art – Page 57 – Robert Garnham

New York Poems

New York 1.
They say that Manhattan is a state of mind

But I’ve looked on the map

And it’s definitely there.
It doesn’t stop,

Not even in the dead of night,

The rumbling, the growl,

Inexorable,

No wonder they look so angry.
I went into Starbucks at five in the morning

And there was already a queue.

Shuffling jittery city dwellers,

The insomniacs and the early risers,

The boy who cannot sleep in

The city that never sleeps,

Nothing more offputting than a

Mardy pre-caffeine New Yorker.
Don’t take coffee, I take

Well actually I do take coffee,

Thanks for asking,

And maybe one of those tarts.

I’m English, you know.
Sitting in the window and watching

The cyclists,

Weaving, open-mouthed.

Stop lights mean nothing to them,

Life seems so tentative,

These two-wheeled mosquitoes,

How many of them end up

Plastered on the front of those

Big-assed delivery trucks that you see,

Or some nobhead’s Humvee?
I thought the barista was only being nice

When he asked me for my name.

He repeated it with a smile, all

Rhotic on the consonants,

Elongating the vowels in a way

They don’t normally get pronounced,

Making my heart all fluttery

Until I notice he’d written it on my cup.
It’s the familiar things

That make me feel at home.

Crushing disappointment,

And the fact that they

Also have McDonalds over here.
New York 2.
I need one with a shot of espresso.

You’re the newbie, you’ll need this.

There’s a whole bunch of confidence there.

She never told anyone

But she likes attention.

She’s like that with every guy, trust me.

And then she can cut him out, say uh-oh,

It’s like oh, it’s bad, she’ll go far,

She got green locker room doors,

She won’t try to apologise.

I don’t have an issue with her.

Every time I told her she gave me the one two.

I used to consider you a friend

And I was your friend whatever.
(Found poem, three NYPD police women chatting in a coffee shop at the next table).
New York 3.
The way he’s sitting

And what he’s wearing

And his hair

Those are the definites.

His sensitive eyes

His long eyelashes and the

Way he just looked

At that jogger,

Those are the peripheries.

And the hoodie,

American Dance Theatre,

Alvin Ailey,

Whatever that is.

(I will google it later).

It’s all mostly symbolic

I feel

I know him.
New York 4.
She took my hand and danced with me

Amid the noise and clamour and cacophony

Of Times Square

As the skyscrapers whirled in their

Concrete and glass delirium,

She yelled

Above the engines and the horns and the

Shouting and the hooters and the sirens and the roar

And the buzz and the energy and the excitement

And the rush and the glee and the pulsing rhythms

Of the city in all its brash omnipotence,

Sorry,

I thought you were my husband.
New York 5.
(Amid the Abstract Expressionists, MoMa)
He, who isn’t here

Would have haunted these

Very pictures,

Broken nose to canvas

And a ready opinion.

Losing himself

In the Pollock

And it’s intricate action,

Felt a spark of the very now,

And would have known everyone

On first name terms.

Jasper. Jackson. Elaine. Robert. Mark.
The boy with the red trainers,

A sly flitting nonchalant phantom

Who will blond my dreams

With his purposeful demeanour

Right now here and

F would have approved.
New York 6.
I’ve only got one joke about denim.

A one liner about crinoline.

I’ve only got a couple of puns about nylon

And a quip about silk

Basically,

I’ve run out of material.
New York 7.
(Written in Tom’s Diner)
I wasn’t sitting near the window.

I was at the counter.

But it was still the diner on the corner

And the burger was mighty fine

On a drizzly Manhattan Saturday.
And there’s a ball game on the tv screen,

Notre Dame are playing NC State

And I’m not sure what the sport is

But they’ve all got helmets and shoulder pads.
There’s a picture from a magazine

Of Jerry Seinfeld on the wall and he’s

Kind of looking at me imperiously

As I eat my burger which,

As I said, is mighty fine.
I’ve got that tune in my head now,

You know the one.

