Author Archives: Robert Garnham

April 14 Poem A Day 3

It’s week three and I’m really in the rhythm now, still trying to a funny poem every day. Of course the definition of a funny poem differs with individual senses of humour.

Some of these might even be performable!

Poem

You can shove Paris up your a##e
Swindon is a proper town.
If you put your hand over the first part
Of the word ‘Swindon’
It looks like it might say ‘London’
Until you take your hand away.

Swindon.
You can’t spell ‘Swindon’ without ‘win’.
Unless you use a postcode.

Swindon. Swindon,
It’s a hell of a town,
It’s got a bus station and a Lidl.

We’re Swindon town, we’re Swindon town.
We’re Swindon town, we’re Swindon town.
We’re Swindon town, we’re Swindon town.
We are.
Swindon town.
Is probably the football chant the local team uses.
I don’t know, I don’t really follow football.

Going into Swindon
Always makes me hyper
Knowing it was the birthplace
Of Billee Piper.

It’s got a car park.
It’s got a station.
It hasn’t got an underground tube network.
It’s got a street gang
Called the Swindon Massive.

Here’s a list of places I’d
Rather forego visits and instead
Is got to Swindon:

1. Ashburton Owl Sanctuary.
2. The dentist.
3. The Leicester Museum of Coat Hangers.
4. Any branch of Kwik Fit.
5. Cheltenham
6. Laura’s brother’s house.

Excuse me Mr Pinkerton
Let’s turn this thing around.
I love you baby.
Heart thump jitter purge
Teeth a-chatter
Keep away from me with those handcuffs
Oh you are so naughty
Feel the way my heart rate increases
Not with the overwhelming brilliance
Of your accursed beauty
But by the glimpse
The merest glimpse
That jolt within
Of a road sign
That says ‘Swindon’.

My friend Jeff gets an orgasm
Every time he sees Swindon.
He lives in Swindon.
He keeps his curtains closed
Except for three times a day.
Three or four times.
You know. Depends.

I want my ashes to be scattered
On that funny roundabout thing!

You took me by the hand
And let me down past the eggcup factory
And I whispered into your ear,
‘Welcome to Swindon’.
And you replied,
‘Your’e WELCOME to Swindon’.

Poem

I took a selfie with my camera
A selfie with my phone
I’ll upload it up to Instagram
The moment I get home.

I took a selfie in the petrol station
A selfie in the sauna
A selfie in the botanical gardens
Surrounded by flora and fauna

I took a selfie in the farmyard
A selfie with a tractor
A selfie to be my Guardian Soulmates profile pic
(She’s out there, I just need to attract her).

I took a selfie on the underground
A selfie on the tube
A selfie in the public toilets at the urinals
(Though that one was a little rude)

I took a selfie in the space station
I went up there for a bet
I uploaded it to my Facebook page
No-one’s liked it yet.

I took a selfie in Okehampton
A selfie in South Brent
A selfie in Moretonhampstead
And other places I went

In and around Dartmoor.

I took a selfie in the pasty factory
Next to the dispatch manager’s office
A malfunction on the conveyor belt
Led to a pasty in every orifice.

I took a selfie at the disco
A selfie at the rave
I took a selfie hoping you’d realise
It’s you it’s you it’s you I crave.

I took a selfie in the Museum of Rural Life
Next to a display of milk churns
I put on a show of great bravery
And yet still my heart it yearns

For companionship.

I took a selfie here in Paignton town
Right in the middle of Torbay
Relaxing in an ice cream parlour
With a nice sorbet.

I took a selfie in the Premier Inn
Or it could have been a Holiday Inn
There’s so many inns that I’ve been I
I’ve got confused about the ones that I’ve been in.

I took a selfie on the Millennium Bridge
Surrounded by other people taking a selfie.
If prosperity is measured by Instagram likes
Then I must be very wealthy.

Poem

I took a selfie.
No-one cares, dammit,
Baby cakes jack a spleen so damn
Ego
Tistical
So self obsessed
Big man camera held
Jaunty angle
Hand quivering
That’s it’s now add one of
Those
CHEAP
Filters
And whack it on
To some
Jaded
Social
Media
Site

Poem

1.
Trapped in an Antarctic research station
With a giant male antlered stag
And a Grandmother who speaks only Welsh.
Life doesn’t get weirder than this.

She spends most of the day cooking Welsh cakes.
The stag spends most of the day eating them.
I say to her, Carol,
We need the electricity,
And she says,
Donald needs his grub.
She says this in Welsh.
Donald is the stag, apparently.

It’s bloody cold.

Oh dear god it’s pooed next to the
Sleeping bunks
And last night I found my best anorak
Enmeshed
In it’s antlers.

Carol, ceaselessly knitting
Knit knit knitting
And then for a bit of light relief,
Crocheting.
She’s only gone and knitted him an
Antler warmer.
I don’t know how she does it.

Donald steadfastly refuses
To wear the
Antler warmer.

The wind whips round our cabin.
A ceaseless moaning mournful wind.
It kind of goes like this.
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooh!
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooh!
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooh!
And the stag goes
Arooooooo aroooooo aroooooo!
Plaintive.
Homesick.
It’s ever so grim.

2.
it’s all a question of geometry
and working out all the angles
of your
shack
carol says she’s glad he’s not
a yak
you can’t go back
and they often attack
if the science survey found out
i would get the sack
i would have to change tack
and tell them that they lack
a sense of humourrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
vis a vis the whole
welsh grandmother / male antlered stag thing
inhabiting their research shack

3.
I’m trying to extract biogas
From five thousand year old ice.
The biggest trouble is
Finding ice that’s that old.
The only ice I’ve found so far
Was made last week.
I think they’re having me on.

4.
I tell you,
After about six weeks
You get really fed up with
Fucking penguins.

5.
Where the hell’s she getting all
This wool from probably
Got a suitcase full of
Sodding sheep SHES ONLY GONE AND
KNITTED HIM A JUMPER I was on the
Satellite phone last night having a good old moan
To a friend back home and he said at least
You’re not stuck here watching Britain’s Got Talent
And I said something like yeah, you’ve got a point.

