Scots Wa’ Straw - Ivor Cutler is dead...
Anti-intellectual poet, artist and performer who delighted and irritated for 50 years
THE poet, humorist, illustrator and composer Ivor Cutler possessed a disconcerting talent and a singular ability to view the world from an oblique perspective. His admirers spanned the generations, from those who had become fascinated by his doleful Scottish tones in the late 1950s to members of the modern pop generation. His recordings were championed by John Peel on Radio 1 over many years, and in 1997, at the age of 74, he was signed up by the record label Creation, the home of Oasis. (...) Throughout his career Cutler remained the grit in the oyster of respectability. He did not dispute the description once given to him that he was a rather stupid genius. Such genius derived from his ability to view life from the opposite direction to that taken by society, and his ability to empathise with the implications of that viewpoint, as in his one-sentence poem: “A fly crouching in a sandwich cannot comprehend why it has become more than ordinarily vulnerable.” ((http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-2072691_1,00.html))
Deutsche Zusammenfassung: Ivor Cutler war ein schottisches Original, aus der Arbeiterregion Glasgow so wie der deutsche Hans-Dieter Hüsch, mit dem man ihn am als eigenwilligen Entertainer besten vergleichen kann, in der Arbeiterregion Rhein-Ruhr zuhause war. Meine Kollegin am Englischen Lehrstuhl bei Prof. Joerg O. Fichte, Annette Berger, hat ihn mir damals nahegebracht und seither sehe ich Kellner die Salatsauce anbieten nicht mehr mit den gleichen Augen... Die Welt wird ein Stück blasser und ärmer sein ohne ihn.