In case you didn’t know, I’ve got a new book out! : Thoughts on ‘Nice’.

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’ve got a book out. Indeed, it is my first published book, my first proper collection from a real publisher, Burning Eye Books, rather than a self published effort. I can’t begin to describe how great it feels!          Ever since I was a kid I wanted to be a published writer. While other kids would daydream and talk about winning some football match or scoring a winning goal, I would dream about there being a book out there with my name on the cover. I would repeat, over and over to myself on those long suburban sultry nights, the image of opening a box from the publishers and seeing all the books there inside, ready to go out into the world.

          It’s taken a while!

          Burning Eye are the most dynamic and wonderful company I can imagine. They’ve published all my favourite names in the spoken word community, such as Megan Beech, Vanessa Kisuule, Rob Auton, Salena Godden. I have devoured every volume over the years, and when the chance came up to send them some material, I didn’t hesitate. I heard nothing for a while and I thought, well, on to the next thing, then.

          Then last year, while staying in Bristol and supporting Vanessa Kisuule at the Hammer and Tongue event, I received an email from Clive Birnie inviting me to send in a manuscript, because he’d chosen me to be published! I was so happy, but I didn’t want to jinx it by telling anyone. The only person I told was Vanessa, and then I carried the secret around for months! 

          I cannot stress how incredibly professional Burning Eye have been. I’ve worked with editors and proofreaders, going through the poems and clarifying every last mark of punctuation or dodgy example of bad grammar. (Like this sentence). Hours spent enchanting emails about the rules on brackets and semicolons, hyphens, and the fact that one poem had to change its content in order not to be sued by a large film company which has a mouse shaped logo! Burning Eye were brilliant, it felt so good to be a part of their system.

          So, what is Nice?

          First of all, the title. I’ve always hated the word ‘nice’, because it’s so floppy and undescriptive, and it can be used sarcastically. But I wanted the book to be positive, to contain only funny or life affirming poems, and I needed a one word title that was positive in itself. The original title was ‘Nice One’, then I went with ‘Responsible’, and then back to ‘Nice’. I was also going to call it ‘Poems’.

          So, Nice is a collection of fantastic upbeat silly funny poems which don’t tax the brain and make no claims to literary excellence, but they are the ones that I enjoy performing the most and the ones that the audiences like. There are also one or two brand new pieces in there which I’ve not yet performed, such as a rap about fuchsias originally written for my music group Croydon Tourist Office, and another about, ahem, weird sexual fetishes. Indeed, a first read of the manuscript shocked me at the amount of sex mentioned in the book, although there was nothing exactly graphic. I did wonder what a psychologist might think!

          The cover is deliberately bright and clean. It’s based on the sort of design that you might see on a 1980s album cover, I wanted to create something simple and iconic, easy to replicate, and easy to put on posters. I think it looks clean and fresh, and the motif is repeated on the back. The colouring also could represent the rainbow flag, though this is not explicit and I only thought of it after I’d designed the cover!

          On the whole, Nice represents the last two or three years of my performances, and now it’s out there in the open for the whole world to enjoy, and I can go on to the next thing.

          I’m hugely proud of the book and the reception so far has been great. I’ve been working on it for a year and it still hasn’t lost its magic with me, so I hoping that this remains the case for the reader, too. The next step is a couple of events to help launch it, such as a book signing in Paignton in December, and a mini book tour taking in Torquay, Exeter, Bovey Tracey and Woking.

          You can buy the book here http://burningeye.bigcartel.com/product/nice-by-robert-garnham 

 

Poem (People Keep Mistaking Me For Tom Daley) 

Poem

Got mistaken again last night

For Olympic diver Tom Daley.

That’s the third time this week.

The classically handsome features,

The tanned, toned physique,

That winning smile,

Just like Tom Daley.

A lot of people have said

We could be twins.

Coming out of Morrissons with a

Supermarket trolley,

Some yob shouts from the bottle bank,

Tom! Tom! Tom!

Tom Daley! Tom Daley!

It’s Tom Daley!

Swimmer bloke! Trampoline swimmer bloke!

Tom Daley! Divey swimmy divey divey

Swimmer bloke!

From the tv!

Oi!

Tom Daley Tom Daley Tom Daley Tom Daley!