6.
Ooooooooooooooooooooooooh.
Aroooooooooooo. Arooooooooooo.
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooh.

Poem

I haven’t got a parakeet.
I’ve never had one.
So I feel barely qualified, if at all,
To write an ode to parakeets,
Of which this is, ostensibly.

Oh, parakeets,
As multicoloured as a
Packet of sweets
(Goodness, its only the second verse
And I’m really struggling).

The wide arc smooth parabola
Of your flight
As you colour the evening sky
And bring your sweet bird song
To the setting of the sun.
(I just guessed all that
Because I don’t even know if
Parakeets can fly).

I painted a sparrow bright green.
Its a paracheat.

During the First World War
Thirty eight of Brixham’s trawlers were sunk
By enemy action.
Its not known if any parakeets
Were also lost.

As far as I know
There has never been a parakeet
On Coronation Street.
(I mean, there might have been,
I don’t usually watch it.
Is Mary the Punk still in it?
Or Roly the dog?)

My friend Fran’s parakeet
Is really sweet
With its paws and its whiskers and its tail
And the way it sits on my lap.

Poem

I was trying to order a moussaka
But the pub was full of circus performers.

Clowns in the most part whose gaiety
Tomfoolery sinister subversions aimed at

Something beyond my need to fee on
Moussaka. I need to see the bartender.

I know its on the menu but I still want to
Ask her if they’ve got a moussaka

One of the bleeding clowns tumbles over
And invites me to smell his lapel flower

(I’m not falling for that one again) and I
Have to duck to avoid a custard pie

Which then hits the specials blackboard behind
The bar, slowly dribbling down leaving a

Creamy trail and obliterating a word which
Could very well have been ‘moussaka’

Because I can’t seem to think of any
Other word ending in ‘aka’.

Poem

Dean reckons he’s got
A transvestite goat.

How can you tell?, I ask.
Because its a bloke, he replies,
And yet it’s called Lulu Belle Kingsley.

Who gave it this name?, I ask.
I did, he replies.
Why did you call it Lulu Belle Kingsley?
I ask.
So I can tell people
That I’ve got a transvestite goat, he says.

Later on I go round Dean’s flat
And he hasn’t got a goat at all.

Poem

1.
Bilo stands back and admires his latest canvas. The subtle texture of the paint speaks to him deep inside and reminds him of something from his childhood. He cannot quite define what it is but it’s somehow more of a taste than anything else, that vague place where flavour and colour mix, perhaps going to the very
r o o t
of his cognitive skills.

The next day the paint dries and the colour is ever so slightly different, and the taste has gone.

He goes to the shed and plays his bongos for a bit.

2.
At the retrospective
Slugs it out with a critic.
‘You’ve got no soul, Bilo,
No humanity within you.
In fact when I look at your work
The only thing they reflect
Is the stupidity of me being
Here in the first place’.

A long drawn sigh
And a deep mutter
Along the lines of
Balls To The Lot Of Ya.

Also,
Queries the curator as to why
Only three walls have paintings on.

(Because
That’s all
You’ve done,
Bilo).

3.
Bilo has the name of his girlfriend
Tattooed on his back.
Her name is Susie.
They break up.
As fate would have it,
His next girlfriend is also called Susie.
When she sees the tattoo
It kind of freaks her out.
Eventually she gets used to it.
When they eventually stop seeing each other,
He goes searching for another girlfriend called Susie.
He finds one called Suzie.
She changes the spelling every morning
With a magic marker.

4.
Takes a ceramic St. Bernard dog,
Puts it in a glass pyramid
With a smaller St Bernard dog.
Adds water and coloured stars
So that on shaking the installation
The stars fall ever so gently
Like a mini constellation.

Suzie takes one look and says,
‘My uncle brought me one of those
Back from Austria’.

5.
Decides to emulate Banksy
And sprays the word ‘knockers’
On a wall near the station.

6.
each individual bristle of his paint brush
bristles individual each application
master of his craft individual
i mean we are all
good at one
thing

surely?

7.
There, he said, sit back and
Gaze upon my genius!

In the middle of the canvas, a
Tiny dot which, he said, re-

-presented the nullification of all
Hope in a blank void nothingness.

Susie said it looked like a dead fly and
He conceded that it was a dead fly,

8.
I visited the studio of the artist Bilo
And immediately became enraptured with a sculpture
The likes of which I’d never seen.
A white metallic box, rectangular, monolithic,
With various protuberances, brown,
Like raised bridges,like portals to a new age,
One about two thirds of the way down, the other
One third from the top, both on the left hand side,
And on the rear a strange convolution
Of black metal grilling and pipes
The likes of which, in their elegant geometry,
Brought to mind the logic of ivy.
It stood like a monument to souls, to life,
Quietly humming with a sci-fi energy
In an almost smug manner, and yet it represented
Something beyond the immediate, timeless,
He kept his sandwiches and the milk in it.

9.
Taking some paint,
Whacking it on!
Taking some paint,
Whacking it on!
Taking some paint,
Whacking it on!
Taking some paint,
Whacking it on!
There, that’s the
Bathroom decorated.

April 14 Poem A Day 2

My friend Mark has a whole room
Devoted to his trousers.
He’s got two pairs of trousers.
One beige, one slightly off-beige.
They are hung in his trouser room,
Though seldom simultaneously,
As he’s usually wearing his trousers,
Unless he’s wearing shorts.

Mark, I said. Mark. Marky babes,
Why have you got a whole room devoted
Just to your trousers?
And he replied that it was to stop them
From getting creased, and could I please not
Call him Marky babes?

A ground-floor room, climate controlled,
Exposed oak beams, Gothic window,
Stained glass, flagstone floor,
Trousers rotating in the slightest breeze
Trousers rotating in the slightest breeze
Trousers rotating in the slightest breeze
Mesmerisingly.

In twilight the trousers take on
A personality all of their own,
The low evening sun diffused
Through stained glass captures the various
Zips buttons and poppers
Of Mark’s cacks
Like imaginary constellations decrying
Nonsensical astrology.

