Author Description

for SATB unaccompaniedThe text for this imaginative and effective piece by Gabriel Jackson is a response to Allen Ginsberg's A Supermarket in California by Latvian poet Kārlis Vērdiņš, translated here by Ieva Lešinska. As in Ginsberg's poem, the initial setting is a supermarket, depicted with vivid imagery such as 'a weary, shrivelled apple', before the angel protagonist expounds on their observations about contemporary society. Pleasingly alliterative lines such as 'he'd babble boozily about tanks' are artfully given rhythmic emphasis by Jackson, who fully exploits the dramatic intent of the poem, giving space for the text to come through by homophonic setting, a pure harmonic language, and often sparse textures.