He then peered at me closer and said,

Oh.

In the coffee shop,

Flapjack please and a decaf cappuccino 

The barista above the steam gurgle machine

Says, half heartedly, ‘hon haley?’

And I say, what?

And she says, 

‘hon haley? hon haley?

and I say what?

And she says,

‘hon haley.

Nothing, nothing

I thought . . .

Sitting in the coffee shop

Avoiding eye contact

Feeling

Awkward.

Tom Daley is one of my favourite athletes.

This is because of the way that Tom Daley dives.

Tom Daley climbs up the ladder and then

Tom Daley dives off of it and Tom Daley

Hits the water and then Tom Daley swims to the side

And Tom Daley climbs out of the pool.

You could buy Tom Daley an ice cream and Tom Daley

Is the sort who would say thank you for buying me

An ice cream because that’s the sort of person

That Tom Daley is.

I dreamed that he came round

And we chatted about Professor Brian Cox

And now his to shows, informative as they are,

Might be half an hour shorter

If he didn’t speak

So

Slowly

The cat wanted to go out and

Tom Daley volunteered.

Come here, Kevin, he says,

Come here.

The cats called Kevin.

Sometimes people mistake me for

Professor Brian Cox, too.

I’m not Tom Daley

But if I was I’d probably

Wear a false handlebar moustache

In public

In case someone dropped their handbag

Into a river or a harbour

And a call went up among the throng,

‘Is anyone here an Olympic diver?’

Another invitation this week

To open a summer fete.

Just wear your swim shorts, the email said,

So we can put pictures in the staff magazine.

They thought I was you know you.

I’m fed up that

People use me just as a sex object.

Turned on the tv last night.

Diving championships,

Happened to be on.

Just in time to see Tom Daley

Clambering up for another

Rocket ship from the springboard.

And the commentator said,

‘And now here’s something different,

It’s performance poet Robert Garnham’.

A walk around rainy Brixham

Most weekends I come over to Brixham. You know, how Superman has his fortress of solitude, or the prime minister has Chequers. Or the president has Camp David. It’s a nice way of ending one week, beginning the next, catching up with The Olds, and catching up on reading.
Brixham feels like the end of the universe. It’s a town on a rocky escarpment which juts out into the sea ending with the sheer drop of Berry Head. It’s the end of the line. There’s nothing after Brixham except salt water and fishes.
Obviously the news the last two days has been depressing and the weather has been wet and windy, but today I decided to go for a walk and perhaps think of subjects to write poems about. The town centre was mostly closed due to the end of the tourist season, and sheets of rain could be seen blowing diagonally across the harbour where paint peeled row boats jiggled like shivering mice. In quick succession I saw:
1- A sign on a closed cafe which should’ve said ‘Closed due to our renovations being carried out’ which now read, having slumped down on its blue tack, ‘Closed due to our being carried out’.
2- A young teenaged man working in a themed restaurant, in an alleyway, dressed as a pirate, emptying a Hoover bag into a bin.
3- A sign on a shop which read, (rather inexplicably), ‘Due to staff illness, please use the other door’.
I went to a coffee shop to try and write an acrostic poem. I couldn’t think of anything to write an acrostic for. Normally a quite famous local poet is in there, holding court, and he once said to me, ‘I feel as if I ought to know you from somewhere’, but he wasn’t there today. I pondered on life and how lonely and cold Brixham felt, then stood up to leave.
Just then the door opened and my ex came in. He looked well. Sickeningly well. He looked fit and happy and for some reason was wearing tshirt and shorts. We exchanged pleasantries and I told him how weird it was to see him here, of all places. My fortress of solitude. He said that he was in a charity Zumba day at the social hall. Which was the last sort of thing I expected to be happening at a sleepy Autumn fishing port.
I walked home and wondered briefly what it was all about, and whether I should be doing something like Zumba, or whether it mattered at all, that such an ostensibly lonely walk around a shivering little town should leave me feeling strangely good about people. 

Some new poems I’ve been working on.

Poem
Check in desk one is closed

And check in desk two is closed

And check in desk three is closed

And check in desk four is closed

And check in desk five is closed 

And check in desk six is out to lunch

But

Check in desk seven

Is manned by a chicken.
Did you pack your bag yourself

Did you have your bag all the time.

