Hootananny, Fraser's Church Street pub, has long been established as one of the most important live music venues in Inverness, but now the proprietor wants to use it to reintroduce the love of poetry to the public.

However, slamming conventional poetry recitals as deathly dull affairs, Fraser believes he has hit upon a revolutionary new way of impressing the beauties of poetry on the public: Orchestral Verse.

"Poetry lends itself to the stage because it's short, but the problem is how to get people to absorb it," Fraser said.

"We are projecting poems on to a screen so that members of the audience can read it to themselves three or four times while we play live classical music in the background. That gives the audience a chance to think about the poem and absorb it before they hear it recited."

Fraser believes the music from father and daughter classical musicians Rob and Amy Field will provide suitable mental preparation ahead of readings by Fraser and author Hamish MacDonald.

"Speaking personally, in terms of the arts, my first love is probably poetry rather than music," Fraser said.

He and MacDonald will read a total of 24 poems dealing with such timeless topics as birth, life, love and death, taken from the book "Staying Alive", an anthology collected by Neil Astley, founder of one of Britain's best known poetry publishers Bloodaxe Books.

"These are poems that actually mean something," Fraser said. "Poetry has been ruined by modern poets trying to do what visual artists have done, which is go abstract. Each of the poems we have picked is rich in meaning and most of the poets are from the last century rather than Victorian or pre-Victorian."

Kit Fraser spouts forth in preparation for the poetry event. Northern Exposures

Poets represented in Sunday evening's reading will include well known names of 20th century poetry such as Edwin Morgan, John Betjeman, Philip Larkin and Seumas Heaney, the latter with an unusual love poem likening his wife to a skunk.

Fraser hopes this weekend's experiment will be followed elsewhere and reawaken popular interest in poetry much as the way the use of W. H. Auden's poem "Funeral Blues (Stop All The Clocks)" in the film "Four Weddings and a Funeral" brought the poet's work into the popular consciousness.

"Poetry presented properly, as in that film and in that style, shows that good poetry really resonates with people," Fraser said.

"A hundred years ago all educated people loved poetry. That's no longer true.

"I would like to take this on tour and I'm glad to be doing this in the Highland Year of Culture because this is innovative. It hasn't been done before."

* Orchestral Verse will begin at Hootananny at 8pm on Sunday.

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