Uncategorized – Page 21 – Robert Garnham

Edinburgh Fringe, days three and four

Well I’m starting to get into the swing of it now. The rhythm. Leaflet and smile. Leaflet and smile. Poetry death match, madam? Leaflet and smile. And then go to someone else’s venue and leaflet and smile. Poetry death match, sir? And then get to your own venue and hope they damn well turn up.

‘Yes. Sounds great. I’m busy today but I will definitely come along tomorrow’. That’s what they say. But then they hear that there’s an act at the same time involving tightrope walking badgers. How can poetry possibly compete against tightrope walking badgers?

We had our best audiences over the last two days, six at a time. Yesterday was weird, though. Two of them left before the end, and one of them fell asleep. That’s never a good sign, is it? Mind you, she looked absolutely pooped. And I know how she feels. Festival fatigue set in yesterday and I just had to go to a book shop for a bit and pretend I was elsewhere. Just for a bit.

I’ve seen some really good comedy, though. Ever since last year I’d wanted to watch John Kearns, and sure enough he was brilliant, funny, inventive, harmless and likeable, and I was very glad that I went even though everywhere I go I have to lug around a big cardboard envelope containing the shows props. You have to stow it, you see. Stow it in the corner whenever you get to someone else’s show.

But the funniest thing I’ve seen is a comedy motivational show by Ken Do. Hilarious stuff, physical, character driven comedy which made me laugh like nothing else I’d seen for months. I wanted it to go on for much longer than it did even when Ken invited me up to help him illustrate some of his confidence building measures.

Everyone should go and watch this show, it’s at Pivo at seven each day.

Been performing elsewhere, too, at an event called Jibba Jabba. The audience is generally bigger than ours. It’s a confidence thing, you see.

There’s something weird happening, too. I mean, weirder than walking round in a tshirt which has a picture of your own face on it. People keep saying, ‘I’ve seen you before, were you here last year?’ And someone asked me if I was married to Sarah Millican. I’m not. I did a Google picture search on ‘Sarah Millican’s husband’. It was scary. Try it.

One day to go, now. I feel for my fellow poets who are here for the month. Jack Dean, Rob Auton, Tina Sederholm, Dominic Berry, it must be so, so tiring and emotionally draining. On the plus side, they’re probably not staying in a tent. Forty year old and I’m camping. Never again!

Home tomorrow. I’m typing this at a picnic bench on a campsite at seven in the morning. How I long for simple comforts, like doors and a roof!

Edinburgh Fringe, Days one and two

And so into battle every day, against thousands of other shows, leafleting in the Mile, leafleting outside our venue, leafleting outside other peoples shows and venues, and talking to people about the show and summing it up in three words (‘ Poetry death match’), and leafleting and leafleting some more, and then one person turns up on the first day.

And worse than that, she hadn’t even come to watch us. She had expected something else to be on. We invited her down into the basement of the Royal Oak to our performance space and we performed just for her. But then she said she had to leave at half past to see something else, so we stopped the show halfway through and reminded her that she needed to go. She didn’t clap much.

The second day we had a fifty percent increase in viewers, and they both stayed to the end. One if them was Tina Sederholm. The other was an Australian we met earlier.

But it’s so much more than just our show. I went to see one of my heroes, Rob Auton, he was brilliant and honest and human and everything that’s good about the human spirit was exemplified in him. We chatted afterwards, and I helped him pack up. As a fellow performer, you see, the importance of getting the venue ready for the next performer is paramount. And another poetry hero was also there, Byron Vincent.

Then I went off to see a drag artist, Mzz Kimberley. She was fantastic and belted out some classics to an audience of eight blokes. She sang to me. I could have watched all night. And when I left, I saw Eddie Izzard crossing the street. He stumbled on the cobbles in his high heels and bumped into me. Oh. These chance encounters!

A poet gave me his flyer. It must have been his last one, as he had written his set list on the back, I wanted to go and find him. It was probably important!

So it’s a cattle market here, of shows and flyers and leaflets and slow walking tourists. But I’m getting the hang of what’s required, hence this blog. Getting the word out there, you see!

