Author Archives: Robert Garnham

Cheltenham All Star Poetry Slam

I went along to Cheltenham and took part in the qualifying event for the main All Star Slam. It was a useful exercise, if nothing else. I certainly learned a lot and came away with lots of inspiration for next year.

There was a rumour, whenever I mentioned the slam, that it is always won by someone from Cheltenham. So the idea persisted before the start that perhaps I should freely publicise the fact that the former mayor of Cheltenham, and current leader of the local Conservatives group, is also called Robert Garnham. (This is true. Check it online). I decided that this might be a tactical error.

I’d already changed the poem that I was going to do in the qualifier. I’d hoped to start with The First Time, with its raunchy content and sexual comedy, but I’d heard from various people that the audience, who judge at this slam, were very conservative, (with a small c). For this reason I decided to start with The Straight Poem, which I thought they may find wryly amusing.

Whimsical, even.

You know what will happen, I kept telling myself. I will get called to go on first. And then people won’t know what to make of me. And I shall fall by the wayside.

I attended the event with Tim King and Morwenna Griffiths. We were all good enough to qualify, I reckoned. We arrived at the venue and the audience were asked if they’d ever been to a slam before. Most of them said no. Well, I thought to myself. Whoever goes on first will lose out, because the audience won’t know what to expect. If they’ve never been to a slam or seen performance poetry, then they won’t know if the first person is good or bad. And their scoring will therefore be indifferent. Unless, of course, there’s a warm up a couple of poems beforehand for the audience to understand just what they are watching.

In quick succession, two things occurred. The first was that there was no warm up. The second was that I was picked to go first! Ignoring my reservations, I belted out The Straight Poem to the best of my abilities.

It was well received, seemingly. Tim King’s Big Pig poem was similarly enjoyed. And Morwenna brought the house down with her Black County Dialect poem. It’s going to be close, I told myself. Tim and Morwenna are probably definitely through. And I might be, too. However, I might lose marks just by being on first.

Indeed, Morwenna did go through. Like a poetry gazelle, she leapt into the All Star Slam. Tim and I were beaten by some people from Cheltenham.

We reconvened a couple of hours later to support Morwenna. We even came up with a chant: MorWinner! MorWinner!

She was beaten in the first round by some people from Cheltenham.

Then we had to drive back to Exeter in the pouring rain . . .

Had an amazing time at the Bristol Poetry Slam last night. I didn’t really know what to expect as my only slam experience is the Exeter Poetry Slam and that strange one I did in Berlin where I was the only English speaker. I’d heard the Bristol event was huge. How right I was!

The quality of the poets was very high indeed. I’d been into Foyles book shop earlier in the day and picked up the festival brochure. Not only was I blown away by the fact that there was a picture of me on the second page, but that the entry list included Vanessa Kisuule, Steven Duncan, Tim Vosper and my good friend Samantha Boarer. So I knew it would be tough!

I sat with Sam on the front row and we chatted in order to forget just how nervous we were. Neither of us were called out in the first two groups. Then Sam went up and she did very well indeed, winning her group. I went up a couple of slots later and did The Straight Poem, which was amazingly well received. It’s a 2013 remix of the old poem and the new sections seemed to work really well. Not only did I go through to the next round, but I had the highest score of anyone so far!

I jiggled my order around and did The First Time next. It was my strongest poem and sure enough, it went down amazingly well. The audience cheered and clapped and stamped and it got a very good score putting me in to the final. Alas, Tim and Samantha fell at this stage, and I was up against Steven Duncan, who was just sublime all evening. He managed to get through to the final even with having points deducted for running over his time!

He won the toss and went first. His poem was remarkable and it received full marks from every judge. I knew then that I could not possibly emulate this. I thought of doing Fozzie, but this had subject matter close to my other two poems and I didn’t want to be typecast. I thought of The Old Lady and The Fly, but this didn’t seem right. So I went with Beard Envy. It got me the strongest haul of points of the night, but just missed out.

Steven was a deserving and popular winner and I was more than happy with second place. We went for a drink afterwards and chatted and I felt really good at having made some new friends and seen some inspiring poets. And it was a damn good practice season for Cheltenham next weekend!

And tomorrow is the Exeter Poetry Slam, which I’m judging. So I was left with this one thought: Just four points separated me from being Exeter and Bristol slam champions at the same time, if only for a day!

As you may already know, I was fortunate enough to to-win the Exeter Poetry Slam on Sunday night, with a very talented poet by the name of Daniel Hayne. It was a dead heat in the third round so it was decided we should share the accolades. And why not? It feels great to be a co-champion, it feels like much more of a bigger story! Having said that, I am still not sure that poetry can ever be judged the same way as sport. The audience were wonderful, appreciative and intelligent, but it all depended on the dynamics at the time. If the audience were miserable, or had better tastes, or had all left their ovens on or parked on double yellow lines, then th story might have been different!

So I have spent today trying to write some new material. That’s the problem with something like this. Everyone has heard my best stuff now! After a couple of false starts with a poem about being high fived, and another poem about an architect falling for a supermarket janitor, I wrote a new piece about being friends on Facebook with Frankenstein. I am moderately happy with it!

It feels like its been one of those days in which not much has been achieved. I have a typing of typing to do and emails to send but I have been ignoring everything. Perhaps writing this blog also comes under procrastination!

Anyway, there a two people I would like to thank for helping me win. My director, when I was in the only play I have ever been in, who first got me performing or even being brave enough to speak in public, Polly Agg-Manning, and the performance poet Chris Brooks, who likewise encouraged me in performing and helped me to navigate the world of performance poetry in all its subtlety!

I have had a busy weekend rehearsing for the Exeter Poetry Slam on Sunday night. It’s going to be an interesting evening, I have never done a slam before except for the Bang Said The Gun thing in London a couple of months back. 

Part of me still wonders if it is right to judge poetry in a sporting manner seeing as though so much of it revolves around circumstance and audience response. Perhaps it is the audience who should be judged and marked. On the other hand I am looking forward to the whole event. James Turner and Clive Pig will be taking part, two of the finest performers in the South West.

i also had some fun over the weekend making a short film with the maverick director Bonjour Twain. He certainly put me through my paces and the part where he made me spin round and round was particularly challenging. The results can be seen with this link

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6xUn7nkVaCY.

Can it really be over two years ago that I wrote most of the poems that made it in to my first collection, ‘Year of the Cassowary’? The last couple of years have been a whirlwind. I only ever came to an evening of performance poetry because I had told myself that I neededd to see more culture. And then Chris Brooks, the host, put out a call for new poets. Hmm, I thought, I shall give it a go!

Lately I have been attempting to write some new material with the idea in mind of a new collection.  I have accumulated a lot of new poems and found a lot of old ones which, on reflection, didn’t seem as bad as I thought. So these are currently in the process of being prodded and poked and shaped lovingly the same way a potter makes those pot things. The only trouble is that alls of my poems are traditionally called ‘Poem’, as Richard Thomas alluded to at his headline slot at Taking the Mic in Exeter last month. So this will make the contents page look a little strange!

As a result of all this I have been looking anew at Year of the Cassowary and feeling quietly proud that this little pamphlet should have such a pedigree and should have led to so much. Many of the poems are still performed regularly.

If you are intersted in downloading the Kindle version, the address is http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0080Y3366/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_tmb