Robert Garnham

An Interview with Tim King

Tim King

One of my best friends in the world of performance poetry is Tim King. He is a man of integrity and innovation, art and language, with a real sense of justice and an understanding of what it is which keeps us all going. His poetry is by turns personal and universal, exploring themes of loss, addiction and living. Some of his work is playful, with rules and strictures which he imposes on himself for the purposes of their composition. Some of his poems, also, are incredibly funny.

I first met Tim at a performance poetry workshop almost five years ago. Since then we have worked closely at venues all over the south west of England, appearing together at the Rest Festival in Salisbury, slams in Bristol and Cheltenham, and as part of a larger ensemble at festivals in both Barnstaple and Denbury.

We have also shared some crazy adventures getting to these events, most of which have been shared on this blog in months past.

Tim is a first class poet and performer and a wonderful human being. There’s also something very reassuring about his beard.

1. Hi Tim. It’s a simple question, but how did you get in to ‘performance poetry’?

Hello Robert. Thanks for breaking me in gently. I think it’s all to do with feeling I have stuff to say. I’m trying to discover what that stuff is and how best to say it, but of course it keeps changing. In the past I wrote songs and sung in bands, although I always deferred to the musicians in those situations so often the focus would slip. I had this idealistic notion that if we all worked together a certain synergy would occur and the end product would become more than the sum of it’s parts. In reality I found my ideas were routinely diluted. At that time I lacked the confidence, musicianship and persuasiveness to articulate myself adequately or the authority to impose my half-baked ideas on people who could do things I couldn’t do. Performance poetry seemed like a way to achieve roughly the same thing without having to worry about all the musical nonsense. Liv Torc got me started.

2. Your themes touch on issues which ought to concern everyone such as environmental matters and FGM. Should all poets or performers draw attention to such matters? Is it ok to be political?

I think it’s definitely okay to be political with a small ‘p’ – we’re social creatures and essentially society and politics are the same thing. That said, engaging from an explicitly party political perspective seems counter-productive. I don’t see the point in alienating folk before you’ve even started. I wouldn’t presume to say what other poets and performers should do, although I do think making work which reflects one’s own interests and enthusiasms is probably a good start. I feel passionately about the environment and the sexual abuse of children, so I make some of my work about those subjects. For me the whole point of performing is to connect in such a way that the audience realises I’m a person, just like them. Of course, everybody already knows this, it’s obvious… but there are levels of knowing. It’s about getting under the skin, exchanging a spark or doing whatever it takes to truly communicate the shared nature of our humanity – our oneness – if you will. To that extent, I think so long as it emanates from a real place all art is automatically political. It’s ultimately subversive, because accepting that all people are essentially the same makes it harder to countenance authoritarianism, inequity and cruelty.

3. Will you be doing more musical works in the future?

Yes and no. I’ll definitely be incorporating more musical ideas into my ‘act’ over the coming period but I’m not planning to do anything exclusively musical (e.g. a musical).

4. Who are your influences, both within poetry, and outside?

As a child I loved Spike Milligan, Edward Lear and Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Gaol. I also grew up entranced by 60’s pop music: the Beatles, the Kinks, the Small Faces, etcetera. I really like intimate, cosy, domestic seeming stuff that somehow speaks of underlying profundity. I like nonsense too.

As a teenager I was greatly influenced by gender-bending glam-rock minstrels Bolan and Bowie, although probably the biggest single impetus to my creativity came from the discovery of Kate Bush in the late 70’s.

I loved the way her work was so different from anything I’d encountered before. It opened the door to the possibility of not following the herd, not trying to be true to anything other than the little voice inside. She gave me the kick I needed to stop worrying about whether or not I was good enough and just get on with it. She touched me deeply and I love her to bits.

John Cooper-Clarke, John Hegley and Neil Innes all featured quite heavily in my adolescence and early adulthood, but it wasn’t until I went along to Taking the Mic in Exeter and saw Liv Torc host and perform in 2010 that I began to think seriously about doing something similar myself. Liv is great – totally outspoken, a brilliantly funny and original poet and very encouraging. She’s helped a lot of excellent poets in Devon on their way and now she’s doing similarly inspirational things in Somerset with Take Art and further afield with the Hip Yak Poetry Shack. I love Liv too – not to quite as many bits as Kate though. Kate gets the lion’s share of the bits and Liv gets more hugs. To be honest, I guess that’s more a matter of opportunity than anything else. I hope that doesn’t look bad? What was the question again?

5. Your work is unique and no two poems seem to adopt the same rules or format. Is constant reinvention important in any art form?

That’s an extremely kind thing to say. Thank you. With regard to rules and format, I’ve frequently read that, in design ‘form should follow function’. In art, I think form is much more an integral part of function. For me, working to rules is a really good way of tying up the analytical part of my mind just enough to let the subconscious stuff through. Left to free-run, I’d probably write pretty much in strict ballad form (I blame Wilde and 60’s pop music) which could quickly become quite boring. I’ve always enjoyed setting up alternative strictures and structures to avoid this. More recently I’ve found myself using more fractured forms – re-mixing predictable forms in unlikely ways, mashing poems together, shouting “CUT” periodically, that sort of thing. It’s pathetic really.

So far as re-invention goes, lots of great artists constantly repeat themselves: Monet’s lily ponds, Shakespeare’s interminable iambic pentameter, James Turner’s brilliant sonnets. I think it’s horses for courses. I’m more of a flighty filly – but hopefully I can still run the race.

6. You have maintained the same performance image since I first met you, wearing the same type of shirt at each event. In such a way, you have a trademark style. How important is this to your performance?