The Seinfeld tv theme music.

I probably wouldn’t have come here

If it wasn’t for, you know,

These two things.
New York 8.
The Staten Island ferry

Everyone is merry

They’re all waving at me!

Am I a celebrity?

Have I been recognised?

Am I famous here?

No, they’re

Wiping mist from the windows

Of the inside seating area.

I’m depressed now.
New York 9.
She purred

Hold on there, honey,

I’ll just put you through

On to line number three.

There was barely a click.

No static.

She’s such a

Smooth operator.
New York 10.
I want to go out with Rhys.

I want to have a date with Rhys.

I want to spend quality time with Rhys.

I want to get to know Rhys.

I want to be with Rhys.

I want to make out with Rhys

I want to express my love for Rhys

I want to have relations with Rhys

I want to be at peace

With Rhys.
I say to Rhys

Please

Rhys

Please

Rhys

Please please please

Rhys Rhys Rhys

Rhys

Come on

Don’t be a tease

Put me at my ease

I haven’t got flees

You are the bees

Knees

Rhys
Rhys

What do you say?

Rhys

What of it, Rhys what of it, Rhys what do you reckon?

You and me Rhys please Rhys what do you think Rhys

Me and you Rhys you and me Rhys us together Rhys

Rhys

Us together Rhys us together Rhys us us us

Together together together

Rhys

Rhysie babes.

Please
Oh dear!

Rhys has gone walking off.

Rhys

Has called the police.
New York 11.
The big pancake. The big muffin.

The big nausea. The big nothing.

The broad one. The tall one.

The big fella. The concrete devotional.

The prostrate giant. The cosmopolitan.

The metropolitan. The big breakfast.

The all day lunch. The concrete funnel.

The distorted mirror. The seismic cherry.

The license to chill. The delicatessen.

The bad boy. The big bad boy,

Cavernous potholes so deep you’ll

Lose yourself for a week.

The big dependable. The three-way delicious.

The exuberant fruit. The hungry papa.

The pumping beehive. The big badger.

The big glacial. The big crazy.

The big security. The big despicable.

The big beat. The big Apple.
New York 12.
No ghost dance

On these gentle hills

Nor ceremonial gatherings

On the granite outcrops,

Central Park no wilderness,

Just the whisper of

Other people’s conquests

Too rooted in the now

To wander successfully.
New York 13.
Melissa loves her new boyfriend

She was telling me

He’s got it all and she’s fallen for him

And love is a tentative thing,

It makes her heart sing

That just a glimpse of him

Makes her all tingly inside.

Tell me more, said I.
His name is

Bruce.
It’s amazing,

It’s true love.

We haven’t actually been on a date,

But we shared the taxi home

From a Eurovision Song Contest party

And he was so nice.

He didn’t even touch me.

What a gentleman.

I’ve already changed my

Facebook relationship status.
He’s not like other men.

He doesn’t try to impress you

With a list of all the blokey masculine

Macho things he’s done.
He’s ever so retro.

He likes antiques.

Old things. Ancient things.

He loves Cher.

He has a big droopy moustache

The kind that women in the seventies

Used to love.
He works on boats.

You never see him without his sailor’s cap.

But he also likes the countryside,

He loves camping.

And cottages.
He’s so manly

Yet he’s not afraid to show his emotions.

Just the opening chords of I Will Survive

Has him in floods of tears.

He has the soul of a rebel,

And a connoisseurs appreciation

Of the female form

In all it’s beauty.

Lady Gaga, Kylie Minogue,

Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland

Barbra Streisand.

Cher.

He’s a punk demon tearing up the road with his

Motorbike,

Which I haven’t seen

But he wears lots of leather

And he says there’s nothing better than a

Big one throbbing between his legs.

He’s the man for me!
He’s so caring.