Have you any liquids or

Small firearms

Did you book your ticket on line.

Buck-aaaaapppp!
I’m still alive

There are so many things.

That can kill you

But none of them have

Killed me yet

Unless you’re reading this

In a posthumous collection.

I’m very much alive.
My chakras may be misaligned

Like wonky buses in the bus station

And my feng shui

Might be all too much feng

And not enough shui

But I’m still alive

And when I saw that chicken

Operating the airline computer

And issuing boarding passes I

Thought

Good for you.

Good for you, chicken.

Good for you.
And I want to live and I want to fly and I want to have a real good time and i want to make this life the best I can I want to be a real man that’s the plan 

I want to live the life ecstatic I want to be the absolute best I want to breathe the sweet sweet air I want to feel the wind in my hair.

I want to live.
At that moment.

A representative of the airline arrived.

And she said

Sorry, is this chicken harrassing you?

It doesn’t represent the airline or any

Of its associated companies.

We’re so sorry.

We’re calling security.
Check in desk one is closed

And check in desk two is closed

And check in desk three is closed

And check in desk four is closed

And check in desk five is closed 

And check in desk six is out to lunch

And now we’ve got to just stand here. 
Poem
Since you left me

I’ve been able to get so much

More done.
I painted the skirting board.

Put up a shelf.

Learned some rudimentary expressions

In Cantonese.

Cleaned the oven.

Planted some hanging baskets.

And I finally got round

To cataloging my cd collection.
I can’t believe

It’s been thirteen and a half years.
Poem
At night

The lighthouse syncopated flashes she translates

In morse.
Irregular yet beautiful words,

Strange juxtapositions,

Poetic devices and

Postmodern cut-ups

Beamed to her coastal cottage.
Who might be this

Mysterious lighthouse keeper?

This poet of the senses?
Enthralled,

She strikes out across the shale

In a trance-like state,

Those breathtaking words 

Spurring her on
Only to find

An automated lighthouse

And a restless cormorant. 
Poem
My friend Ben is monotone.

He says things and they’re monotone.

He speaks to me he’s monotone.

He laughs at things in monotone.

When he has sex he’s monotone.

Unmoving and quite monotone

No tonal shifting monotone

Call him on the telephone

And wait there for the dialling tone

Then he comes on all monotone.

My friend Ben is monotone

He drives a Toyota.
Poem
My cousin Phil

Slipped at the top of Box Hill

Bounded end over end

In a never ending cartwheel

Right from the very top,

Then straight through the middle

Of a loving couple’s picnic,

Damaging a sausage roll

And two scotch eggs

Virtually beyond repair

Falling at such a velocity

His shoes flew off

And one of them clouted a nun

Who shook her fist at him.

He, er, he, huh huh, he died.
Poem
People always ask me

What I think

Might be

The meaning of existence.
Poem
I cheated on my eyetest.

I remembered every line.

I cheated on my eyetest.

The optician said I was fine.

I cheated on my eyetest

It felt so good to do it.

I cheated on my eyetest.

I breezed my way right through it.

I cheated on my eyetest.

This morning I walked into a bus stop.
Poem
They said it was full of monsters and guns,

Hot humid nights and mist hung over verdant valleys,

This ain’t no place for a stranger.

Scared out my wits in Burnsville. 
A one stop truck stop on a highway heading south,

Too hot to sleep in an un-air conditioned motel,

Nothing on the tv, no Ant and Dec

Scared out my wits in Burnsville. 
A glowing Coke machine attracts moths and flies,

Throws out its glow on the melted Tarmac road.

I’m probably thousands of miles from the nearest Lidls.

Scared out my wits in Burnsville. 
There’s a Bush in the White House

And bumper sticker pro-gun slogans.

When I ordered in a diner the room went very quiet.

Scared out my wits in Burnsville. 
There’s an ice machine on the motel verandah

And everyone’s drinking Mountain Dew, though

It’s a relief to see they still have McDonalds over here in the US

Scared out my wits in Burnsville. 
Country music on the radio, preachers on the radio,

Jesus is out to get me with his AK47

And now on channel 53 for some reason, ‘Are You Being Served?’