I’m not sure it affects my performance at all. It is useful when I go places and people recognise me from the clothes. I may have to change the shirts soon, as the elbows are wearing a bit thin. I’m considering a complete change of style. When I can be bothered to find a ‘new look’ I’ll probably stick with it for a while. Recognisability is definitely helpful.

7. What are your plans for the following year?

I have a couple of one-man shows I’m working towards: one about growing up, called Significant Childhood Sexual Trauma and another about climate change (as part of the research I’m doing a two-month online climate-science course with Exeter Uni starting in January) – I guess these shows will be ready when they’re ready. I don’t really think in terms of years. In the more immediate future I’m planning to get out and about a lot more during the coming months, hopefully putting together a small nationwide tour of Open Mics for the Spring and Summer. I’m also going to anthologise my chap-books into one mega-chap-book so I have something to sell on the tour which hasn’t been booked yet and I need to sort out my online presence. There may be some musical collaborations in the offing too. It’s possible I’ll need a life coach.

8. As a co-host of a performance night, what advice would you give to anyone who would like to get started as a performance poet?

Do what you want. Don’t try to second-guess the audience and do what you think they want you to do. They want you to do what you want to do. They want to see your passion. They need to see your passion. Don’t be a tribute act. Be you. You rock! That’s my advice – by all means, feel free to ignore it.

9. Which work of yours are you proudest of?

Back in 2013 I put together a show with a brilliant singer/songwriter called Rebecca Maze and fellow poets James Turner and Morwenna Griffiths. We did three performances of Returning the Dark Stare in three separate venues in Torquay and Exeter. People cried and laughed and felt transformed and said wonderful, wonderful things about the evening. Could that be my single proudest achievement to date? I don’t know. I’m not terribly susceptible to pride. Being one of the performers chosen for the first WOMAD Poetry stage in 2013 was pretty cool (as was being invited back for more in 2014) and working closely with Chris Redmond and client’s of MIND as part of Take Art’s ”The Thing Is…’ workshop project was another highlight. Running Taking the Mic with Morwenna for the past three years has been a joy. Watching people develop. Making friends. I dunno. For now I’m just having a ball. Mainly I feel gratitude. I know I haven’t really answered the question, but I promise I’ll be sure to let you know when I feel properly proud of something! http://iamnotasilentpoet.wordpress.com/tag/tim-king/

Thanks so much, Tim!

An Interview with Bob Hill

I first got in to the poetry of Bob Hill by accident. I was searching for a friend on Facebook, also named Bob Hill, when I noticed that there was a Bob Hill who had thirty-something mutual friends. Thinking that this Bob Hill was the other Bob Hill, I sent him a request. Bob Hill said yes.

The more I got into the world of performance poetry, the more I realized that this was a happy accident, for Bob is one of the finest names in the genre. Inventive, human and very funny, Bob’s oeuvre was right up my street.

I never did find the other Bob Hill.

Bob’s poetry is rich in wordplay and humour and a real concern for the way that we live our lives. Yet the emphasis is clearly on comedy. Bob is a ‘stand-up poet’, feeding off the reactions of the audience and making each performance a site-specific engagement.

Bob is also a significant figure in the poetry landscape, having supported such names as John Cooper Clarke and Porky the Poet. I urge everyone to seek him out on YouTube or at a poetry venue, or to sample his collection, ‘Jack Hughes is Dead’.

– Hello, Bob. How did you get in to performance poetry?
• Hi Robert, I started to perform poetry after searching for a poetry group in Bournemouth where I live. The only one I found on the internet was ‘Freeway Poets’, a monthly open-mic event. I went along, signed up and blasted out a political poem called ‘The Hatfield Anti-Nazi League’. I got a rather raucous and positive reception and really that convinced me that performing my poems was another option for me to get them out there. I consider myself a poet who performs and am just as happy at more low key readings as well as doing the ‘stand-up’ stuff.

– You have a brilliantly informed and cheerful performance style. How much of this is your actual personality, and how much is a persona that you adopt on stage?
• Wow, that’s a question I do ask myself as well. I think I’d have to say that my on stage persona is informed by and reflects my personality but so do my poems themselves when they are on the page. I hope that I am multi-faceted and I feel that my stage performances reflect the ‘me’ when I’m in the pub with my oldest and closest friends.

– You’ve supported some of the biggest names in performance poetry. Who are your heroes and influences in poetry?
• I don’t really have heroes as such, it’s a word that I’m not really that comfortable with. However, I do have influences but they change over time and with my reading of other poets and writers. The two poems which have influenced me in terms of kick starting my own attempts to write poetry in the first place were Browning’s ‘Porphyra’s Lover’ and Christina Rossetti’s ‘The Goblin Market’. Add to that the hip-hop lyrics of KRS1 and Public Enemy and the performance styles and lyrics and musicality of Esther Phillips, Jill Scott, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Gil Scott-Heron and there you have my direct influences regarding poetry. As I said though, the process of improving as a poet has ongoing and new influences with everything I read. This would also include prose writers too. Also, the old folk club comedians such as Billy Connolly, Mike Harding, Jasper Carrot and Jake Thackeray have been an influence in my writing and performance.

– Do any other art forms or media influence your work?
• Yes, I often use paintings, drawings and photographs as prompts to my writing. For example a recent poem of mine, ‘Reunion’, is based on a painting by John Atkinson Grimshaw entitled ‘An Autumn Idyll’. I also find that music has kickstarted some of my work as well.