My hero: Professor Zazzo Thiim

I’ve been writing poetry now for the best part of ten years. Yet my foray into the world of ‘comic’ verse did not come completely by accident.

There is one man who came before who showed me that performance poetry was a real art form and worthy of investigation. Indeed, when people ask who my influences are, (which, come to think of it, has only ever happened once), I often reply ‘Frank O’Hara, but to a greater extent, Professor Zazzo Thiim’.
Who is Professor Zazzo Thiim? Notwithstanding several attempts by many in the Californian poetry community to attribute the invention of performance poetry to their particular clique, or the claims of those within the British poetic movement to assign invention of this genre to those from various diverse backgrounds both cultural and symbolic, there remains a theory within the English departments of some major university establishments that the invention of ‘performance’ poetry can be traved to the moment in June 1953 when Professor Zazzo Thiim accidentally sat on a harpsichord while reciting the works of Tennyson. Indeed, it was seen as the most whimsical and amusing moment of the Basingstoke literary season, mainly on account of the audience reaction – (sheer disbelief mixed with a fair amount of loathing) – and the apparent embarrassment not only of Thiim himself, but also the Mayor, and Arthur Miller, to whom the harpsichored belonged.

There were immediate appeals for a repetition of Thiim’s groundbreaking (and harpsichord-breaking) work. Indeed, he was asked to perform it on the radio (to general acclaim), and before the Ambassador to the United States, (who turned out to be just a man in a hat who was passing by). Performance poetry was born. Thiim was astounded by the fact that he had invented an entire new genre. He began writing his own verse, which he would perform either sitting on a harpsichord, astride a harpsichord, while playing a harpsichord, while lying on a harpsichord, and finally, while lying underneath a harpsichord. This lasted for six years, until a colleague is said to have inquired of him, ‘What is it with you and all these bleeding harpsichords, anyway?’ He turned up at the next poetry event with a mouth organ.

Throughout this time, not only did Thiim write poems to fit in with his harpsichord smashing regime, but he also began to dissemble and play around with the poetic form. Working in unison with the University of Staines, he looked at poems in more detail than any other literary practitioner until he acquired a reputation as a literary and poetic experimenter. Poems were shot from cannons. Poems were jumped up and down on. One poem was whispered to the Queen, who was asked to ‘pass it on’. (She didn’t). One poem, entitled ‘Frank (23 ½ Seconds of Silence)’ was performed as twenty three and a half seconds of silence. And another, ‘Frank (23 ½ Seconds of Silence with a Brief Interlude)’, was an extended version of the first but with a slight clearing of the throat in the middle. ‘Frank’ was a poem performed with a tambourine with the eminent professor repeating the word ‘scones’ over and over, finally ending the consuming of a whole scone live on stage, while ‘Frank’ consisted of the Professor shouting out the words ‘I do not believe in Aberystwith’ while pouring yoghurt over his head. One of his most famous poems, ‘Frank’, received some notoriety when it was discovered that it had been the last work read by Tony Blackburn before his debut on Radio One. And of course, who can forget the stirring moment when one of his better known poems, ‘Frank’, was included in the first space probe sent out by the Belgians?

There has been of course some question as to why the Professor should have entitled all of his poems ‘Frank’. But as the good professor has pointed out on numerous occasions, all titles are essentially meaningless and spoil the anticipation of a poem or a work of art. Just look at ‘Last of the Summer Wine’. ‘Frank seemed as good a name as any. Do we enoy the Professor’s poems today? Naturally. As the performance poetry scene goes from strength to strength, the work of Professor Zazzo Thiim has been cited by many, including myself, as their main inspiration for taking to the stage. In areas where performance poetry is popular, there has also been a marked increase in sales of harpsichords, and there can be no other reason why this is so than the enduring legacy of Professor Zazzo Thiim.

Foibles in Guildford and Other Poetic Adventures

This week I felt really badly. For the first time that I can remember, I cancelled going to a poetry gig and performing. Taking the Mic in Exeter is a brilliant event which I love. But I was just so, so tired! I asked Tim if I could phone it in from home, but I was too tired even to do this!