Scared out my wits in Burnsville. 
The motel laundry doors lit bright fluorescent

Shining hot shirtless lads operate the tumble dryers

I linger in the doorway just a fraction too long

Scared out my wits in Burnsville. 
Hot drip sweat rolls under my Arsenal tshirt 

A low moany groan emanates from the woods

I’m probably not going to get the latest cricket results

Scared out my wits in Burnsville. 
The highway sighs as if it’s all too much

The long grass crickets fill the night with sound 

The whole place seems to have a malevolent intent

Scared out my wits in Burnsville. 
The hillsides loom and

The neon buzzes and

The passing trucks growl and

The world smells of creosote

And disappointment,

Something sticky and

Unsettling in the

Heat of the night,

Restless dreams in wooden homes,

This covered fold, this

Hidden valley,

And I start to wonder, to empathise,

Try to imagine those who spend their lives

Hidden in closets and churches,

Daring to love only in their imagination,

Peering out through fly screen doors

At total strangers,

I, without that frontier spirit,

An ethos without a Jesus or a Bible,

Being different just by being,

Plus you can’t get a 

Decent cup of tea anywhere.

I’m scared. I’m scared,

I’m so very very scared,

Scared out my wits in Burnsville. 
The next morning

I had breakfast in a diner

And the waitress

Made me read her the menu

Because she liked my accent

And the man at the next tab,e

Asked if I knew his cousin

In Clapham.

Poem
There’s a circus in the town.

The big tops on the green

There’s s circus in the town

The biggest one I’ve seen

There’s a circus in the town

But I am not so keen

There’s a circus in the town

The clowns are really mean.
Six of them this morning.

In the beach front coffee shack

Sadly stirring their cappuccinos 

With the face paint flaking

The whole place reeked of

Caffeine and stale disappointment.

One of them was reading the Daily Mail

And nodding in agreement with

The letters to the editor.
Poem
Ben,

He’s trying to park his car.

Not getting very far.

He’s worked out all the angles wrong
He’s got

The car stuck in first gear

He’s getting nowhere near

The place he wants the thing to go
And now

The traffic’s building up

I guess he’s out of luck 

Drivers are shaking their fists
At him

They really are appalled

And now he’s gone and stalled

The sweat is rolling down his brow
And now

The satnav’s voice comes on

She says he’s got it wrong

And now it is recalculating
He 

Cares not one iota

For his grey Toyota

He wishes that he had a bike
It’s like

His life is on the blink

He finds it hard to think

Things now are so complicated
Rams

The car into reverse

He couldn’t have chosen a worse

Moment to do such a thing 
He scrapes

His car against a van

It’s owned by a big man

With tattoos and a sour expression
That night

He gets home to his wife.

Coquettishly,

She pats the bed

Next to her and says,

Over here, big boy,

My brave warrior.

He leaps on to the mattress,

Misses, collides with the bedside cupboard,

The lamp stand slowly spinning around 

As he lands in a crumpled heap on the floor.
Poem
That dream again.

All hot and humid in the sultry night,

Me in bed, and he’s there,

The prince of darkness,

Olympic diver Tom Daley,

Preparing for a back flip on to the duvet

He’s wearing Superman boxer shorts and,

Inexplicably, a cowboy hat.
He comes often between the hours

Of two and three, 

Bathed in an ethereal glow,

imparts his wisdom,

Says things like,

‘The best way out of Basingstoke

In the rush hour

Is the A331 heading towards Farnham.
Love is an accident, pure chance,

A private dance

Skipping on fate 

And being brave, it comes

Deep from within.
We’re talking about professor Brian Cox

And how his tv shows, informative as they are,

Might be half an hour shorter if he didn’t 

Speak

So

Slowly.

The cat wants to be put out, and Tom

Volunteers,

Come here Kevin, he says,

Come here.

The cats called Kevin.
Mists swirl and time does that thing it does,

Rewinds.

I’ve only ever wanted companionship,

A guide through life,

A small banana farm in northern Queensland 

And Olympic diver Tom Daley

This afternoon I bought the latest

NewYorker and a packet of custard cream biscuits

And Tom immediately chided me for

Eating too many.
What an appetite you have.

Why is it so untidy in here?

When was the last time you went

Around with the duster?

That picture’s crooked.