– There’s a lot of wordplay in some of your poems. Is this influenced by a love of language?
• Broadly speaking, yes. However it is the wordplay that comes with really well told anecdotes and/or jokes that really influences any wordplay in my writing. A poem works like a well written or well told joke in that one has to trust the audience to understand it by its context and nuances rather than by signposting one’s own ‘meanings’. Jokes and poems work on shared experience and universal understandings and wordplay aids these understandings if the writer trusts the reader/listener.

– Poetry is just one of your interests and pursuits. What else do you do?
• I write short stories and flash fiction, I DJ and listen to a wide range of music, I read vociferously. I debate politics and social issues, I love facilitating others in their own writing. I visit Paris as often as I can. Just sitting and chatting over a drink of some kind or a meal happens a lot too. I have a road bike which I venture out on looking like a mis-shapen carrot in orange lycra. I also watch a lot of films of all genres.

– Do you have a set idea or theme for a poem when you write, or does the idea evolve along with the poem?
• It depends. For example, if it’s a commissioned piece then the theme is set by whoever is paying and what they want the poem to represent. The poem itself will evolve with every re-write and re-draft regardless of what the starting point was. I’ve just written a poem a day for #AdventPoems and I never really knew where those poems would go until I’d written them but the body of poems had the theme of ‘Christmas’ as a starting point.

– What would you say were your ‘greatest hits’?
• Two, in particular; ‘The Iron Lady: Rust in Peace’ which I wrote the day that the Chilean miners were pulled out of the ground and ‘Dividing Assets’ which is a bit of a morality and revenge tale involving a feckless man.

– Do you have any particular philosophy or message in your work?”
• I like to present the idea that all things can be seen from different perspectives; physical, philosophical, sociological, political whatever. Added to this I like to show the realities of ordinary lives but with the idea that all tragedy has comedy and vice versa and that the mundane has its own mysteries and fascinations.
https://bobhillpoetry.wordpress.com/

An Interview with Saskia Tomlinson

Saskia Tomlinson is one of my favourite Devon-based performance poets. Such is the breadth of her subject matter, the beauty and virtuosity of her writing, the ease of her performance style and her engaging personality, she could well become one of the most accomplished performance poets in the country.

I have only known Saskia for a couple of years, having first seen her at the Exeter Poetry Slam, and then booking her to perform at Poetry Island which I used to host at the time. Since then she has gone on to win slams and appear at festivals, while her art and animations go from strength to strength.

At the same time I detect a certain eccentricity beneath the surface, which only endears me to her, and her to her audiences, even more. Who else would give away free organic vegetables at a poetry slam? Who else would walk all the way across Barnstaple to make sure that a restaurant had recycled a plastic bottle? And most touchingly of all, who else would give me a present of a pink zebra-patterned roll of gaffer tape? I treasure it to this day.

As a result, Saskia gives the impression of being a fully rounded individual with a sly sense of humour and a clear sense of who she is and her place in the world.

A couple of months ago I decided to try and interview some of the local performers who make the South Devon scene so exciting, and who better to start with than the performer who might well become one of the finest on the national circuit?

– Hello Saskia. You recently performed a poem that you’d written at an early age. When, and why did you start writing and performing poetry?

“Yes I have been writing from an early age. At school I always loved the creative writing we had to do, and would happily stand up in front of the class to speak them. It’s amazing how children have so much confidence. I started preforming in front of people by singing songs I had written. Then I realised that I couldn’t really sing or play the guitar so speaking my words came much easier to me.”

– Who or what are your influences as a poet / performer?

“I used to be obsessed with TS Elliott’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, even thought I really had no idea what it was about. The imagery really stood out to me. I used to completely nick lines from the poem and put them into mine. But over the last few years I have been going to spoken word events and been inspired by so many performers, and started the find my own voice in that crowd I think.

-Do you rehearse? And if so, how long does it take to become familiar with a poem?
“No I don’t really rehearse, sometimes I don’t know what I’m going to do until I get to the venue. I find it terrifying to read a poem on stage. So I memories my poems by going over them before I fall asleep at night.”

– As well as performance poetry, you also excel in art, animation and film making. Which of these interests you the most? Which are you most proud of?
“I do want to be an animator. I have found that animation and poetry go perfectly well together because they both work with images that are constantly evolving, and this can be really interesting”.

– Do you get nervous before a performance?
“Yes I get very nervous, and sometimes waffle on a bit when I am introducing a poem.”

– Your performance style seems closely related to your personality. Do you adopt or exaggerate certain aspects of your personality in performance? Do you perform a ‘version’ of yourself?
“I think everybody does that when they preform. Don’t they? It is important to stay true to your personality. I think in South Devon we have such a range of personalities in the performance poetry world, and thats why its such a vibrent scene.

Thank you very much, Saskia Tomlinson!

My Notebook has Finally Run Out of Pages

Since I started ‘performing’ poetry up and around and all over the place, I’ve used the same notebook. It has become a major part of my stage persona because it is the one thing that remains the same whenever I get behind a microphone. And as such, it has become an integral part of my image, and been prodded and cooed over by a wide variety of people from all over the country. Vanessa Kisuule got all unnecessary over it during an Apples and Snakes event in Exeter. Jack Dean held it, almost lovingly, while we shared a drink at a bar in Edinburgh. Other people have held it, stroked it, and even taken photos of it. Indeed, the damn thing has become more well-known and adored than its owner could ever be.