The reason was that I had a gig the night before in Guildford at the excellent Pop Up Poetry, run by Janice Windle and Donall Dempsey, two enthusiastic and lovely people who I first met a couple of years ago on a previous visit. This time they asked me to do a twenty minute slot, and even better, my sister came along to watch. It was the first time she had ever seen me before, and I’m glad that I didn’t suck that night.

The audience were amazing and receptive and my set was greeted with applause and laughter in all the right places, even if I did emit a loud belch halfway through one of the poems!

The one drawback was that I had to get up at half four the next morning to get the train back to Deb’n. Hence my fatigue the next night when Taking the Mic rolled around.

It had been a week of performing. The Friday before I’d participated in the poetry tent at GlasDenbury. Yes, you read that write, a music festival in the small Devon village of Denbury. There were young people there, and they played the music terribly loudly, and the headliners were those mighty rock leviathans Dr And the Medics.

The best part of performing at a festival was the wristbands. I wore mine for two days afterwards to show everyone that I had two wristbands. The first said ‘Artist’. The second was proof that it over 18. You know, just in case it wasn’t too obvious.

And then the next day I was performing at Paignton Green for the Family Fun Day. I was with two poetry friends, Ellie and Brenda, and we all decided we would do family friendly material. Which was ok, except Brenda decided to edit as she went along, and quickly had to change a very dodgy line mid-poem from explaining exactly what she did with the cheese-cutter knickers to ‘and then something else happened’.

It was good performing in my adopted home town. Especially because there was just a two minute walk home. Unlike the Guildford gig.

So that’s what I’ve been up to the last few days. And now I’m working on the Poetry Island Anthology, which will be available very soon!

Two Great Gigs

The last twenty four hours have been very busy for me. And do you know what, it’s actually quite good to be busy. Especially now that I have moved house, it feels like I am ready to tackle all sorts of things.

On Friday night I had the honour of hosting the Aesthetic Clarity annual awards and birthday party. Part of my chores for the event was to add up the votes for the various categories, so it was a bit of a responsibility, and one which I was very surprised they left to me. You know. I case I cocked it up. But I didn’t.

I did a couple of poems at the start of the evening. They were both well-received, which was good because it was a youthful audience full of talented singers, dancers and models. Either that or they were being sarcastic, but as a scientific research indicated this week, sarcasm is a sign of intelligence. They genuinely seemed taken by my work, which was nice.

This is the third time that I have worked for Aesthetic Clarity. The company is a modelling agency run by a friend of mine, the indefatiguable Toya Harvey. She is the most wonderful person, incredibly busy and ambitious, and because of this she is something of an inspiration to me. She regularly works to three in the morning, which is perhaps why she told me to man up when I complained that I was working on the script till almost eleven o clock! Toya has created a company which exists to fill its models with a sense of self-worth and to improve their esteem, and this happens. It actually happens. People with issues and problems are welcomed, and it really is delightful to see the transformation.

The evening also allowed me to work with The Freakboi, a good friend of mine and a fellow band member in Croydon Tourist Office. He played me his new rap. It mentions filou pastry.

And today, I did some street poetry out in the open in Torquay with Ellie Davies, Graham Chillcott and Brenda Hutchings. Our audience may have been small and fleeting, but we had the most amazing time, poeting away while some Spanish language students played football next to us in the hot sunshine. There were a few weird moments, like when Graham was interrupted full flow by a student who wanted to sell him a packet of crisps. And when a tourist advanced with their camera, only to ignore us and take photos of the town crier!

The town crier liked my Titanic poem.

It was all a part of the Riviera Fringe Festival, a brand new event for this year which is hoped will go from strength to strength. It’s co-run by an enthusiastic and hard working chap called Jay Fortune.

I caught the ferry home afterwards. I think it’s the only gig I’ve been to in which I could catch a boat there and back. I resisted the temptation to stand at the bow of the vessel and do that ‘I’m the King of the World, wahoo!’ line from Titanic.