When you walk wearing those trousers,

(Those ones, there),

I can hear a shushing sound.
Softly, dusk fell,

Just like the Ukrainian who

Tom defeated in the European quarter finals,

Yet without that big belly flop that became

An Internet click bait Youtube hit,

Dusk, hiding with it the pain and the paranoia

As well as his classically handsome features,

Trained, toned physique,

Winning smile, you know how

People have often said we could

Be twins.
When Frankenstein’s monster tore himself

From the angst and ennui of the

Mer de Glace in Chamonix he passed

Right through Surrey on his journey north,

Just like Tom Daley on his way from the

Bournemouth diving championships 

To an exhibition he undertook in

Milton Keynes

Whereat I nabbed a pair of his pants.
My friend Anne once opined that

True love is not caring when your sweetheart 

Leaves a floater in the toilet bowl

After having a dump.

My hand reaches out,

Fumbles for the custard creams,

Finds nothing there.

I’m only happy when it rains.

I’m writing this on a very rainy morning. It’s a Saturday. I’m writing this at my desk which is next to my window, with the windows open a little bit. The rain is beating against the window and I can hear the gutters gurgling and the remaining leaves in the tree roaring in the wind. It’s dark, murky, and misty. The surrounding hills are shrouded in mist as the rain pummels this little seaside town.
And do you know what? I absolutely love it. And I always have done.
Rainy days have always felt special for me. Ever since I was a kid, I knew that a rainy day would be a day when you didn’t have to go outside at lunch time at school, that you would be able to sit inside and be creative with bits of paper or, in my case, write stories. I loved writing stories when I was a kid and a day which passed without the opportunity to do this was always a sad day. Rainy days were special.
And as I’ve grown up, a really horrible rainy day has still felt special, even though I’ve worked in shops for years and rainy days are bad news for the retail sector. Every time it gets gloomy and starts raining, I feel an urge deep in myself to sit at a desk next to a window and just write. It’s what I’m doing right at this very moment.
I’ve often wondered why this is. I was never an athletic child, so I never felt the need to go and run around a playground, or play football, or to be all manly and masculine with all the usual accoutrements of the sporting elite. For me, true prowess came with a pen and paper and the imagination, and the rain helped me to do this. I’m like one of those formula one drivers who always does well when it rains, I felt. A rainy day has always been a special day.
I’ve always had an affinity with the rainforest. I’ve always wanted to visit that place in Venezuela where they have thunderstorms every afternoon. Not for me the holidays spent in the sun lying on a beach, I’d much rather be somewhere rainy, like when we were kids and we’d go down to Bognor and sit in a car on the edge of the beach, with the windscreen wipers wining, looking out at the angry sea as the rain fell. The rain pummelling on the car roof. Those were ideal holidays.
So that’s why I writing this. Because it’s raining. And soon it will brighten up, which is a shame. One of the songs I’ve always hated is that one which goes ‘I can see clearly now the rain has gone’. I’ve always found that a really depressing song.
  

On having a sofa phobia.

During a performance in Plymouth the other night, the host encouraged the poets to talk about fear and what it was that each was afraid of. Ever since I was little I’ve had an irrational fear of sofas.

I have no idea why this is. The look of a sofa, to me, is really quite disgusting, so much so that it becomes a hindrance especially when people want you to come round their house. I do not have a sofa of my own and I doubt that I ever will, and I can’t even watch a sitcom or a soap opera if there is a sofa present on screen.

I go around to visit friends and I just kind of linger. Either that, or I sit on a kitchen chair. The worst thing about dinner parties is that, eventually, the host will say something like, ‘Let’s all go and sit in the living room’, and sure enough they will have a sofa, looming there with all its evil intent, and I will shudder inside and try to summon up some courage. It’s why I don’t go to many dinner parties.

I cannot describe how disgusting sofas are. It’s the cushions, primarily, and the fact that they are so big and cumbersome, and that people sit on them and eat and generally live their lives on sofas. The worst thing of all – and this really does give me the willies – is when you are on a train and you see abandoned sofas in people’s back gardens. It really does make me feel quite queasy.

At the moment my favourite art gallery in Torquay is having an exhibition of abstract art, the centrepiece of which is a giant sofa covered in graffiti, and there is no way that I will be going there until after the sofa has gone. I saw a picture on the internet and it was like being slapped in the face.