It started life as a weather diary, but I only bought it because I liked the fabric cover and the fact that I could glue poems on to the page. They seemed to stick really well, no matter what kind of glue stick I used. Oh, the hours I would spend cutting out poems and glueing them in! I stuck a label on the front with just the one word – ‘Poems’ – just in case I forgot which notebook they were in. As I advanced through my poetry career, this label became a source of amusement. Of course it’s got poems

The book is filled with corrections and amendments. When a poem was no longer seen as worthy enough to be performed, it would be carefully removed and a new poem placed on the page. Some of the pages were torn because of this. When I took part in a slam in Berlin, I had to write my name in phonetic letters ‘ GARNUM’ written in big letters on the inside cover. Then I had to make the poem German-friendly by removing elements that only English people would know about. Top Gear. Nick Clegg. That sort of thing.

There were stage directions, too, from various performances and productions. Scribbles, question marks and hasty revisions. The Swindon poem was mostly written during the interval while I waited to appear in the final of the Swindon Poetry Slam. (I lost to Tina Sederholm). There’s a funny smell to the cover, having put the book down in a closed shop doorway while doing outside street poetry. And it’s been battered by five years of travel up and down the country to various venues.

And then one day, a stern warning from a fellow performer at an event in Barnstaple. ‘Are there copies of the poems in there?’ ‘No’. ‘Then do you realise that if you lost that book, your career is doomed?’ Touchingly, he added, ‘I’m very worried about this happening’.

Saskia Tomlinson bought some pink zebra print gaffer tape for me and I covered some of the cover with it.

So yes, the book has become an integral part of me. But now it is full up!

I went out searching for a new book the other day and I found one. It’s smaller and more durable but it just isn’t the same. Nevertheless, I have already stuck some new poems in there, and it seems redolent with the promise of a new year, a new me.

The book will continued. It has a buddy now. Someone to share the workload.

To celebrate this fact, here’s one or two of these new poems.

Poem

Prevarication at the counter.

Putting it off and prevarication.

Damn its cold so cold and in here there are

Lazily thrown cushions

In the coffee shop where I now am

When I could have gone into work an hour early.

It’s the coffee shop with the quote on the wall

From jack Kerouac

In the coffee shop where I now am

In the coffee shop where I am now.

Talk about the weather.

Talk about the cold.

Talk about attempts at fashion with scarves

For it’s probably the first truly cold day and

Scarves are still a novelty

In the coffee shop where I now am.

Slyly slyly slyly

They take serviettes from the dispenser

On noses which drip drip drip

And people cough like it’s a

Doctor’s waiting room

Which come to think of it

Could easily be the case as

The Doctor’s is just around the corner

Poem

I put my hopes and dreams

In the washing machine.

Whizzing round on the prewash spin,

A life of lost causes trundling within.

Contentment, opportunity, chance,

Caught in an endless dance.

Life so brilliant, a life of knocks,

Future hopes, and pants and socks,

Winners and duds amid the suds, and

There, tapping on the glass,

A dream that wants to get out

Before it’s cleansed of all that

Residual realistic grime on which

Our personalities are dependent

And define us as human.

Some dreams are too delicate,

And these have to be done by hand.

South Devon kicks ass when it comes to performance poetry!

For a while now I’ve had this thought that the South Devon poetry scene is one of the richest and most vibrant in the county, when you take into consideration the scarcity of the population in most of it, what with all them fields and things.

Torquay is a resort which has, admittedly, seen better days, but even here there are two vibrant performance poetry nights a month. Poetry Island is long established, first under Chris Brooks, and lately under Ian Beech, both of whom have done amazing things to bring big names down to the bay, and now there is a night at the Artizan Gallery, too. Exeter isn’t that far away and there are three regular monthly nights as well as an amazing array of one off events thanks to venues like the Phoenix and the Bike Shed. Plymouth has two regular nights, and even Totnes has events at the Kingsbridge Inn.

But it is the sheer variety of styles and performers which makes the scene so vibrant. It is impossible to come up with a definitive South Devon style, because there are so many different interpretations of what makes spoken word and performance poetry so engaging. Daniel Haynes is droll, funny, serious, human, everything which a Bard should be. Which is good, because he is the currently Bard of Exeter. Tim King is experimental, political, also very human. The most human of all humans is James Turner, who exiles literary excellence and a fantastic understanding of the importance of performance and voice, as did the late and very much missed Rodney Bowsher. Joanna Hatfull is impossible to categorise, fusing theatre and monologue, humor and reality into her poems which never stray too far into surrealism. And then there’s Ian Beech, whose poetry is heartfelt, honest, occasionally ranting, often fierce, always well meaning.

Add to this people like Jackie Juno, Ziggy Abd El Malak, Chris Brooks, Gavin McGrory, Morwenna Griffiths, Solomon Doornails . . .

So what flavor is there to this excellent scene? Are there any common traits? Most of the performers have developed parallel and each event serves to drive each participant on to find deeper modes of poetic expression and audience engagement. Yet there seems to be a willingness to perfect this individualism in a way that may not be the case somewhere like Bristol or London, where a similar style dominates. The rhythms are different from one poet to the next. You might get the excellent Marc Woodward with his fast paced calm delivery, followed by the enthusiasm of Chris Brooks, and then the calm, slow, assured delivery of Dan Haynes.

There’s a great thing going on down here in South Devon at the moment and it makes me glad to be a part of it. And now some of us are starting to get recognition from further afield, strange parts of the country who can only be intrigued by the creativity and art which seems so normal. When I first started performing at Poetry Island, Chris Brooks would end each evening with an appeal for performers. Yet now there are so many that there is a strict rota and waiting list! And that has got to be a very good thing.

For no reason whatsoever, here’s a couple of new poems.