Mark.
Hey, Mark.
Mark.
Mark.
Mark.
Mark.
Mark
Hey Mark.
Mark.
Mark.
Mark.
Mark.
Mark.
You are so devilishly impulsive.
Sorry, I thought you were Mark.

Two years ago the local perv
Broke in and was found
Sniffing the crotch of the left hand pair.
And since then Mark has
Always locked the door.

Mark came round the other day
And did some work for me.
I paid him with a twenty pound note.
He trousered it,

During the great earth tenor of 2013
They swung gently like
Two old people
At a Cliff Richard concert.

There was a man in there the other day with Mark.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked.
Mark replied
‘He’s just a trouser browser’.

THE
AIR
SMELLS
FEINTLY
OF
FEBREZE

living room
kitchen
dining room
bedroom
trouser room
guest room
He’s put the house on the market
‘Why’s that?’ I asked.
He replied, ‘I’ve just bought another
Pair of trousers’.

My Aunt lives near Heathrow Airport
And every time a plane flies over
The glasses in her drinks cabinet
Jingle together.
( this has got nothing to do
With Mark or his trouser room).

As a joke a jape as tomfoolery
As a cruel prank last Thursday
I let a fully grown mountain goat
Into Mark’s trouser room.
But the joke was on me because
It was the local perv again
Dressed as a mountain goat.

Poem

Too hot out
For serious contemplation.
I sit in the cool of my room
At my parent’s
Bunga
Low.

Window open,
Net curtains twitching on the slightest breeze,
Car tyres on the concrete road surface,
Apolo
Getic.

The stipples ceiling has cracks.
Little roads through a mountain landscape.
But instead of being round the world is
Rectangular
( Except for a slight recess in the east).
The capital city is the light fixture.
The explorers are ever so brave
Who reach as far as the
Archi
Trave.

Outside in the summer heat,
The plaintive honking
Of something that honks.
I’m a city boy so I don’t really know
What kind of animal honks.
But I wish it wouldn’t.
It gives me the willies.

I imagine the room filled with
Albino
Ocelot
Octopuses
Cool
Coral
A
Drinks
Vending
Machine
PepsiCo

It’s so hot
I try to visualise somewhere cool
Like an airport air conditioned coffee shop.

Actually the honking is probably
Just the shed door
Creaking in the breeze.

Poem

A pig and a donkey did it once
And now we’ve got a ponkey.
It stands in the lobby
Next to the receptionist.
It’s ever so helpful.

A visiting professor of zoology
Was most bemused by its neurological
Characteristics.
The tenacity of a donkey.
The amiability of a pig.
‘The best of both worlds, Mr Morgan.
The best Of both worlds’.

And I said,
‘Who’s Mr Morgan?’
And the ponkey said
‘Squeal-ore’.

One night the receptionist said
‘I can’t work properly or efficiently with the ponkey
Watching my every move’.
And I said ‘It’s got the amiability of a pig,
That’s what the professor said’,
And she replied, ‘I wouldn’t go trusting
Everything that quack said,
After all, he thought your name was
Mr Morgan’.
Fair point.

A plaice and a flounder did it once
And now we’ve got a plounder.
It then had offspring of its own
Which are quarter-plounders.
They taste just like flounders.

Poem

Helen is turning into Leeds Castle.
I noticed in the sauna last night
That she’s developing
R
A
Mparts.
There’s a certain grey aspect to her skin.
She’s got a drawbridge where before
She merely had
The normal accoutrements of a
Middle aged lady.

Hey, Helen.
You always were impassive,
So stony faced.
Let me clamber up your
Battlements.

Instead of a hat she’s got a moat.
Instead of a handbag she’s got a gift shop.
Instead of glasses she’s got a keep.
Here hairstyle was a fashionable bob.
Now it’s crenelated.
Instead of a coat she’s got some tea rooms.

It was hot in the sauna.
She said,
‘You’ll get nothing out of me’.
I said,
‘You’re so defensive’.
She said,
‘Its my job’.
I said,
‘Let me get close to you’.
She said
‘I distrust all poet rio invaders’.
I said,
‘What if I bring some ice cream?’
She said
‘One must naturally be cautious’.
I said
‘Human society is built on compromise’.
She said
‘Isn’t it hot in here?’
I said
‘It’s a sauna, what do you expect?’
And then a coach party of
Tourists arrived.

Oh, Helen,
I’d like to climb your
Spiral staircase
And raise my flag
From your
Immovable turrets and other
Architectural flourishes.

Ever since she started
Turning into Leeds Castle
She walks much slower
And I got frustrated in the high street
When people kept coming up and saying,
‘I know you from somewhere’.

Poem

This poem keeps BANG backfiring.
I’ve done a systems BANG check
But it still keeps BANG backfiring.

They moved the tables round in Costa
BANG and now I feel losssssssst.
Where my favourite table was
BANG BANG is now a sofa
OMG BANG

Chinny comes BANG in
He’s shaved off his beard
And BANG now it emphasises
The lack of a BANG chin
That led to Mark BANG and I calling him,
BANG ironically, Chinny
(We’re both BANG quote sarcastic sometimes).

BANG BANG
There’s a shed in the middle
Of the BANG national archives
On asking BANG the Chief Archivist why
BANG she replied
That BANG BANG
That BANG
That BANG BANG
She replied
BANG BANG BANG
She replied that it looked BANG
Better than a greenhouse.

On purchasing a novelty BANG inflatable
Pink flamingo from Amazon.BANGcom
I was notified BANG that
‘Customers also purchased BANG
A novelty giant BANG pocket watch BANG
Suitable for the Mad Hatter.’

Since the new BANG people
Took BANG over BANG the deli BANG
It’s been BANG fairly BANG quiet in there BANG
BANG I suppose BANG they need to BANG
Build a rapport BANG BANG with their BANG BANG
BANG BANG
BANG BANG BANG clientele.

Mark is BANG POP BANG POP coming to join me
In the POP POP coffee shop POP
(That’s weird, it’s never popped until now BANG).

