“Technicolour suburban entertainment” – John Hegley
“I was weeing myself” – Sue Perkins, at the Old Vic, Jan 2005
“Rachel Pantechnicon of London was my favorite performer that I saw on the whole tour. Pure creative genius.” – Buddy Wakefield, US Poetry Slam Champion, December 2004
“The queen of misplaced invective” – Don’t Feed the Poets website, Sussex.
At first glance Rachel Pantechnicon appears to be the love child that Eddie Izzard and Pam Ayres never told us about. Her style, however, owes little to either self-aware oddness or homely innuendo. Rachel's charm resides in her attraction to the unusual aspects of the very usual.
Her apparent awkwardness (she perches on high heels to add a physical dimension to this affect) is a ruse. Here is a poet comfortable enough with herself to tell us that the secret to poetic rhythm is cat treddling. "Once the cat gets going the poem pretty much writes itself." We are being let in on a trade secret here. "I went to a workshop with Simon Armitage," she informs us candidly, "and this is how he does it too." One poem even stops abruptly mid-word, "That's where the cat lost interest".
Unlike many of the performers at the Poetry and Words Tent, Rachel Pantechnicon does not have a political agenda. So when topics like; why garden centres are one of society's evils (they put traditional water feature stockists out of business); or the egalitarian nature of tomato ketchup ("it comes in a sachet, used by the common man and the government attaché") arise, they are toyed with rather than driven home. She treads the line between funny ha ha and funny peculiar with aplomb, as illustrated by her raucous tale of a runaway mobile library (it narrowly avoids an orphanage).
It often feels like Rachel never grew up. A number of her poems are written as childhood memoirs. One essay on the influence of religion on teenage girls contains the killer line, "I'd believe in the doctrine of transubstantiation, before I'd believe you." "Please tell a grown-up if you think you are about to hurt your coccyx." She remembers in another. Whatever you say Rachel.
Jamie Walters, Glastonbury Festival website, July 2002 – although he misquotes me substantially
Superbly crafted characters Rachel Pantechnicon and Liz Bentley give us a sneaky peek into their disturbing world. Rachel is a poet and children's author with such titles under her belt as 'Teenybop Theologian' and 'Cheese-grater Leg-iron Lion'. She has recently found part of the Bayeux Tapestry. Liz is on a synchronised swimming team, and has recently won Poetry Idol. Her hobbies include napkin folding and answering personal advertisements. The humour is wonderfully subtle, showing rather than telling us all about these troubled women's lives. It's dark, a little bit frightening, and definitely one of my Fringe highlights.
Jade Wright, Three Weeks magazine, reviewing ‘Rachel & Liz Get in Touch with their Feelings’ show, August 2004
Rachel’s completely barmy. She lets her beloved cat Harold treadle the floor to decide the rhythmic structure of her poetry. Her poems are inventively hilarious and are always filled with obscure references to such things as ‘the elf shelf’ and adolescent Lutherans. She’s discovered the missing end to the Bayeux Tapestry in her kitchen drawer, and she’s here to share its long lost insights into medieval society’s feline obsession. Her persona is purposefully prim but always awkward, a juxtaposition that allows her kooky poetry to shine brightly. Her brand of absurd domesticity has wit in abundance, and will appeal to all poets, and anyone with an eye for oddity. Apparently Rachel’s emotions run to extraordinary places.
Kate Abbott, Three Weeks magazine, review of my ‘Rachel Lets her Emotions Run Away with Her’ show, Edinburgh August 2006