I’ve got a busy week ahead, with Chris Brooks’ performance poetry course on Monday, the comedy night on Thursday, (in which I have a small slot), Glas-Denbury Festival on Friday and Family Fun Day in Paignton on Saturday. And as well as all that, I shall be putting the Poetry Island Anthology together!

So, here’s a poem for ye.

Poem

Being gay was all right,

But now I’ve discovered

Steak nights

At the Wetherspoons.

I think it’s solely responsible

For the fact that

I’m not nearly as homosexual as I used to be.

No more Gloria Gaynor!

No more Glee!

No more Chihuahuas!

I can’t remember the last time I

Bought some moisturiser

Or baked a quiche.

The excitement, risk and dare

Of dating and dancing and anonymous

Sex and rampant nights of

Hot hot heat pulsing actions and

Dextrous skill

Is not as overwhelming as the thrill

Of ordering a mixed grill.

I’m not as gay as I used to be.

It may sound like a mistake

But I feel just great!

For a start you don’t have to

Stay up so late.

Looking down at a plate

And seeing a steak

Makes me think I could almost

Pass as straight.

Almost.

I’m not as gay as I used to be.

I used to spend all night on the dance floor,

Spinning and gyrating, begging for more,

Dancing and prancing, I liked my sex raw

(Unlike steaks

Which I prefer medium rare),

Athletic men in their skin tight tops

Moving to the beat, soaking up the heat

So hot and saucy and fizzling and sizzling

And oozing various juices.

That’s it, over here, table 23

I’m not as gay as I used to be.

When people see me, they say I look ‘well’

By which they mean instead

That I look ‘well fed’.

A genial bloke, a jovial mucker,

A gay man trapped in the body of a trucker.

My promiscuous days may be history,

I’m not as gay as I used to be.

Instead of spending my nights

Giggling and gossiping and bitching

I now spend them

Mostly in the kitchen.

Instead of cuddling up on the sofa

Cooing and laughing and loving

My ultimate aim now is for

A sausage and egg McMuffin.

Instead of looking for the ideal man

I’m looking for the burger van.

Instead of making love

I’m making pizza.

Instead of handcuffing and whipping a man

I’m whipping up a meringue.

Instead of a one night stand

I’ve got a cake stand.

With lots of cakes on it.

Instead of feeling that buzz of excitement

In my groin

I’m ordering a sirloin.

The only thing that’s the same, I suppose,

Is that I really like sausages.

I’m not as gay as I used to be.

Last night,

For the first time in ages

I met a man

He was called Phil

We started to have some fun

But halfway through he suddenly left

At the exact moment that I asked him,

Phil,

Is everything all right with your meal?

I then changed the oil on a Ford Focus

And watched some football.

Camaraderie at the Barnstaple Fringe

Its been the most amazing week or so and the last few day’s have been weird yet strangely life affirming.

I’ve been in Barnstaple now for three days participating in both Spectacular Vernacular and Poetry Ping Pong. The weather has been amazing which has helped make me feel good, but most of all it’s the camaraderie of the performers and those who run the event.

Day one
Spectacular Vernacular overran a tad. I amused every one by repeatedly saying Macbeth in the theatre. Not everyone laughed. Previous to this I’d had to mend my cardboard zebra with gaffer tape. On the way home the sump guard fell off Tim s car. We had to use the gaffer tape yo fix it.

Day Two
Spectacular Vernacular and Poetry Ping Pong.
The first Poetry Ping Pong was at Barnstaple Library. It went ok. The audience were appreciative. The second show was less well attended. In fact it was only Tim and Saskia. So Dan and I did all new material.
Spectacular Vernacular went better and didn’t overrun though there was a mini outcry when I dropped Camp Cat from my set.

Day Three
Poetry Ping Pong and Spectacular Vernacular.

Had two brilliant shows at the theatre. The audience was amazing and responsive. Previous to this Dan and I did an impromptu interview on local radio, and a marketing seminar.

For me the abiding feeling is of the attitude and support of the organisers and those in other shows. Everyone supports and promotes each other and sees as many shows as possible. For example I just watched Purgatory Passengers and it was the funniest thing I’ve seen in years!

One day to go and three more shows to do. No sign yet if fatigue. Though I do have work on Monday morning!