Two castles
Facing each other
And two forbidden lovers.
One, an athletic youth BANG,
A prince, joyous, forlorn,
And she, a BANG winsome princess,
Buxom, BANG coquettish.

The bin robbers BANG took the BANG pouffe!
The bin BANG robbers took BANG the pouffe!
The BANG bin robbers BANG took BANG the pouffe!

I can’t believe he (BANG Chinny) took a mobility scooter
Into the London BANG underground and BANG got
Stuck between BANG the ticket barriers BANG
Wheeeeeeeels spinnnnnnnning tyre smoke curling BANG

And thence BANG BANG BANG POP BANG
BANG oh BANG BANG POP BANG POP BANG
POP BANG BANG just BANG BANG POP BANG
BANG forget BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG
BANG BANG BANG BANG it BANG BANG POP BANG
BANG BANG BANG POP BANG BANG BANG BANG

Poem

I’m not Matt Harvey.
I wish I was but I’m not.
And even if I was
I wouldn’t write a poem in this style.
This is my style.
Not Matt Harvey’s.
And in any case
Matt Harvey wouldn’t write a poem
Which starts with the line
‘I’m not Matt Harvey’
Because he blatantly is.

I’m not Doris Lessing, either.

Poem

This is my slam poem poem.
It’s a poem about a slam poem.
I’d like to perform my slam poem poem
At a poetry slam with the slam poets.

This is my slam poem poem.
I’d hover at the mic
Like a kestrel at the slam
With my poem at hand
Because I’m the man at the slam with the plan
Who thinks he’s the best in the land
And that’s why I’m at the slam.

Slam down that muvva!

I won’t be going
No to or fro-ing
With this poem
And all that life is owing
Can be found in this poem
More robust than a Boeing
747-400.

I told my friend Fran
That I was entering the slam
And she said ‘Don’t forget your bran

Flakes’.

‘Do you want a hand?
I can drive you in my van
To the slam’.
Said Fran.

Hey there
Hip cat
On stage
Mic man
Slam man
Hey there
Hip cat
Trip hop
Hip hop
Top hat
Mic man
Hey there
Hey there
You there
Mic man
Ice cream
Mic man
Yes please
Oh dear

This is my slam poem poem poem
This is my slam poem slam poem
This is my slam poem poem slam
Slam the poem
Slam it down
Slam down the poem
The slam poem poem
Slam it like a bad boy
Slam the slam slam slam
Hey sister go sister go sister go sister
Watch me slam
Did you see me slam?
Did you see me slam it?
Did you see the slam that I slammed
Did you see me slam it dammit?

There’s slam all over the place now

Oh oh oh I want so much to do this
And I’m all hyped up now
But Darren says I’m not good at the mic.

Poem

Disco dancing with Seamus Heaney.
I think it was Erasure,
‘Who needs love like that?’

He didn’t once analyse the lyrics.
I ought he was Norman Mailer.
He went to take his t- shirt off.
No, I said. Please, no.

Ok, Heaney, I said.
I think your books about Rabbit Angstrom are sheeeeeer genius!
For some reason he sighed quite audibly.

Banging it banging it banging it.
Punching at the ceiling.
Blowing a whistle with all his might!

There was something retro about the nightclub.
I wore my Converse All Stars.
They look trendy but they hurt after a bit
If I danced too much.

He didn’t buy me a drink.
Heaney, you’re such a meany.

The next song was M’s PopMuzik.
Ah man!, I said, I love this one!
Heaney sloped off, started chatting up a
Pretty young thing from Newton Abbot.

Who else would benefit from this?
Who else wants to join right in?
Who else shall I add to this
marvellous fandango
flamingo
flamenco
crazy crazy beat
Sylvia Plath doing the
cha
cha
cha
Who else wants a piece of this?

Heaney Heaney Heaney
His lips are devil red
And his skin’s the colour of mocha

Thinking back it might have been a while ago
As Erasure and M were both 80s acts
And both Heaney and Mailer are brown bread now

Well I’ve been undertaking the April Poem a Day challenge this month. The September one was very productive for me and led to my book ‘Perpendicular’. But this year I set myself the additional challenge of
1- Not featuring any introspective or serious poems
2 – No poems with a ‘gay’ theme
3- Every poem being humorous in content.

Anyway, this is what I’ve come up with some far from the first week.

Poem

I don’t want this poem to be about
The thing that it’s about.
I don’t want it to be about that thing.
I don’t want to have to
Mention
That thing which I’m thinking of right now
Because it’s what this poem is about.
People go out of their way not to
Talk about this thing,
This thing I’m writing this poem about.
People feel disgusted
Being made to think about this thing,
This thing that this poem
Is about, ostensibly.

So I won’t mention it
Because I’m nice like that.
And I’d like to shield you
From the reality of life of
This thing existing
By pretending that this poem
Is about something it’s not
By the method of not mentioning
The thing that it’s actually about.
I’m so clever.

Poem

A pogo stick
In a steep scree-lined Welsh valley.
Boing boing boing
And the boinging echoing back
On the echo boing
As gaboinging
Intermittently interspersed
Between my own pogo boings
In a sort of boing gaboing boing
Or sometimes boing boing gaboing boing
With the next gaboing obliterated
By the latest boing
If I get a chance to pick up speed.

Boing boing gaboing boing (gaboing)
Boing boing gaboing boing (gaboing)
Et cetera.

Up and down
Up and down in my Welsh valley
With the pogo and the echo
Loud enough to have some serious fun
(A cheery hello to a passing backpacker)
But not loud enough to cause an
Avalanche.

Until the park ranger turns up
And says I’m driving all the woodpeckers crazy
With my syncopated boing gaboing
And that an amorous sparrow
Is under the impression that it’s a mating call.

Poem

1. Abstract

Apart from John Hegley, Matt Harvey, John Cooper Clarke, Pam Ayres, Johnny Fluffypunk, TS Eliot and hundreds of other notable poets, not many have tackled the subject of garden sheds.