Poem

You said you’d do a magic trick.
Is this your card?, you asked.
Or is this your card?
Or this?
And then you reached into my pocket
And you announced,
This, this is your card!
And then you looked at it and saw
That it was my one day megarider bus ticket
And a tiny tear formed
In the corner of your eye.
In any case,
I hadn’t even picked a card.

It’s ok to be funny at a poetry night, usually.

There’s so much variety in performance poetry and spoken word. Some times it seems that the emphasis is on poetry which gives a message or aims for a certain effect, and there’s nothing wrong with this. Some of my best friends in poetry are superb creators of serious, ethereal poetry which grabs the heart and takes your breath away with beauty. I love this kind if work, and I’m deeply jealous that I’ve never excelled at it.

And then there’s that Bristol style, of well intentioned poetry with a conscience, a hint of hyperbole, and three rhymes per line. Again, this is a fantastic form. Most slam winners I’ve seen over the years practice this method, and why not? The effects are beautiful, if a little wearying if everyone’s at it.

And then we come to the funny poets. I suppose this is my area. Often it feels like the poets who make people laugh are not regarded as highly, especially at nights where the emphasis is on page poetry. Such works are seen as light, throwaway, perhaps not even memorable. Again, this is not the case at every poetry night.

On Thursday night I went to Bang Said the Gun in London. It’s my favourite night of poetry, mostly because of the excellent atmosphere. Humorous poets are welcomed and cheered and the audience is genuinely appreciative. Some if my favourite poets are regulars here, such as the brilliant Rob Auton, and the often hilarious Martin Galton. Indeed, both performed new poems which were a mix of funny and heartfelt, and often with a serious twist, such as Rob Auton’s poem about eating meat in heaven, or Martin’s poem about giving a conker to his mum.

Maybe this is the key, this hint of the honest which keeps a comic poem memorable. But then, aren’t all poems, no matter how funny, tinged with an honesty and a hint of truth? My poem ‘Fozzie’ is about rejection and dashed hopes. ‘The First Time’ is about debunking the sexual myth. ‘Camp Cat’ is about stereotyping. ‘Moon Simon’ is just silly.

So next time I sit down to write a funny poem I shall be looking for the depth beneath the surface, the honesty which hides behind every faked witticism. Because we are all living our lives and trying to be human.

And here’s a poem about geese.

Poem

Lately I’ve been obsessed with geese.
Geesey geese.
Fleecy geese.
Call the police.
His name is Rhys.
He might come from Greece
He probably comes from Newton Abbot.
He’s obsessed with geese.
It’s me.

Geese in the undergrowth
Geese in the kitchen
Geese in the photocopying room
Geese in the kitchen
Geese in the potting shed
Geese in the kitchen
My aunt just freaked out
Because of all the
Geese in the kitchen.

Geesey geesey goosey goose
I don’t know. Give us proof.
Geesey geesey goosey goose
Gets my emotions on the loose
Geesey geesey goosey goose
Eight hundred of them crammed into a small
Commuter train
Geese on the line
No wonder I was late getting in to Basingstoke.

I met a goose named Graham
I asked Graham the goose what it was like
Being a goose.
He said it was great.

My colleague Tina is an amateur zoologist.
I told her how much I liked geese.
I pushed back a strand of hair from her face,
Tenderly.
She grabbed hold of my wrist and said,
‘Try that again, Jimmy,
And I’m going to human resources’.
My name isn’t Jimmy.

All is quiet in the common goose mountains.
A rustle and a bustle in the gathering foliage.
All is quiet in the common goose mountains
Shifting and a cracking in the dense rhododendrons
All is quiet in the common goose mountains
A crack and a flap and they fly up in the atmosphere
All is quiet in the common goose mountains
v-shape wing-span fly fly goosey geese

Bump ba-dump honk
Bump ba-bump bump
Honk honk bump ba-dump
Is the sound of a goose
Falling down the stairs.

How come the logo for Universal Pictures
Just shows planet Earth?

I watched a documentary last night
About corn flakes.
It’s on again next week.
It’s a cereal.

The switchboard put me through with
Barely a crackle.
Such a smooth operator.

A friend works in hot air balloons.
He’s very concerned about
The rate of inflation.

A lady walked into the newsagent and asked,
‘Have you got my Psychic News?’

Several of us in a room
Asked to offer the name of our favourite geese.
I was too afraid to stick my neck out.

Geese in the gift shop
Geese in the kitchen
Geese in the locker room
Geese in the kitchen
Geese in the Great Hall
Geese in the kitchen
Of Pembroke Castle.

There once was a man from Nice
Who like me had a passion for geese.
Such a feathered delight
To watch them take flight
He filmed them and put them on Youtube
And linked it to Facebook
Where it was liked by his niece.

And my neighbours forever banging on the walls
Banging banging banging on the walls
Because at two in the morning
There’s nothing more daunting
Than the ferocious honk honk honking
Of eight hundred geese in the throes of an
Orgiastic goose mating frenzy
Bang bang bang
Honking honking honking
And one of them’s got hiccups
Each honk followed by a hick
Each hick followed by a honk
Honking and hicking
Hicking and honking
Honk hick honk hick honk hick
Banging on the walls
Bang bang bang
Hick honk hick honk hick honk
And me in the middle shouting
Yes, yes, yes!
This is what life is about
You can keep your soap operas and your alcohol
You can keep your Ant and Dec
For I am a man proud of his bearing
And I have geese!
But that doesn’t stop my neighbour
Banging on the walls.