He doesn’t want to upset whoever

Gave him the Tshirt that reads,

It’s Raining Men.

But he wears it all the time.

And on the back it says

Hallelujah.
He’s coming round tomorrow night,

I’m going to tell him the way I feel

Over quiche.

He says he’ll do my nails

And watch a box set of the Golden Girls.

I might put the football on.

He was telling me

How much he likes footballers.

And ball sports in general.

He’s the man for me!
I’ve got him some whiskey.

He says he likes a stiff one

Before bed.
So what do you think?
And I said, well,

First the good news is

I can’t see any problem looming with his

Red blooded masculine urges,

And the whole time you’re together

He won’t even look at another woman.

He’s not the sort of man

Who’ll force himself on you

Unless you’ve got the latest issue of Vogue,

And he’ll make your flat spotless.

You’ll be up to date with all of the

Latest celebrity gossip

And he’ll be genuine interested

In how much you hate your work colleagues.
And now for the bad news.

There will be no kids

I can guarantee it.

Try as you might

You’ll never break his heart.

And be prepared to meet a lot of

Impossibly handsome young men who have all

Inexplicably missed the last bus home,

One by one, on consecutive nights.
It’s not going to happen, sister.

It’s not going to work.

Take your mind off this man, this

Aesthetically pleasing man, this sensitive

Teasing perfumed perfect

Moisturiser tube squeezing

Eyebrow tweezing

Salad seizing

Wit so cold it’s

Almost freezing man

For whom the dance of life

Is to dance all night

With the kind of type

He likes to like

Which I’m afraid, honey,

Is not you.
That’s a shame, she said,

He’s coming round tonight to pick up his

Black and Decker Angle Grinder.

Oh, I said,

In that case I take it all back.
Poem
I met a wizard, a sage,

A man of his age

Whose wage was to lift

His spells from the page,

Engage with souls and enrage

As if locked in a cage,

Mix emotions, persuade, rampage,

Oh, how I would gauge

With a hint of outrage

As I performed on the stage,

He was an old man

So he wasn’t teenage,

His name was Adrian

But his friends called him Adge.
I said,

Wise man,

Tell my why people are suffering,

For when my heart is fluttering

I hear a low muttering,

It’s happening right now

Over the coughing and spluttering,

Like a YouTube clip

That won’t stop buffering.
Why is this world filled with hate and with

Torture, and hunger and greed,

People who don’t get what they need,

It’s like hatred has planted a seed

Which won’t go away

Until we are freed,

Plus a lot of people

Routinely lose their car keys,
And soldiers,

Dressed in their khakis,

So glib their humour, so sarky,

So cold outside, it really is parky,

It’s a lark, see.

Oh wise man, I beseech thee,

You could teach me,

I’m out of reach, see.

If I was a germ you could bleach me.

Oh wise man, unleash me.
He opened his mouth to speak, see,

Thought about it deeply,

Cleared his throat and said,

Well
And I said,

Give me all your learnings, I’m yearning

To feel that burning

And the world turning,

Life is unfurling

Like ideas thrown in the air

I’m hurling

Concepts at ya,

What philosophy can we capture,

Or otherwise enrapture.

Tell me wise man,

Have you got it beat?

Is the street your retreat to make

Your life complete

Like a celebrity reTweet

Tell us why

Life ain’t so sweet.
He pondered and said,

The trouble is
And I said,

I crave the truth quell the horror in my brain,

The souls I fear who die in their millions,

The humanity of which we are all a part,

I no more fear the truth, let it blaze like a bonfire

As it wells from deep within, for I cannot help but cry

At all the lies that blind us,
And he said, the thing is

And I said,

Blinded by the clap trap,

I’d rather eat a flapjack,

Drive around in a hatchback,

Wear a backpack,
And he said, if I might interject

And I said

Back catch

Sack crack

Hackensack

Crackerjack

Luggage rack

Quarter back

Pontiac

Anorak

Piggyback
And he just walked off.