2. Introduction

I am about to tackle the subject of garden sheds.

3. Contents

The contents of the poem, you mean?
Or the contents of the shed?
You see already I am confused by the
Format of this piece but I could
Willingly oblige you, one way or the other.

4. Here we go then

If I had a shed
It would be the best shed in the world
But I wouldn’t let it go to my head.
At nights I lay in my bed
And dream of having a shed.
Oh, the loneliness.
I think of all the tears I’ve shed
Over not having a shed.

5. The next verse

I’d like a shed.
I’d paint it red.
I’d call it ‘Fred’
I’d like to be buried in it
When I’m dead.

6. Immovable sheds

Due to their semi-permanence
Sheds are virtually static
Due to their construction and purpose
They don’t usually have an attic.

7. Big sheds

I’d like a shed so big
That people say
‘Hey, nice chalet!’
And I’d say, ‘No,
It’s a shed’.

I’d like a shed so big
A barn owl tries to live in it
And I’d say, ‘Hey, barn owl,
It’s not a barn,
It’s a shed’.
And the barn owl would say,
‘In that case I’m not a barn owl,
I’m a shed owl’.
And I’d say
‘It’s all a question of semantics’.
And the barn owl would move in
And poo on all my stuff.

8. I really like this next verse

I’d like a shed so big
It’s got it’s own shed.

9. Here’s a website link to a real kick-ass shed video

10. Get some rhythm!

Lock me in your shed, baby
Throw away the key.
Lock me in your shed, baby,
Throw away the key.
Down with the paint cans.
Down with the lawn rakes.
Down with the compost.
Down with the creosote.
Lock me in your shed, baby,
Throw away the key.

11. On preferring a shed with a felt roof

I’d like a shed with a felt roof
Angled at eleven and a half degrees,
Not enough to repel rain,
But enough to make a marble roll
Of its own volition
Should one be placed on it.

12. Alternative shed names

I know I said
That if I had a shed
I’d call it ‘Fred’
But I’ve considered other names, too.
Like Ethelred.
Ted.
Jed.
Kenneth. Brian. Lola. Steven. Anne. Carol. David. Connor. Nathan. Lord Pinkerton. Johann. Philip. Susie. Christopher. Ironing board. Ryan. Desmond. Lionel. Jessie J. Bob.

13. Moving on

If I had a shed
Oh, and
Michael. Sandra. Granny Finch. Katherine. Jean-Francois. Ian.

14. Almost at the end, now

If I had a shed
I’d keep my hopes and dreams and
Aspirations inside of it
And possibly
A lawn mower.

15. Acknowledgements

Thanks to Jeff for the use of his shed.

Poem

Thou hast upon thy charms a tariff
Mitigating against, among other things, insomnia
That one should prioritise the transaction
Rather than the honesty of truth.
Halt! Pale creature, and ponder on this.

Why should’st thou be so concerned?
Thou manners have tempers not of this world.
Thine eyes shaded against the sun
Thine elevation increased by heightened heels
Yet mirth and whimsy pass ye by.

Cast thine eyes leftwards.
Cast thine eyes rightwards.
Can’st thou savour the ephemera
That we should, with our desires, augment various japes.

Be this not concerning the tariff tarriff tarriff
Thou hast no need of thy tarriff tarriff tarriff
If chance prevails one must faithfully gyrate.
Cast all thoughts of thy funds from thy mind.
Be this not concerning the cobblous sound of pennies accumulated, accumulated,
Be this not concerning the grotesque fripperies that one might purchase, purchase,
If chance prevails one must faithfully gyrate
Cast all thoughts of thy funds from thy mind.

Upon what manner is this public obsession?
Currency hath not the charms of potential merriment
That we should by turns de-accelerate and ponder on lightness
In pale guarantee of a more harmonious mind frame.

Poem

I always seem to associate
Several Surrey towns
With shades of beige as marketed
By the Ford Motor Company in the 1970s.

Egham is Nevada beige.
Woking is Sahara beige.
Weybridge is classic cream beige.
Guildford is light beige.
Staines is antique beige.

I know Staines has a Middlesex postal address
But it’s definitely in Surrey.

My friend Steven opines
That I always get excitable
And blunder on through life
And he might have a point.

I like the display of busts
In one of the galleries at the British Museum.
I can’t remember which gallery it is
But they’ve all got big sideburns
And the sun slants oblong like solid dust.
I put my hand in the dust slant solid beam.

Haslemere is Bahama beige.
Horsell is Toucan beige.
Bracknell is in Berkshire but it’s milk caramel beige.

In 1995 I had a bad cycle accident
And my nose has been this shape ever since.
I fell off my bike in Englefield Green
(Sonic beige)
Went riiiiiiiiiight over the handlebars.

I take time now and then
To slow down and savour life
And to commune with the exact platzgeist
Of a place / moment.

So up yours, Steven.
See, I can do it sometimes.

At nights the trains used to spark electric and
Light up the skies,
Silhouetting
Holloway College like Dracula’s Castle.
And I’d get ever so scared
Until,
Lulled to sleep by the friendly roar
Of transcontinental jets,
I’d dream of labyrinthine holiday cottages.

Poem

1. Oh my goodness
That’s 20p he owes me now.

2. Dreaming of being an aircraft
I zoom over mental landscapes
With the thrust lift pitch yaw
Except I do so safe in the knowledge
That I’m 20p poorer.

3. It was one of those sunny Devon mornings, the kind of morning in which one feels that the world is not so terribly bad, and I’d begun by answering some emails, then going for a walk along the promenade, then to the coffee shop where is usually sit and scribble poems and things before going to work, and he was in there, and he wondered if I might lend him 20p so that he could upgrade from a primo to a massimo. And like a fool I said yes. He then sat next to me and bored me rigid with tales about his uncle.

4. Tentative ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffriendship
I
Believe
In
The
Power
Of
Being
Ever
So
Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice

5. I went to the 99p Store
But I only had 79p.
(Gosh, I’m so postmodern
Mentioning the 99p Store
In a poem!)
I couldn’t make a
Single purchase.