A busy week. And a new poem.

The week started weirdly and then it just got weirder as it went on. But that’s what happens when you’re a performance poet, apparently.

You know that crazy hazy place you inhabit just before you wake, when dreams and reality kind of combine until you don’t really know what’s going on? I dreamed that I was at a poetry night watching Simon Williams, and he was reciting a poem called ‘There’s A Penguin In My House’. It all seemed so vivid and real and I had his voice right thee in my head. And when I woke, I could still remember the words! So the first thing I did was to write them down.

Nothing like a parrot though I’m told
Nothing like a parrot though I’m told
Though it’s got a dainty beak
every now and then a squeak

There’s s penguin there’s a penguin there’s s penguin in my house.

The next weird thing to happen was that Chris Brooks phoned me at work to say that he wasn’t feeling too good, and could I take his performance poetry workshop that night in Torquay? I said yes, and then only afterwards thought how I could possibly get away with leading a workshop and professing to know something about a subject through which I have bumbled in the most part.

But the group was excellent and enthusiastic, and the next thing I knew was that I ha dispensed with the lesson plan that Chris had sent me. Indeed, we all probably had too much fun. Apparently there was a lot of giggling.

Tuesday morning I went to the library quiet room and had a good writing session, coming up with two great new poems which I shall no doubt perform somewhere, some time.

Wednesday passed without incident.

On Thursday, I was asked to do an unannounced three minute set at Chris Brooks’ comedy night, Jocular Spectacular. On these nights, I usually do the door for him, so to throw people off the scent I wore a t-shirt and shorts for my door duties before changing into my performance clothes once the show had started. Chris informed the audience that I was only there so that the comedy night could apply for an arts council grant by proving that it had other art forms. The audience was amazing, really receptive and warm, the two poems I performed, ‘Titanic’ and ‘Baton Twirling Eel’, going down very well indeed. The headliner was Mitch Benn. I’d heard of him. I sat in the green room with him after my set. He didn’t say anything.

I left the venue to find my train home was delayed. And then when I finally got home at midnight, I discovered that I was locked out! I had to go to the shop where I work and borrow blankets and pillows, and then go to the flat I’m currently moving in to and sleep on the floor all night.

I say slept. I didn’t get much sleeping done. Hey fever, for a start. Secondly, it was damn uncomfortable. Thirdly, I’ve slept with earplugs ever since I was a teenager and I didn’t have any for the first time in years. All of a sudden I had superhearing. I could hear cars three roads away. Birds. Trees. It was very disconcerting.

Saturday, and rehearsals in Barnstaple for Spectacular Vernacular. Yes, it’s confusing being in two shows, one called Spectacular Vernacular, the other called Jocular Spectacular. In searing heat,I took the train to Exeter and shared the journey, by chance, with actor and comedian, star of stage and TV, James Cotter. We chatted about theatrical matters and it felt kind of good to hear about his career. At Exeter, he got off and Daniel Haynes got on, and so did fifteen drunk England fans, who spent the rest of the journey singing such classics as Minnie the Moocher and American Pie.

Rehearsals went well enough. A tin of tuna kept falling out of my flasher’s overcoat. That was the only setback.

Tim King offered a lift home to Paignton, and Saskia came along because she was going clubbing in Torquay. Tim’s sat nav diverted us into the sticks and, as the sun went down on a very hot Devon evening, we kind of drifted off the face of the earth. We passed a cheese factory. Then the road was closed for unspecified reasons, so we had to go back past the cheese factory. It was a very camp little factory. It had big chimney stacks. I wondered why a cheese factory should need chimney stacks, but there you go. By the time we got to Torbay three hours later, the streets were crowded with revelry makers, what with their being Football On and a UB40 concert on the sea front.

Arrived home knackered, and felt somewhat for Tim, who now had to drive all the way back to Exeter.

So it’s been a very busy week, and next week promises to be just as busy with nine shows over four days in Exeter, and a gig on Wednesday night too. But that’s the life of a performance poet, apparently.

Anyway, here’s one of my new poems.