At the Duplex on a Friday night.

I’ve never felt gayer than I did on Friday night. Well, obviously I have. I mean, the times I’ve been doing gay things, you know, the really gay things, but this was more symbolic. Because the gig was at the Duplex in Christopher Street, the gayest road in the world, quite possibly, opposite the Stonewall pub and the gay rights memorial. And right outside the venue, with all of this gayness, was a poster with my face on it. And it’s been there for weeks!
I arrived and met up with Mark Wallis and his partner Bart Greenberg. I’d known Mark for a few years when he still lived in England, and even then he was performing as I Am Cereal Killer, a kind of camp punk spoken word artist with bright red hair and face make up. His partner Bart is a playwright and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the New York cabaret scene.
Also there were a couple of actors who Bart had hired to do a rehearsed reading of his new play, and then two very familiar and wonderfully flamboyant characters arrived. First was Margoh Channing, drag queen and cabaret artist with her giant hair and costume, her new show, Hung, about to be performed in New York, and then Dandy Darkly, the drag clown spoken word storyteller, with his pointed shoulder pads and sequinned one piece cat suit. I felt very plain in comparison.

We were shown upstairs to the green room, which is a fully functioning flat over the venue, and I did a mic test on stage with the actors, it all felt so professional and very real. And as always happens in these situations, a camaraderie emerged between the performers as we prepared ourselves in the apartment upstairs with its views down on to the small park where the gay rights statues attract tourists.

I couldn’t have asked for a better audience for my New York debut, and it felt a real privilege to headline with these acts. I’d seen Dandy before in Edinburgh and I have always been a huge fan, and I’d seen I Am Cereal Killer, but Margoh Channing was a revelation, hilarious and touching, tender, human and very funny. Nancy Stearns sang a fantastic song about being in love with a young gay man, and Bart’s wonderful play was about a gay relationship.

I think I purposefully downplayed my performance because there was no way I could compete with all of the others, but people were very kind and they laughed in all the right places, and I had to change the set order on stage as I’d meant to do a couple of serious poems. However, the audience were up for laughter and a momentum had built up. So many people wanted to chat afterwards and amazingly I sold out of the books I’d brought with me!
We went back to the green room apartment, where I felt guilty at just sitting on the sofa as the others showered and changed into their civilian clothes. But as I sat there I pondered on how amazing the gig had been, and how it could possibly even be my best one yet. I was most relieved that my humour seemed to translate well to the American audience, and that the crowd were very definitely on my side and intent on enjoying themselves.
But most of all it was the cabaret scene that I loved the most. I think I fitted in because I was, in a way, the straight man, with his shirt, tie and jacket. Drag queens, drag clowns, cabaret acts and singers, they all made me feel so welcome and I’ve made a whole load of new friends. I’d love to see them all again some time. Perhaps this should be a regular thing?

An Interview with Hannah Teasdale

Hannah M. Teasdale’s collection ‘Laid Bare’ is a beautiful selection of autobiographical poems built around themes of love, loss, longing, physicality, the body, motherhood and relationships. The book tells the story of the poet’s relationships with her family, with a lover, and with herself. And as such it is a powerful work, deeply honest and frequently mesmerising in its use of language.
I’ve known Hannah for a couple of years and her performances are equally assured and honest. She connects with the audience with a measured insistence that feels easy, allowing us to glimpse the human within.

Your poetry is very autobiographical. How useful is writing poetry in order to explore your own feelings and emotions?
The emotion is already there. The writing of it comes as a natural process, as a consequence; it is simply a way of ‘setting the emotion free’ from my mind – and to some extent, my body. The only way I can manage my feelings is to pour them out onto a page.

That said, I enjoy writing commissioned pieces where I am given permission to use language without the blood-letting.