And then first thing this morning
I got an email from my landlord
Restricting me to just the one goose
Who I chose just now, he’s called John.

On saying ‘Thanks’ at the end of a poetry performance

Hello, today I thought I’d talk about what it is we say when a poem has finished.

I’ve been to many gigs all over the place and it’s true that the nature of these events is defined by the sort of poetry thats performed there. It’s not uncommon, at a page poetry event where poems are ‘read’ rather than performed, that there should be no clapping at the end. People sit there in a respectful silence. And that’s ok. That’s the culture that these events have created for themselves. And in any case, the poems are usually about the seasons or wildflowers or ennui.

Performance poetry nights are a different beast entirely. They are hipper, more energetic, more like entertainment than poems about agriculture and hedges, and the audience becomes a part of the whole performance. That’s why it’s often somewhat disconcerting when a poet finishes a poem and says absolutely nothing. The audience doesn’t know what to do.

We’ve probably all seen it. The poet stands there, having finished their poem, and there’s no acknowledgement whatsoever from the audience. And then they say something awkward like, ‘That’s it’. Or ‘That’s the end’. And then there’s a bit of muted clapping.

The vast majority of performance poets build up a rhythm as they go along and the final words, usually, ‘Thanks’, or sometimes ‘Cheers’, if the poet is a bit blokey, signals to the audience that their wait is over and that they are free to cheer, clap, whoop or should ‘Yeah!’. It becomes a part of the performance. And it helps the evening flow along.

But are there alternatives? Do people get tired of the same old ‘Thanks’? The wonderful local poet Simon Blades built a whole routine around this and would signal that a poem had finished wins lavish arm gesture which was both funny and a humorous aspect of his act. Every now and then I do something similar. Perhaps I might blow on a harmonica or whistle or something. But the essence is just the same. I’m telling the audience that the poem has finished and,if they’re not clapping already, the audience should damn well clap now.

Another aspect is the comedic acknowledgement that the poem has finished and that the next one is starting already. I’ve done this a few times. I’ve signaled that the poem had ended by announcing that ‘This next poem is called . . .’. In such cases I’m sacrificing potential applause for a comedic response. Hopefully laughter. It doesn’t always work but it’s very nice when it does.

So that’s what I’ve been thinking about, anyway. The acknowledgement that a poem has finished is part of the act. Unless the poet doesn’t want applause, and that’s fine. They might purposefully build themselves a reputation as a serious page poet, and the audience might be glad of an opportunity not to clap. Deadly silence at the end of a poem is a response in itself. It’s just a little embarrassing when the poet has read something that they hoped would elicit applause. The audience probably still likes them just the same, it’s just that they never got the chance to show it.

Anyway. That’s the end of today’s lecture. Next week we shall be discussing clearing throats on stage.

http://youtu.be/EkMmsv4OjqM

Voidism : And Why I Don’t Want To Know Who Mytho Geography Is

A few years ago I came up with a philosophy, or rather, a method of living which I called ‘voidism’.

It started on a trip to Plymouth. Arriving back at the railway station to catch the train home to Paignton, I passed through a tunnel to get to the proper platform only to become aware of a door leading off the tunnel. I knew that it was probably a staff store area or some other vacant part of the station infrastructure, but a part of me still wanted to have a quick look and see what it was.

I didn’t. Indeed, quite the opposite, I made a conscious effort not to even look in the direction of the door, and to carry on walking through the tunnel. And it was only when I reached the platform and got on my train that I decided that this was just emblematic of the way I live my life.

There are areas of the world, geographic, intellectual of otherwise, which I want to keep distant from myself not so that I feel perpetually ignorant of such issues or places, but because I want them to maintain a certain level of mystique. Yes,I can make educated guesses as to what they exist for or are like to visit, but it don’t actually want to find out. I create a void over a certain subject or place so that they will always maintain their mystery, and a better version of them can exist in my imagination, probably better than the actual place themselves.

Another example of this is the German city of Koblenz. I once passed by on the motorway during a thunderstorm, half asleep on a coach heading south. And as the thunder and the lightning lit the sky, the city of Koblenz appeared as a collection of lights in the distance. I made various guesses as to what the city might contain,and what it might be to live in or visit Koblenz, while simultaneously deciding that I would never go there. Never, ever. As a result I have a huge interest in the city of Koblenz without even doing a Google search about the place. It seems nice.

The same happened in Canada, crossing the great prairies past the city of Regina in Saskatchewan. I saw it as a collection of lights on the horizon and I have decided that I should never go there.

A few years ago I became Facebook friends with a mysterious fellow by the name Mytho Geography. I had no idea who he was, as he hid behind his alias, but we have chatted and made jolly small talk by way of status updates and comments and the occasional message, and all the time I was distinctly aware that here was another void, a person I would have so much fun guessing about that I would never want to meet him. The version I had of Mytho Geography was of an intellectual figure, a wanderer, someone seeing the world through new eyes yet pointing out what we knew all along. I decided that one of my voids should forever mask him.

Alas, it was not to be, as Facebook decreed that all aliases should be unmasked, and Mytho Geography became Phil Smith. And worse still, I would then see him in the flesh for the first time at the launch of the Broadsheet Magazine, for which he has written an excellent introduction. A void has been lost, and with it, all the romance and adventure of the imagination.

I have never really publicised voidism. There are two main reasons. The first is that people might think I’m quite mad, the second is that I am aware how such a philosophy of purposeful ignorance might be used for negative means, by people using stereotypes and a lack of imagination to justify their own narrow mindedness. The aim of voidism is to bring magic and mystery back to a life in small doses, not to give up on intellectual inquiry all together.