Poem

For years
My parents didn’t know their neighbour’s names.
One day their neighbours walked past and said hello
And their dog got it’s head stuck in the
Slats of the gate.
My parents forever then referred to them as
Dog’s Head Stuck In Gate Man And Woman.

Oh look, they’d say,
There goes Dog’s Head Stuck In Gate Man And Woman
As the two of them walked past
Exercising their dog.

I thought how strange life is
And the certain barriers which we create
Such as names and other niceties
That this amiable couple should
Forever be defined, after a lifetime,
As Dog’s Head Stuck In Gate Man And Woman
Forever imbuing that one lame incident
With all kinds of semantics.

One day I visited
And Dog’s Head Stuck In Gate Man And Woman past
Without their dog.
‘Where’s Dog’s Head Stuck In Gate Man And Woman’s dog?’
I asked
And dad said, ‘it died, unfortunately’.
And I said ‘so what do you call them now?’
And mum said, ‘Philip and Beryl’.

Who are we and why do we do it? (Perform poems, I mean).

This week I was asked by someone who the ‘persona’ was that I adopt when I’m performing. The person asked this because whenever I perform I tend to wear the same shirt and trousers and I told them that this was my ‘costume’. The person I told this to is in the theatre so they took this to mean that I became a character whenever I performed.

Ah, I said.

And then I got to thinking that maybe she was correct, and that the person who stands up and does things into a microphone is not the same sort of person who does everything else that I do. The Robert Garnham who gets trains and goes to work and eats a flapjack and goes to the supermarket is not the same Robert Garnham who performs poems about orgasms and trousers.

The question then came up again during rehearsals for a show that I’m involved in. ‘Who is the narrator of this poem?’, I was asked. And to be honest, it’s not something I’d even thought about. (The poem is about orgasms).

Anyone who does anything performative it always a different person in front of other people. And yet this persona is bound to have qualities of the person underneath. Whether or not this is an unexplored side of that person, or an exaggeration, depends, I suppose, on the act itself. I’d always thought that my ‘character’ of ‘Robert Garnham’ was a bit of an academic buffoon whose poetry aims for the deep while accidentally provoking much sniggering and laughter. Which, I suppose, is a pretty fair summation of what I do, but also of who I am underneath.

I’m always saying the wrong thing.

I looked at all of my favourite poets and performers. John Hegley becomes somewhat school-teacher-ish when he does his thing. On the one occasion that I worked with him, he was a completely normal chap before he went on stage. (Mind you, we’d both got to the venue late because we’d both got hopelessly lost on the way). Rachel Pantechnicon is very clearly a constructed character who bares very little resemblance to the person who plays her. Yet there is still a slight resemblance of sorts. Both have taken aspects of their normal character and infused them into their stage presence.

But there’s also a form of wish-fulfilment. In the case of Robert Garnham, there’s a sense that he becomes the sort of person on stage that he wants to be in real life. He doesn’t usually get everyone’s attention in any situation apart from when he’s behind the mic. He’s always the one who gets spoken over during staff meetings at work. Yet he’s always the one who’s proved right. He hates staff meetings.

So why does he do this strange performance every now and then? Because he can? Because there are underlying issues? Because he just wants to entertain? Because he’s always been incredibly jealous of Pam Ayres? It’s probably a combination of all of this. Plus, it’s really good when people laugh.

I told the theatre director that the persona I adopt himself has a persona which changes with every poem. There are many meta-layers and semantic possibilities within this. Robert Garnham becomes ‘Robert Garnham’ who then becomes “Robert Garnham”. This explanation seemed to satisfy her and then she asked the same question to another poet.

Swindon Poetry Slam

Robert Garnham

I arrived at the town of Swindon in a manner perhaps unbecoming of a poet, by hanging out of the window of the Intercity train as we pulled into the station. The church bells were ringing, which was weird. I remember thinking, hmm, that’s got to be some sort of omen. I kept looking around to make sure that nobody could see me hanging out of the window. I took my glasses off in case they fell on to the track. Nothing bad happened. Indeed, it was Quite Fun.

I booked into the Travelodge.