6. 20p
Is meant to be
Plenty for me
So lending thee
20p
Hath left me
Empty.

7. Coffee shop rules and regulations:
– Don’t grab a table first and then order a drink.
– Watch the steam rising from the machine, see the way it rises, Jake?
– Toilets for customer use only
– The ephemera of logos and corporate design, temporary at best.
– Comfy sofas, but no good if you’re a sofa-phobic.
– Sorry, no tiaras.
– Ladies, please don’t fight over the only copy of the Daily Mail.

8. In early morning light
The road surface, smooth,
Shining ever so worn flat
By a decade’s car tyres,
The dips and hollows caused by
Fortune’s roadworks

Causing ever such slight shadows.

9. Josh, I know you don’t like poetry and you never read anything of mine, so it’s probably quite safe to hide this right now, halfway down the page, and declare it to the world, that I absolutely adore you.

10. See below for a half-assed selfie I took while writing this poem in the coffee shop.

11. I love everyone who’s ever lived
Which is quite an undertaking
When you consider history’s assholes.
People in the most part are fantastic,
Even that bloke over there.
I wonder if he’s ever leant someone 20p?

12. Scene five, the stables.
ILLYANA- Upon my whim, that I should
Partake of that which I can never afford.

ALLACUTIA – (While shoeing a horse)
Upon my soul, what might that be?

ILLYANA – (Looks out window, soulfully)
I seem to leap from one misadventure to the next.
I see the daily grind of absolute nullity
Where others see chance.

ALLACUTIA – Pray, tell me.

ILLYANA – Life in all it’s pleasantness,
Hath but, like a church to a couple
Contemplating wedded bliss,
An ominous gothic twinge.

ALLACUTIA – ( Blinks she, heavily).
Upon my Heath, do tell.
(Be still, thou tiresome horse, be still!)

ILLYANA – Upon my desires, ‘this as I say
A whim that I should
Plumb the depths of our friendship, and drive a
Tractor through that which has sustained us as
Friends, but, alack, for I am in need of
Twenty once in order that I might be furnished
With a packet of Polos.

ALLACUTIA – That my wealth should bar all further trespass
And other sympathies upon the tenements of our camaraderie, I hereby
Present to thee pence of twenty.

ILLYANA – Ta.

(The horse bucks, knocks over a small automobile)

ILLYANA – For goodness sake.

It’s been a very unusual but enjoyable week performing in two completely different towns to two completely different audiences. In Bath I performed to the students of Bath Spa University and I was the oldest person in the room, though I did get mistaken for being a 22 year old, and I did cause consternation at the bar by asking for a cup of tea. They made one for me in the manager’s office, and then they didn’t know how much to charge for it. Bless.

And then the next night in Okehampton I was the youngest person in the room by some considerable margin. It was in an inn on the edge of Dartmoor, miles from the town itself, surrounded by bric a brac and paraphernalia, the gig itself take place in a room decked out to look like a galleon. The audience wasn’t very big, but when some younger tourists from Sweden turned up, the manager of the inn informed them that watching my set was compulsory!

I did similar material on both nights and it went very well. Yet my overriding memory of the two days was the travelling. If I have to get on another rail replacement coach again then someone’s going to get nutted,

I was very impressed with the students at Bath Spa. Samantha Boarer has long been a favourite poet of mine, and she is now seen as an elder statesman among the younger students. Those who performed were individuals, humans, with genuine concerns, humour and rhythm, surrealism and genuine literary talent. There was a really supportive atmosphere which I was incredibly glad to be a part of.

And it was great the next night to spend some time with Jackie Juno, one of the people who inspired my poetry career. Endlessly funny, inventive and real.

There’s so much talent in this area and it makes me proud to visit other parts of the country and see just how individual and buzzing the Devon / South West scene is.

It was only the other day, while poking round through some old photos on my phone, that I came across this picture.

It was taken in the jungles of Queensland, more specifically, in the Mossman Gorge River.

I was there with a bunch of backpackers who were all about fifteen years younger than me. Oh well, go on then. Twenty years younger. We'd spent the day travelling through the jungle in an organised tour in search of the famous Jungle Haiku, the remnants of which can still be found amid the lair of the cassowary and the fresh water crocodile.

If anyone is unfamiliar with the Jungle Haiku, then let me remind you. In the 1960s a band of Japanese students of literature, enraged by the increasing westernisation of their university campuses, wrote a series of beautiful haiku which they were sure that nobody would ever read. Emboldened by the exuberance of youth, they set them on the air on lanterns which carried them not towards the mid Pacific, as they hoped, but towards Australia and parts of Papua New Guinea.

It is probable that all memory of this would have been lost had not the literary explorer, Professor Zazzo Thiim, discovered two of them in the jungles of the Mossman Gorge in 2010.

The haiku were said to be of such exquisite beauty that his heart rate increased immediately and he felt within him the ferocious pull of the centuries. Thiim, thereafter, said little about the haiku.

In 2011 I travelled to the same area with a band of enthusiastic students of French symbolism. Youthful, exuberant, they started the day eager to find more of these fabled haiku, but as the day wore on they became more interested not only in engaging with their environment, but also with each other. By the time we got to the Mossman River itself, all thoughts of the haiku had vanished to be replaced by the necessity of going for a swim. As one of them was heard to quip, ‘Who needs bleeding haiku when it’s almost forty degrees and ninety percent humidity?’

I gave in, and joined them in swimming in the river. The boulders, worn smooth by the constant flow, were slippery, but the water was cool, fresh and pure. Swimming against the tide, I was able to drink and rehydrate myself.

As the afternoon slipped into evening, the gathering darkness held within it a queer magic and we swapped stories around the camp fire of literary shenanigans and high whimsy. I recited a few poems and a few of them ell asleep. But in that magical day we had all become as one, a unit of brave explorers who, in the morning, would never see each other again. It was timeless, beautiful, resplendent.

As I made my way to my tent I looked up and saw the remains of one of the Jungle Haiku hung in the branches of the tree. To find it now. I told myself, would spoil the moment forever. Let us rest with our memories, and carry on with our lives.

