Elise Cowen

Watching Iain Morrison and Leiza McLeod's "Gimme the Beat Girls" last night at Prototype has made me think. The show presents a series of poems by female Beat poets, which are sung whilst the two performers respond to each poem with props and actions. The female Beat poets have been a marginalised and largely forgotten part of the Beat narrative that focuses upon the genius of the lone, rebellious male. The poems themselves are full of genius and like much Beat poetry they really need to be spoken, better still performed, to be brought fully to life.