My sister thinks that this bizarre phobia goes back to when we were kids, and there was a particularly nasty sofa at a relative’s house, sitting on which felt like you were being eaten by a big cushiony fabric-covered monster. This might be true, but I think the real reason is that even before this, when I was a baby, I remember having jelly and dropping some on the sofa at my Uncle’s house. I remember being upset because the site of that jelly on the sofa was so disgusting, and I remember people fussing around reassuring me that I would have some more jelly, and me trying to explain that this was not what I was freaking out about. I’ve always hated jelly, too.

Coffee shop sofas are okay so long as I sit directly in the middle of them. So is the sofa at Tim’s house, a good friend and poetry colleague. Again, so long as I sit directly in the middle, equidistance from the arm rests. (Just typing this is making me feel sick).

So there I was on stage in Plymouth the other night, talking about my sofa phobia, and the audience was laughing, when a woman said that yes, she completely understood, and that she, too, had a sofa phobia. ‘Is it the cushions?’, she asked. Yes, I replied.

Because of that I feel able to write about this now. It’s an unusual affliction and quite humorous to the uninitiated, but it’s real, and I thank you for your support in sharing this with you.

I’m going to go for a lie-down, now.

  

Shouting Out Words at the World! And feeling strangely good about it . . .

I’ve just had a great weekend in London performing a half hour set at a trendy film festival in Hoxton, in a studio gallery underneath a railway arch converted for the weekend into a one screen cinema. It was a great event, under the banner Lets All Be Free, showcasing films which probe notions of freedom and what it means to be human in the modern world.

  I was initially sceptical that my poetry would go down well. After all, my oeuvre is mostly comedic and some might see the approach I take to serious matters as Taking the Mickey. The block of films shown before my performance dealt with subjects such as migration and political activism, with serious, weighty themes which were greeted by the audience with respect and contemplation. I was due to perform at half eleven in the morning.
A year ago this would have given me cause for concern and I would have been phased by the whole festival and its spirit of underlying seriousness. Yet now, I am able to approach such events with a sense of wanting to entertain and amuse and to give everything to my performance and the words.
The tactic seemed to work. The audience were appreciative and they didn’t escape to the bar while I was on, indeed, more came in and watched. Not even the sudden death of the microphone halfway through was a problem, I just spoke louder. Because of this I was very happy with the way that it went.
So what’s so different now? Several things have helped. For one, I’ve been concentrating less on the writing process and more on the rehearsal. This is thanks to my unofficial director, the wonderful Ziggy Abd El Malak, who’s shown me several techniques which I now employ regarding movement, pausing, etc. Secondly, I’ve been watching other poets and performers and the way that they do things rather than what they are saying. SV Wolfland, for example, has a wonderful microphone technique and employs body movement, as does Susan Taylor. I’ve even been watching my favourite pop stars to see how they move and how they use the microphone.
And thirdly, I’m just not afraid of things going wrong any more. Spending time with people like Jackie Juno, who can turn a whole situations round and just Have Fun while performing, has been invaluable. Watching the poets at the Womad Festival in close quarters also showed me how the big names control the audience and make every situation that crops up a part of the show.
So that’s why this weekend has been so great. And now I’m sitting here at Reading Station, waiting for my train home, and looking forward to the next opportunity to shout out words at the world!

On heckling at poetry performances. 

You don’t normally get hecklers at poetry nights. This is a good thing, really. Poetry isn’t like comedy, where you do get hecklers. Comedy is a shared conversation, and the best comedians talk to the audience, not at them. Hecklers are usually joining in. Poetry is more of a shared, rhythmical experience. You might get the occasional nod, or someone shouting ‘Yeah!’ in agreement, but not any actual heckling.
I went on a comedy course and we did a whole lesson on dealing with hecklers. Apparently there are three major types:

