He refused to explain what he was doing - It's not me, it's my unconscious was his line - and he held that evasive trajectory, never engaging in critical discussion of his work.