The entirety of Laid bare was written ‘in the moment’ – some of the pieces, when they came to editing, I had barely any memory of writing. I estimate I wrote around 500 pieces in a six month period. Clearly, only a small selection made the final cut.

Clive Birnie was very clear from the outset that he wanted the book to follow a narrative, a natural arc. Therefore, I chose poems that followed this brief and could take the reader on a ‘journey’. I hope that it has been successful in creating a story that readers can follow, in a similar way to a short novel but also that the poems can stand alone, in their own right. There are poems, that for their literary quality, I wanted to keep, but knew they would take the reader off-course from the story. By the same token, I have included pieces that helped to knit the narrative together. I never censor myself during the process of pen to page, however, there are pieces that will never see the light of day due to their potential impact on other people. When I was a child, I wrote a story about my best friend’s family and was completely baffled why she didn’t speak to me for a month after I read it to her. I haven’t completely learned from that experience as sometimes, I have overstepped the mark, but I do put out a clear caveat to anyone who might become intimately involved with me, that I do have a tendency to speak my truth…

Some of the pieces were written for performance, and editing them for the page, was difficult. I began as a writer for page, screen and theatre. It was only after my first pamphlet was published, that I began to read my own work out loud. It has been an almost excruciating process and even at my first book launch, I couldn’t read my own work – I had friends ‘perform’ my poetry.

I learnt the ‘art’ of performing by watching others and understanding the need for flow and rhythm in my writing. This has stood me in good stead with other genres of writing and I am now more competent at both writing and performing. When it comes to answering the question, ‘which poem has received the biggest response?’, I think it would be true to say that sometimes, a poems such as ‘How not to say you love me’ and ‘Simply enough’ , have always been enjoyed by an audience but maybe for their lyrical quality and the ease at which I can perform them. However, there are other pieces that I don’t generally perform, like ‘Torn’ and ‘The Phone Call’ that I receive positive feedback for when people have read the book.
Do you write specifically for performance?

I do keep in mind whether a piece of writing is intended for performance to a live audience, or to be read on the page by the reader. This debate over ‘performance’ and ‘page’ poetry is a palpable hot potato currently and one that causes so many unnecessary divides at a time, when as writers, we should be embracing the art as a whole and not seeking to label and divide. It was said to me by a Professor of Poetry that ‘poetry is not meant to be accessible’, that it requires intellect to analyse and unpick. Others have argued the very opposite and have found great solace in discovering a genre that is not reminiscent of their claustrophobic school-days texts. Some have said that ‘Laid Bare’ dares to attempt to bridge that gap, but I am sure there are many critics who would argue against that.

Who are your literary influences?

My literary influences are broad in genre and writing style. I am naturally drawn to writers who speak a truth about human existence in a way that hits you in the stomach. Deborah Kay Davis consistently surprises me with her succinct use of lyrical but slicing language. She hits ‘that spot’ so effortlessly. Ted Hughes will always provide me with a come-back-to point of reference. If I am ever ‘stuck’, I open Birthday Letters and perhaps find a couple of words to write from. I will always be awestruck by his ability to draw upon the natural world to express the human consciousness. And it goes almost without saying, Dorothy Parker is a complete stand-alone in her ability to pull strands of light through the darkest of black.

What projects are you currently working on?

Over the past year, I have been working on a third collection that consists of much shorter poems dissecting the psychological and physical impact of brief sexual encounters. I hope that it pushes even further through the uncomfortable boundaries of the sexually taboo – without being too explicit.

Recently, I have been involved in a number of creative art’s projects – working with young people and vulnerable adults as a creative writing facilitator but also with artists on collaborations.
What advice would you have for aspiring poets?

I don’t know if I feel qualified to be giving aspiring writers or performers ‘advice’ as it is such a personal journey; what may be right for one person, is not for another. There is a fine line between pushing yourself just far enough out of your comfort zone to grow as an artist but keeping yourself safe and sane enough to keep going, without destroying yourself in the process. A very fine line indeed…
A

The rise of wilful buffoonery and the allure of people like that Trump bloke.