 -Those who are trying to join in

– those who shout out encouragement or even displays of affection

– those who try to be funnier than you.
Alcohol is usually involved.
I’ve been heckled every now and then, and I kind if expect it at comedy nights. But the weirdest and best hecklers are at poetry nights, because they are so unique and unexpected. In Totnes, for example, halfway through my set, someone shouted ‘I love hummus!’ 
Which was nice to know.
In Torquay recently I had a Spanish lady shout out at the end of a poem, ‘oh, I understand that! Very good!’
But the best, or the worst, came at Exeter. One of my poems starts with the line, ‘Isn’t it annoying when you turn the page’. I got as far as ‘isn’t it annoying . . .’, when someone shouted, ‘Yes!’
There’s no possible comeback from that.
So heckling isn’t frequent in poetry, but as poetry increases in popularity, perhaps poets should learn to deal with it.
The best comeback I ever did was at a comedy night. Mentioning badgers, someone shouted, ‘You fancy badgers, don’t you?’ I replied, ‘Nevertheless’, and carried on with the poem.
I felt quite happy with it. And everyone laughed. 
I’ve not done the badger poem since.
Anyway, for no reason whatsoever, here’s a poem about cows.
Poem

1. How would you describe the behaviour of cows?

Cows line astern 

Grass munchers in a row

Like forensic detectives

At the scene of a crime. 

2. Are you familiar with bovine behaviour? Y/N

N

3. Describe the types of cow that you saw.

Fresians black and white

Flanked by invisible maps.

Half of an hour hyped up.

Are they black cows with white splodges

Or white cows with black splodges?

4. Have you ever been caught under the silvery moon suddenly transfixed by the inate beauty of cows and the way that they seem to reflect the celestial moonglow as if lunar objects themselves?

N

WTF

5. Were you aware of this before the incident?

I had a crush.

6. Explain in a single haiku the beauty of the cows you saw.

There once was a field of cows

Upon which I would browse

By the side of the gate

And other places on the farm

Often in shady areas but sometimes in the full glare of the sun. 

7. That’s not a haiku.

Oh

8. Eulogise a cow for me.

Daisy

I know this rhyme is lazy

And people may think me crazy,

Daisy

But in this rhyme I praise thee.

Says me.

Daisy

You are amazy.

9. Tell a cow joke.

In what way is a cow like my parents bungalow?

10. I don’t know.

They’re both fresian.

11. Do you have anything else to add?

I have no beef with you.

12. So I herd.
  

Anatomy of a gig

  Before the gig:
At this precise moment I’m on a train and I’m going to a gig in Bristol. Indeed it’s quite an honour to be doing this gig because it’s a fundraiser for Poetry Can, an organisation I rather like, and it’s part of the Bristol Poetry Festival, and I’m one of two main guests. I thought I’d write this blog to tell you exactly how I feel.

The answer is mega nervous. My mind keeps running over the small things that can go wrong. And then it runs over the big things. The main concern at the moment is ‘will I be crap’? I know that the organisers have asked me because they like my stuff, and also because I’m cheap and available. But what if tonight’s the night where it all falls apart like a cheap microwave lasagne? What if I’m so preoccupied with other things that I don’t have my mind on it and I seem withdrawn and distracted? What if tonight’s the night that something really bad happens in the news and no one cares about my own particular brand of whimsy?

Just writing this adds to the nerves!
And what about the other things. Will nobody turn up? Will I not make it to the venue? Will I spill my drink over someone important? Will I get drunk for the first time since 1991 and upchuck over the first row during my performance? Will I have a sudden attack of the willies and run out of the room screaming? Will nobody laugh?
I’m already in costume, if you can call it a costume. I’ve got the glasses on and spiky hair, a nice jacket, some sensible shoes. I’ve got a card with me in which I’ve written the set and what I’m doing and in what order, and I’ve read it so much that it’s started to look a bit crumpled. Even so I keep having last minute jitters about the poems I’ve chosen. The set is a comfortable mix of old and new, funny and one deeply serious one which I’m worried people will laugh at. Maybe that might be a good thing.
I’m also listening to music. I listen to the bands who inspire performance rather than writing, so it’s Pet Shop Boys, Sparks, Erasure. The train has just passed through Tiverton and I’m wondering if I should turn the music off and concentrate. 
It should be a good evening. In fact it probably will. But that doesn’t make me feel any better and part of me is wondering why I do this kind of thing at all. I’m sure it will all feel much better when I’m at the venue.
After the gig.
Yes, it went very well indeed. The audience was not huge but I knew a lot of people there. I was worried initially that they might not have appreciated my oeuvre. The open mic element of the night showed a bias towards weighty, traditional poetry, and the other co-headliner was Claire Williamson, a wonderful poet, deep and meaningful and totally human, she went down very well with the audience.