I see myself as a scholar, a man who likes to get to the root of most issues, but these areas of mystery sustain me and keep me enthusiastic about the world. It’s like reading such writers as Borges or Juan Goytisolo, revelling in the journey without totally getting it. It’s like conceptual art. It’s the not knowing which gives such things their magic.

On a completely different note, here’s a poem about wine.

Poem

I put down my glass of wine.
The border of Devon and Somserset
Went right through it.
Shimmery non existent man made
Political boundary
Dissecting my merlot,
Which knows neither the gruff side burned
Yokelism of Somerset
Or the soft Devonian burr
Of the barn-weary milk maid.
I nudged my friend Jeff
To tell him this
And he spilled his lager
Right on the same county line.
And then two workmen
From competing councils arrived
To clean it up.
Their fingers, momentarily, fumbling
Together
Like mating octopuses.

September Poem A Day Week Four

EVERYDAY MIRACLES

It shouldn’t work, but it does.
You rev up the engines, then
Punch into the absolute,
Up, up above the weather,
Grey wings reflecting the sky and
Changing colour as
Cloud gives way to blue.

So much else, of course.
Roar and throb and movement,
The vehement sublimity,
Thereafter, of modern comforts,
As if in denial
Of the speed rush.

Lift, and areas of low pressure,
Aerodynamics and power!

This makes mavericks of us all,
Provides a little thunder for our hearts.
A fantastic for the tethered,
Pushing the bounds of natural behaviour
On science or else pride,
Expedience, frivolity, design,
Making monsters from tin
And gods of us all.

SEEING THE FULLER PICTURE

The past I see as a time
Barely black and white,
Sepia weather and bare wires,
Slapdash undertakings,

Things not yet properly
Thought out, considered,
Where all the dreams were
Of rocketships

And a certain sense of
Military bearing still predominated,
Upright non-existent, no
Grievance procedures.

What little neon there was
Smudged in the rain, possibly
Against all tenets of health and /
Or safety, things were bad

For you then, a pervasive
Throb beneath the surface, no
Deviance, the absolute, how
On earth did love ever flourish?

In forty years it’s quite
Conceivable that people will look
Back on this life now similarly.
I stand dark expose light here.

UNFORTUNATE GHOULS

Ghosts,
They only come out
In the rain.

Motorists see them
In the place
Where the mist
Settles over the thicket.

The scrub,
The wasteland,
The void between
Road and town.

The hanging wires.
The reservoirs.

The ghosts are too enamoured
With their own disappearance
To do any serious haunting.
They hang around as if
Looking for something.

On days of steady drizzle
The ghosts shelter
Under imaginary steel
Where the drip drip drips
From jutted metal.

The jutted metal itself
Is also a ghost.
Don’t tell them.
They don’t know yet.

Unfortunate ghouls,
They will disappear,
Just like they always
Wanted to,
When the rain intensifies.

Everybody has appointments,
Business to attend with,
Even ghosts.

GONE

Such ease in erasure.
A split second
Forgiveness
Of misdemeanours.
The past as
Unblemished
As the future.
The present,
Fragile and vacant.

KATIJAH

Beef and mustard crisps
And ill-advised attempts at
Teaching me chess.
Katijah.
That’s all we ever did.

I’d show you the countryside.
You’d never seen stinging nettles.
We kissed once
Katijah.
That’s all we ever did.

You were Californian,
Your brother was a surfer,
Suddenly washed up in the Surrey suburbs.
Katijah.
Think of all we never did.

Your beauty was obvious
And so exotic in our
Commuter-town nothing.
I felt lucky and perplexed.
Katijah.
That’s all I ever felt.

Your dad was a player in Hollywood.
Your aunt was married to a film star.
Your brother was a surfer.
I liked him.
Katijah.
I liked your brother a lot.

You phoned me one day
To talk about our ‘relationship’.
It all sounded so grown-up.
Katijah.
Talk.
That’s all we ever did.

History has excised you from me
And you’re back in CA, Silicon Valley.
I saw you on a website,
Businesswoman of the year.
Katijah.
One day I might send you an email.

ITS ONLY ANOTHER WASTER

You make it very hard
For me to feel euphoric.
You hide your poison
In the sweetest places.
You say I’m
Self-obsessed.

You’re right,
In so many ways.
The weight of living
Is merely the anticipation
Of nervousness.
We don’t see the gradual steps,
Mostly leading down.

You took me to a very
Dark place
And then held my hand
As if I’d always been there
And you were merely visiting.

IN DEFENCE

It always rained during football.
Typical, you might think, yet,
In thrall to a splurdge of various
Teenage chemicals, I didn’t care.

Because Darren was there
And Paul was there.
They always put me in defence.
They didn’t seem to care if I
Let in an opposing player.
They already knew.
They knew before I did.

I was so lucky, really!

The school field was near
Heathrow’s runway, so actually hearing
Simple commands from team captains
Was quite impossible at times.

There were one or two idiots.
Mostly ill-informed, quite possibly.
I’ve seen them lately on Facebook.
They seem almost human.
It’s a different world, now.

It was the whole
Shower ritual
I particularly enjoyed.

Richard would let me
Touch his legs.
I mean, I’d touch them
And he’d not moan or anything.
It’s nice that he was so
Generous with his legs.
He’s married with kids, now.

Once, all my team-mates pretended
That I was a superstar,
Let me take the ball and
They fell about, feigning
That I’d tackled them,
Leaving the goal open,
The goalie having long since dived
Out the way.
I kicked the ball with all my might.
It went about two foot.