I didn’t mention it in the morning. Indeed, I kept it in for all those years, eventually convincing myself that I’d seen nothing, until this morning when, looking at the memory card of my old phone, I found the above photograph.

Bugger it.
;

27 March: RHYME AND REASON, Bath
Headline set

28 March : MAD AS A MARCH HARE CABARET, Okehampton
Headline set

21 April : ACOUSTIC NIGHT, Bristol
Extended set

24 April : POETRY ISLAND, Torquay
Host

One of the things I never realised before embarking on a semi-career as a poet / spoken word performer was how much paperwork there is. Emails, forms, administration, poking people into action, begging for answers, all of it on top of the actual sitting down and writing. But it all comes good in the end and the results are definitely worth it.

For the last few years I’ve been running Poetry Island performance poetry nights in Torquay, and while the nights themselves may seem to run like clockwork, seamlessly and without any hitches, (ha), the organisation behind the scenes is enough to justify getting a secretary. Or at least throwing the occasional wobble. Getting poets together is like herding cats. Nice, well-meaning, talented, awe-inspiring cats, but cats all the same.

That’s why it’s such a joy to go to other people’s nights and relax, enjoy the evening, and then do a set of poems without having to worry about such things as timing and the set order. On Thursday night I made my debut at a comedy night, the Jocular Spectacular Roving Comedy Show at the Blue Walnut hosted by Chris Brooks. It was an amazing night of laughter and hijinx topped off by a brilliant set by the elderly poet and innovator of sound poetry, Mr Lionel Spume. He was fantastic, funny, a brilliant character-piece. I laughed so much that I had to use my inhaler.

And then on Friday, I made my second debut of the week, this time as a workshop facilitator at a sixth form school in Exeter. I was incredibly nervous beforehand, that the students would be monosyllabic, or perhaps downright rude. But they were wonderfully attentive during my performance, and then during the exercises, in which I handed out postcards to provoke some kind of written response, they showed such imagination and poetic flair that I felt very much humbled by the whole experience. Just five minutes, with paper, pen and postcards, and they managed to create works which had a distinctive voice and a beautiful outlook on life.  The hour ended with a question and answer session. I expected something along the lines of ‘Where did you get your tie?’, or ‘What the hell have you done with your hair?’, but the first student asked about ’embracing the abstract’.

It was a hugely enjoyable day, run by Kathryn Aalto, who has also written about it in her blog. http://www.kathrynaalto.com/sleuthing-and-shedding/

So it has been a good week, and next week proves to be busier still, with a radio appearance on Tuesday, (the Brenda Hutchings show on Riviera FM, 11AM, Tuesday), Taking the Mic in Exeter on Wednesday, and then Poetry Island in Torquay on Thursday night. I can’t wait!

Thanks to an amazing amount of hard work, organisation and administration on the part of Daniel Haynes, it gives me great pleasure to announce that we shall be going to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this year with our show, ‘Poetry Ping Pong’.

To be honest I never thought we’d get in. It’s as part of the Free Fringe organisation, which means that all though we don’t get paid, we don’t have to pay ( much) to be a part of it. And having been to the Fringe twice before as a viewer, it’s something I’d always wanted to do.

So what’s Poetry Ping Pong all about?

It’s 5000AD and humanity has changed beyond recognition. Only two remnants of 21st century culture remain, albeit twisted, mutated into a new blood sport they call Poetry Ping Pong. The legends of poetry through the ages are resurrected, then pitched together in horrible, gladiatorial combat. Only two remain. Robert Garnham showed his worth by knocking out the bookies favourite, a cyborg TS Eliot reconstruction in the semis. And Daniel Haynes, slipped into the final by vanquishing a genetically extracted bio-slurdge Pam Ayres thing.

That’s the premise, anyway.

So we are putting on this show, and so far Dan has got us on the bill at the Bath Festival too, as well as the Barnstaple Fringe with our other show, ‘Bard Science’.

And I’m really looking forward to it, because it makes everything kind of official. I’ve always wanted to be a part of something like this. So for the next couple of months we shall be writing and practising and rehearsing and coming out with promotional material and all the other things that Real Poets Do.

On Tuesday we went to Barnstaple to look for a venue to perform in and we ended up in the science labs of the community college. The science teachers showed us round and interrupted the sixth form lessons to show us the different types of rooms that they had. The students seemed well behaved and only a few of them sniggered at the strange people who were standing in the doorway!

So that’s what’s coming up, then. Look out 2014, here we come!

This is the speech I shall be giving in a couple of weeks time at a sixth form college.

Robert Garnham – On Writing and on Being a Poet

For some reason I have always wanted to be a writer. When I was a kid I would write whenever the opportunity arose. Blank paper and notebooks used to fill me with a strange excitement as if I could just reach out and touch the stories that hadn’t come into existence yet. They seemed imbued with the promise of a thousand possible plot developments, characteristics, humour and high jinx, whimsy and rhyme. I would walk to school hoping that it would rain at lunchtime so that I could stay in the classroom and write on scrap paper instead of running around the playground and playing ‘It’ or whatever the hell it was we used to do. To this day I still love it when it rains because it reminds me of those days. The rain brings people down to my level.

As I grew up I found myself with less time for writing. But I did a lot of reading. Where friends watched football and sports and would know everything about what I believe they call the ‘FA Cup’, I followed the Booker Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Best Seller lists, the Culture Show, the weekend book reviews. Instead of Keegan, Wayne Rooney and David Beckmann, I had Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Marcel Proust. These were my heroes. I’d write emulating their style and I’d hope that someone might read it and say that I was just as good as them. My writing was rubbish. And my school friends would laugh because I didn’t know who was leading the ‘FA Cup’.