But there were plenty of friends there: Melanie Branton, for one, a poet with a similar sensibility to me yet much, much better. She did her poetry to huge acclaim, and that’s when I thought that they might like me after all.
There were a few young people in the front and a young man with a big bushy beard, I’d already singled him out to be the one I point to during the Beard Envy poem. He wandered off halfway through the evening and I felt a bit of a panic that I’d have nobody else to pick on. As luck would have it he came back just before my set, and he laughed and clapped all the way through, which made the whole night that much better for me. There was a big grin on his face, and afterwards he came and chatted and said how much he’d liked my set.
As ever I don’t know what it is I’d been worrying about. If anything I worry now that it’s done that I could have done more comedy poetry, as I did a couple of serious ones halfway through. I also wonder what the night had been like if the young people weren’t there, and whether the audience would have had the same dynamic. But it doesn’t matter: it was a good night, and I really enjoyed it, and the audience enjoyed it, and that seems to be the main thing. There’s no sense in overanalysing.
At this moment I’m in my hotel room in Bristol, looking out over wasteland towards the station, and the mist is hiding the sun and making everything monochrome. Life is certainly weird at times. Next week I have to do this all over again, the exact same set yet this time in London. No doubt the same old paranoia and nervousness will kick in once more!

‘On the Road to Ollantaytambo’ by Ian Beech – A Review

I’ve known Ian Beech for over three years and during that time I have seen him put in some stunning performances and read some very good poems. Indeed, I don’t think Ian has ever written a bad or a mediocre poem. Everything about his art is considered and carefully crafted for maximum effect. His performances are clear, rhythmical and often display a wonderful controlled aggression, particularly in his more ‘ranty’ poems. Beechy is always peachy.

I was lucky enough last year to get a glimpse of his new book, ‘On the Road to Ollantaytambo’, and now the thing is out for real and anyone can get their hands on it. Ian has added more poems and polished up those that were already in it, and now the thing is out there, shining brightly. A thing of beauty. With a nice cover. Hell, the book even smells good.

There’s a really satisfying mix of humour and real life, emotion and whimsy, and of course, those ‘ranty’ poems which one can only read with Ian’s voice prevalent in one’s mind. There are beautiful poems commemorating friends and loved ones, such as ‘Sally’ and ‘Rodney’ and ‘James’, the emotion and power of which come from Ian’s heartfelt empathy and absolute devotion to the power of what it is that makes us human. There are also poems which highlight significant moments in Ian’s life, autobiographical vignettes such as ‘Enchanted Evenings, Ancient Games’, and ‘Auntie Kit Kat’.

In my opinion the collection is somewhat let down by the inclusion of ‘F1’. A ranty poem concentrating on the poet’s aversion to this particular form of motor racing, it seems to resemble my own poem about Stoke City FC both in meter, rhyme and some of the imagery chosen.

The cover of the book is

(Hang on a second. Yes, I know you’re all reeling from what I just said about the ‘F1’ poem. I will let you in to a little not-so-secret secret. ‘F1’ was written after Ian saw my own Facebook posts about motor racing, (a passion of mine since a small boy), and my own Stoke City FC poem was written as a response to this. Just for future reference, Mr B, I’m a British Touring Car fan more than an F1 fan.)

The cover of the book is simple and effective, although the title doesn’t trip easily off the tongue. The photograph taken by Ian himself up some mountain somewhere resembles a piece of Renaissance art, using as it does the triangle motif favoured by such masters in order to draw the eye in certain directions, a technique also employed by Picasso in his Guernica masterpiece. The figure on the right is pointing, as if hinting that we should all be looking in that direction, at something else. Like Beechy himself, the figure on the right is telling us that if we only look, we will see life itself happening.

Ian is a man of versatility and passion and this book showcases his many talents as a performer and a poet. There will be more to come from him, doubtlessly. And as he happens to be one of my best friends not only in the poetry community, but also in the wider world too, then for me my favourite poem has to be ‘The Joy of House Sharing’, which reminds me of a particularly harrowing few weeks we spent rehearsing a show. Every time I read it I smile, not only at the humour involved, but also in the wordplay and language, and the memory of that time.