September Poem A Day Week Three

Split second

The clammy no-nonsense
Of the Sunday fall.
The moment it’s realised
That existence is merely a postponement
Of the fantastic.

How could it happen to me?
(And disbelief, of course.)

Surfaces are covered by panelling
In order to disguise the workings.

Axminster

The sallow flames
Of a late evening sun
Illumine as if in majesty
The cow shed
Crenulated in dip trough shadow
The corrugated roof
Of the barn
Caressing the chrome
Of a combine harvester
Parked slyly by the pig sty.
Fiendish yokels whisper
From the shrubbery.
There’s a plaintive mooing.
The air smells of pollen and
Jasmine, cowpats and dairy milk.
The cobbled yard plays havoc
With my high heels and I get mud
On the hem of my dress
As I sashay towards the chicken coop
With a porn mag.

Monochrome Glitterball

You let me in to your grey world
And asked me to stay forever.
That’s nice, I said, ignoring the greyness.
Because you were there, of course!
But then there was a glitch,
A malfunction of things,
And you just kind of wandered off.
Well, thanks for that!

I now try to have my own fun
In a black and white existence,
Like a party every now and then
With a monochrome glitterball
And a CD of static.
You’d laugh, honestly, you would.

I get on well in my polar landscape.
Last night I categorised the world and found
Ever so many shades of grey,
And just for one moment,
A hint of beige.
The last time I saw you
You told me that there were many other colours.
Too many to choose from
In this big wide world.

I shall try and pull myself together.
I’ve got a bus to catch.

There are no vampires .
There are no pterodactyls.
You can’t fly a kite
Because there’s no wind
And the fog sets in.
There aren’t any crows
Because even crows are too colourful
And slugs are too majestic.

I shall try and pull myself together,
I’ve got a taxi waiting downstairs.

I saw you in the sepia.
I saw you in the murk.
I saw you in the absolute
Wrapped up against the snow.
I saw you in the perpetual.
I saw you in the gloom.
I saw you in the confluence
Looming and insistent.
But when I looked again
There were cardboard cut-outs everywhere,
Meaningless shapes
Deceiving
Optical illusions
Memories of the time we bought hats together
Memories of the time we built a shed
Memories of the times we spent at stations waiting for non-existent trains
Memories of the time we learned Japanese by accident.
Dance with me one more time.
Dance with me in the gloom.
A lame comedy tango
In the black and white disco
Under the monochrome glitterball
Dance with me one more time
Feel the coldness in the rhythm
Grin and smile and stay a while
Dance with me one more time!

And so you’re off now, you say,
To get some colour in your cheeks.

Re-drafted

At the last moment
There were unexpected guests.

It’s always pleasant to accommodate
One of your peers.

Their sudden appearance meant
Re-calculations, but procedures

Were maintained, and perhaps it
Helped to neutralise the bias

Towards youth, you know,
Experience over impetuosity.

Further back, an empty seat was
Occupied, a last minute inconvenience,

Baby held in arms to free up space.
A comfort for both, quite possibly.

The deadheader where the observer would have been,
Might conceivably have had some input

More likely too busy with his own concerns,
Tinny rain on metal roof.

A Path across the Island

There’s a path across the island.
It stops at a lake
Of dreams and sunbeams.
I was so vain here.
Proffering what little prowess I had,
In my youthfulness, acrobatic
Tricks for the camera capturing
Nonsense and moments
And a me who never was.

There’s a path across the island.
It forms amid the rhododendrons.
A thicket so endless
And so convoluted and so fierce
With its accidental areas of dreaming,
Purposefully suffocating,
Vehemently intense.
This is fun, you said to me,
Let’s not get dehydrated.

There’s a path across the island.
At night, you might see ghosts,
Spectres of shadows,
Howling at hands quivering
In a place beyond all comprehension,
Fusing and melting with
Those who were less fortunate.

There’s a path across the island.
It’s someone else’s infrastructure,
With all its secret places,
Lying down and listening to the princes.
For some the summer
Will never be repeated.
For some it will never happen.

Home

Where I grew up
There were dark places,
Urban and haggard.
The whole world felt
Tired.
Everybody seemed to have
A secret.

I can’t quite put my
Finger on what
Seemed an ache
But only later became
A burn.

Everything was mechanic
Or else polluted
And the sharp winter mornings
Were split with jet roar
As if we
Didn’t exist.

Now I am older
And far away
And I long for the city,
Forgetting
That it probably

Unserviceability

We override
That which we don’t trust.
How can I take you
Seriously
If all of your indications
Might be wrong?

You lied to me once
And whatever follows,
Whether the truth or not,
Can be justifiably discounted.

You were the cause
Of my delay.
You were my only
Malfunction.

Sometimes,
That which we rely on
Has always been
Working against us.

Pulse

Okay.
Draw an imaginary line.
(I forgot to mention
That this will only work
In winter
When there are no
Leaves on the trees).
Draw an imaginary line,
From the top of Knowle Hill
(On private land now,
Belonging to Wentworth Golf Course,
On which I’d wander
As a child),
Draw an imaginary line
From the top of the hill
To the blinking light on top
Of Canary Wharf.

The line does not move
And if pulled tight enough,
Nor will it bounce in
The still air.

Let me tightrope walk now
From one end of the city
To the other,
Right over all of it,
Including the airport,
Waving at tourists.
Like I said,
This can only be done in winter
When there are no
Leaves on the trees.

On breakneck hill I fog breath,
The sharp wharf beacon pulse
Visible even here.