I don’t usually do politics. The kind of spoken word that I do is an escape from the real world, though I do poetry about themes and society, such as LGBT issues, representation and inequality. I don’t usually do pieces about real people either, unless you count Jeremy Clarkson and Katie Hopkins, both of whom I’ve performed humorous poems about. I always see such poems as having a relatively short shelf life. I haven’t performed the Clarkson poem much since the muppet was fired from Top Gear. It was a sad day.
However this year has truly been a bummer, politically speaking, not only with that whole Brexit thing, (what the hell was all that shout?), and the populism of that Farage bloke, the rise of the rather spooky Teresa May, (again obliterating one of my poems, in which I mention ‘Home Secretary Teresa May. Short shelf life, you see), but rather more scarily, the ominous buffoonery of Donald Trump.
I’ve tried to make sense of all this as the ultimate expression of celebrity culture, the rise of anti-intellectualism, image over content, bluster as a signifier of the supposedly downtrodden. The result of the Europe referendum demonstrated, to my way of thinking, the wilful protest of the supposedly under-represented. Both Farage and Trump have grasped the idea that it doesn’t matter what lies you tell, as long as you sound angry. They have created situations in which there is a supposed opposition to everything which their supporters only just now realise that they cherish. Abstract concepts such as freedom, identity of the dominant culture, fear of change, the foreign Other. The more they shout and lie, the more popular they get, because the lies are so obvious that they’ve become conceptual anti-political protests.
I’d like to write poetry about this. But none of it is very poetic. The best way to fight bluster and bullying is often with humour, and that’s happening a lot in the US but not so much over here. I can’t remember who said that you can’t win an argument against stupidity. But when the stupidity is a purposeful tactic to win arguments, that’s when we should be worried.
The Pet Shop Boys did a song called I’m With Stupid, which had the line, ‘Is stupid really stupid, or a different kind of smart?’
Will all of this blow over? Probably not. Mr Trump hopefully won’t win the election, but you can never be too sure. People are being put off politics, including the politicians, and this will lead to a whole generation of media-managed calculated blundering, office as character, celebrity warmongering.

What is ‘Reception’?

In 2011 I went to Australia and had a great time in Cairns and the surrounding rainforest, just poking around and writing bad poetry and doing all of the usual touristy things. It was rather hot and everyone was relaxed and friendly, and I decided that I would spend a couple of days in Tokyo on the way back, you know, seeing as though I was in the neighbourhood.
It was a long flight from Cairns to Tokyo and when I arrived I caught a bus to the city and found the hotel, by which time it was about midnight, only to find that he hotel had completely lost any information about my stay. Not exactly an adventure, I know, but I was jet lagged, tired, and kind of culturally confused after having just arrived from the rainforest of Australia to the most modern metropolis on the planet.
While I was there an idea came for a novella which I started writing immediately, jotting down paragraphs and descriptions as I walked around the city. I flew back to England and wrote the whole manuscript in a couple of weeks. I’d just finished the last few paragraphs when I discovered that there had been the earthquake and the tsunami. My thoughts turned to the people I’d met and I wondered how they were and whether they’d lost loved ones.
I spent the next couple of years refining the manuscript and rewriting it, but at the same time my performance poetry was picking up and I really became swamped with poetry and spoken word gigs, until I put the manuscript aside and completely forgot about it for three years or so. By chance I came across it this year and thought, hmmm, I should really do something with this.
So I have published ‘Reception’ in all its glory. Rereading it now is a strange experience because it brings back so many of the people and situations I found myself in. Almost all of the novel is true, from the young lady I met in the coffee shop, to the man playing bagpipes. The back story of the Robert character, involving Ryan and Darren, is completely made up, though the idea of it came to me while I was in Tokyo.
It’s a happy little book which I really enjoyed writing. My style has changed dramatically since, so it’s a fascinating insight into the preoccupations I had at the time, and the philosophical nuance which I laid over everything. Sufficient distance has passed for it to read as if someone else has written it.
Reception is for sale for £7.99 from the Lulu website.
http://www.lulu.com/shop/robert-garnham/reception/paperback/product-22867940.html

I’ve started wearing anoraks.