And then modern life intervened, like a rhinoceros poking through the bins out the back of Lidls. GCSEs, A-levels, exams, my first job in Sainsbury’s, falling in love, all the usual things. Powerboat racing. Haberdashery. Eventually I had a full time job and I was an adult, and then I decided to do Open University in the evenings while working during the day time. My writing suffered, as you can tell from this paragraph. And instead of writing to write novels and epics and modernist classics, I found myself writing short stories, plays and poems. Looking back now it’s a wonder I found the time even to do these. I had a bit of moderate success when a couple of short stories were published in a magazine. I was so happy that I wrote to the editor to thank him for taking a chance on an unknown twenty-three year old. He wrote back to say that he was seventeen. A few years later, a play I wrote called ‘Fuselage’ won a competition and excerpts from it were put on over two nights at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter by a professional cast, one of whom had been in Doctor Who. Things were looking up. And then the Northcott went bankrupt and fired everyone I’d been working with. I’m still not sure if the two events were connected!

‘Fuselage’ is in a drawer at home, at the moment.

In late 2010 I decided I needed to get out more and see some culture in my local area. By this time I was doing an MA in Museum Management and my brain was becoming frazzled. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to manage a museum as a job, but I concluded that I’d better finish what I’d started. To distract myself, I went to a night of performance poetry hosted by a comedian poet by the name of Chris Brooks, and I thoroughly enjoyed what I saw. It seemed to speak to me, and the audience was engaged, supportive, appreciative.

I’d never heard of performance poetry before, but I could see that it was a cross between comedy and poetry, and I thought, ‘I want to have a go at this’. Chris Brooks took a chance on and offered me a slot at the next evening. Feeling incredibly nervous, I went along a performed a couple of silly poems I’d written, and to my surprise the audience liked it, and so did Chris. They laughed in all the right places and clapped at the end. Nobody booed and nobody threw anything, and the one person who did walk out had only gone to the toilet. Chris invited me along to the next night, and then every night thereafter.

From this point, things built up steadily. I studied the craft of performance poetry – or ‘spoken word’, as some like to call it – and quickly deduced who the best ones were. There were the obvious choices, like John Hegley, Matt Harvey, John Cooper Clarke, and yes, Pam Ayres. These were the big names, with radio and TV exposure, legions of fans and each with well-crafted and rehearsed poems, polished rhymes, a certain rapport with their audiences. And then there were others, just as good if not better, like Byron Vincent, Rob Auton, Ash Dickinson, Liv Torc, Thommie Gillow, Nathan Filer. These were the people I was completely in awe of.

Big names from the spoken word circuit would come down to Torquay and I’d start to find myself invited to other places to perform. When Liv Torc, the Bard of Exeter at the time, invited me to her evening in Exeter, I felt like Wayne Rooney when he scored that thing he did for that team he plays for in the FA Cup Championship. Rachel Pantechnicon so liked my oeuvre that they invited me to London, offering me my first paid gig as a performance poet. And since then I have slowly built up a little bit of a reputation as poet of interest, performing regularly in London and various other places. The fact I get paid for it is still, for me, deeply surprising.

The other thing I’ve done of late is to start entering slams. Poetry slams are competitions in which the poet and their performance are judged by the audience. I was fortunate enough to win the Exeter Poetry Slam in 2012, and I came second at the Bristol Poetry Slam in 2013. I also came 22nd in the Cheltenham Slam, but I don’t talk about that one. My favourite slam was in Berlin, where I came fourth, even though I was the only one in English, and I couldn’t understand a word that anyone was saying.

So. How do I write?

To write, I have to be in a certain frame of mind. Sometimes this frame of mind comes easily, and I can just sit down and go for it. Sometimes it doesn’t. I might be distracted by small things, like whether or not the freezer needs defrosting, or whether or not to do a selfie and put it on Instagram, or why on earth it is that people like Eammon Holmes. So I have to get myself in the mood for writing. The best method is to get a piece of paper and just write anything. It can be a poem, or a paragraph, or some lines about nothing in particular, anything just to get the ink flowing and the mind conditioned. It’s kind of like swimming in the sea. You just have to plunge in and get used to it. Once you’ve got over the psychological barrier, then you’re free to go.

It’s good to have a specific place to write. I have an old-fashioned desk in my flat which is great for note taking and rough outlines, but there are too many distractions, like books, the TV, the freezer as it defrosts, and how many people have liked the selfie I put on Instagram. If you’re good at ignoring such distractions, then that’s half the battle won. The best place I have for writing is at my parent’s house. They have a room at the back of their garage which is totally shut off from the rest of the world and far enough from their house so as not to hear them arguing about dinner. There’s no TV or Facebook or Family Guy or whatever it is that young people watch these days. The only distraction is the tumble dryer, the rhythm of which, I find, actually helps with poetry.

I always write in pen first. I’ve used the same pen since 1995 for everything I’ve written. I write everything in hand first, then type it up. I’m writing this right now in long hand using the 1995 pen. This very sentence. This very word. And the full stop at the end of this sentence. Some people can just type straight away, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I was chatting to a poet the other day who uses a voice recognition computer program and just speaks his poems right on to the screen. Maybe this is something I’d like to try one day, but I’d probably get a sneezing fit halfway through. Which would be very interesting.

The other thing I do is to read. I read all the modern poets, particularly those in the performance poetry community. I watch poets on YouTube and I go to poetry nights, usually with a notebook to make notes on what I see. I read as much as I possibly can for inspiration, and I take the poems I really like apart just to see how the poet gets a certain effect. I also get inspiration from other places, like music. I love pop music. The use of words in pop music is both economical and pure. Take for example The Wanted’s ‘Walks Like Rhianna’, or a song by One Direction. No matter what you think of the bands, the lyrics do a really good job of creating an impression quickly, efficiently.

Finally, I take my notebook everywhere. It’s amazing where inspiration comes from. Just listening to people, or seeing things happen and the way people act, may result I a certain line or idea coming into your head. I’ve filled in so many notebooks with lines and snippets of conversation that it’s fun to read back every now and then. Of course, sometimes ideas come at the worst of places. I do a lot of swimming, and that’s when ideas seem to come.

So to top it all off, if I had one piece of advice for any writer, it is to read a lot, see a lot, write a lot. Read books, read the classics, look at the world, look at both high and low culture, literature and pop, listen to people, but most of all, write!