AustLit

'Set in Havana, Cuba, in the 1930s, 'Under the Shaded Blossom' imagines a meeting between Meyer Lansky, the Mafia "hood", and Wallace Stevens the American poet.

'Both men spent time in pre Fidel Castro Cuba during the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship. Lansky to set up various nefarious activities on behalf of the New York 'mob' (particularly gambling), and Wallace Stevens for his own reasons. The poet John Jenkins has allowed his imagination to conjure up the lush heat, smells and sounds of Cuba and set them as a background to an extraordinary meeting of opposites.

'The poem 'Under the Shaded Blossom' on which this production is based ... won the 2004 James Joyce Foundation Suspended Sentence Award.'

Source: ABC Radio National website, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/airplay/stories/2006/1630530.htm
Sighted: 26/06/2006