The reason for my visit was the Swindon Poetry Slam. For some reason I had signed up for it the moment I heard about it. There’s always something slightly comical about Swindon – and this is from a man who used to live within miles of Staines and Slough.

I arrived at the venue and was…

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Swindon Poetry Slam

I booked into the Travelodge.

I arrived at the venue and was immediately comforted to see a framed photograph of Pam Ayres on the wall. Or Pam Ayres MBE, as the plaque so proudly declared. Yes, I thought. I already know what the audience will be like. They will be Ayresites. I should have rehearsed a poem about a cat.

The slam, as ever, was incredibly well run by Sara-Jane Arbury and A Man Who Wasn’t Marcus Moore. Spoz was energetic and funny and infectious and I immediately took to his shenanigans as he danced to the 1970s disco classics which were played every now and then between the rounds.

The first person to be picked from the hat was Nick Lovell, a friend of mine and a poet who I really admire, so it was a little sad to see him have to go first. Sure enough, the judges, not yet warmed up perhaps, gave the first three performers low scores, which in the case of Nick, I think, was totally unwarranted. He performed excellently and the audience loved his poem, and afterwards someone told me that it had been their favourite of the night.

I got picked to go up in the third batch and I let loose with The Straight Poem (which goes by the title of ‘Poem’). The audience seemed to like it a lot and I was selected from my group to go through to the semi final. There was a local poet, whose name, I believe, was Miles who had a considerable contingent of local supporters. He got a very good score indeed in his round, performing a poem about doing DIY while het up on caffeine, which I thought was the funniest thing of the night. However, amazingly, he did not get the highest score of his group.

Other highlights were a young lady by the name of Tina, who did a poem about poets and poetry and the whole meaning of it all, and a lady of advanced years and eccentric dress, who eschewed the microphone and performed to dead, purposeful and rapt silence. She was amazing.

Round two, then. And I started to panic a little bit. The audience seemed a tad conservative, and worse still, there was a small child in the row in front of me. I’d hoped to do the poem about sex. You know the one. With lots of references to rumpy pumpy and foreplay and things. And there was a small child in the audience.

I then remembered the poem I’d written during the April Poem a Day challenge about Swindon, which I’d re-written just a couple of days before. While everyone else went to the interval, I sat in the auditorium and hastily rewrote it, and used Wikipedia to check up on a couple of facts. It was the most frantic moment of the night!

For the next round, I was called up to go on third, and I did the Fozzie poem, known also as ‘Poem’. Oh yes, that old chestnut. My signature piece. By now I felt more relaxed and the audience loved it. Miles went next, to rapturous applause from his fans, and he did a poem which I thought was amazing. Then the Quiet Lady. Then Tina. And when they added up the scores, it was me and Tina in the final.

Oh my.

This was the worst part of the evening. I had no strategy. I could have done Beard Envy, but I didn’t want people to think it was a derogatory comment about the Austrian entry to the Eurovision Song Contest. (Seriously! That’s why I didn’t do it). Then I thought about ‘Camp Cat’, but the audience did seem rather conservative. The sex poem was out because there was a child there. So I decided to do the Swindon poem, which I’d only just written and never once performed.

I performed it well, I think, seeing as though I had no practice. The audience loved it. I think Tina thought it was some sort of cheap trick to ensure victory by reciting a tongue in cheek poem about how much I love Swindon. But then, perhaps it was. I was pleased with the way it went.

Tina won.

It was an excellent evening and I was very pleased with the way I’d performed. The highlight, though, was when a lady told me that the Straight Poem was the best one she’d ever heard, and another was when a young man told me that he’d cried with laughter during Fozzie. Such things made the whole train journey and the night in a Travelodge worthwhile!

I met the festival organiser afterwards. And in my usual jumbled manner I could only garble some nonsense about how nice it was that Nathan Filer would be there the next day.

And then I was interviewed by Radio Swindon. ‘What brought you to Swindon?’, the interviewer asked. ‘The train’, I replied, in a kind of Chris-Lowe-from-the-Pet-Shop-Boys manner.

It was a fantastic day. I rushed back to the Travelodge to watch the end of Eurovision.