Sure, there were times when I was quite trendy. Fashions and celebrity obsessions would come late to me, I was never at the cutting edge when I was a teenager, but I made an effort and I even spent a couple of years wearing a baseball cap. Every fad and fashion seemed to have its effect on me particularly in my teenage years. I had a mullet at one point. I had curtains. (They would get in my eyes as I cycled and I would have to keep brushing them out of my eyes). I had short hair, long hair, a side parting, a middle parting. I wore all kinds of luminous t-shirts in the 1990s and cut off jeans. I had trainers so big that the tongue of them came almost up to my knees. I was trendy.
In the mid 1990s I’d use so much gel that it stung my eyes whenever it rained. These were also The Thin Years. I looked all right.
In the year 2000 I adopted a spiked hair style. By this time I had concluded that I wasn’t going bald, like many of my contemporaries. The spiked hair style marked me out from other people because it wasn’t quite trendy any more. It was at least distinctive. In fact it even looked a bit retro, which I complimented by wearing tweed jackets, Converse All Star sneakers, tank tops, ties. This is the look that I’ve been adopting ever since.
But last week something horrific occurred and it’s still having an effect this week, and for the foreseeable future. I’ve bought a rain mac. Fed up with arriving at places damp in the rain, I’ve gone out and purchased the most functional rain mac you’ve ever seen. It’s plastic and it’s cosy and I don’t care that I now look like one of the men from Last of the Summer Wine. I’m rocking the rain mac look and I don’t care.
I hang around with trendy people. As a spoken word performer, my friends are rappers and musicians, trendy types with facial hair and beards, who say things like sick when they mean good, and they wear baseball caps in much more inventive ways than i ever could. How privileged that I should be permitted among their vibrant youthfulness and yet, bloody hell, I’ve bought a rain mac.
Is this the end? Is this the start of the great decline? I’m in a coffee shop as I write this and they’ve got the air conditioning on. And I’m wearing my rain mac to keep warm. I don’t care how I look and I don’t care if one of my trendy young contemporaries comes in. They probably wouldn’t think it’s very sick.
They’ve forecast rain for later. And you know what? I’m quite looking forward to it.

I got heckled twice this week. Weirdly.

So something weird happened the other day, and the weird thing that happened was that I got heckled. And then two days later something weird happened again and that was that I got heckled. And the weird thing about this weird thing that happened was that this happened with the same poem. And another weird thing about this weird thing was that the heckles were both so dissimilar even though they happened during the same poem.
It’s a new poem which I use as an introduction to myself. I wrote it in Edinburgh and I performed it for the first time at the Boomerang Club when I co-headlined there. One of the inspirations for writing it was watching the wonderfully powerful performers in Edinburgh such as Dandy Darkly and Matt Panesh, people who I really admire and use language effectively. It also uses highly literary language for comic effect, accentuating the traditional idea of a spoken word poet from Shakesperian times.
So the second time I performed it was in Exeter in Sunday night, and because it’s a poem which introduces me and my oeuvre, it’s the first poem of my set. So I performed it and someone shouted out, ‘I like that!’
Which is a nice heckle. I did a stand up comedy course a few years ago and one of the sessions was all about heckling. The course instructor told us that there are several types of heckle: just helping out, saying something nice, being drunk, or showing off. So this was a saying something nice heckle, the correct response to which is, ‘thanks’. But like a deer caught in a car headlights, I just said, ‘muhhhh’.
The rest of the set went very well.
And the second time I performed the poem was in Swindon two days later. At the end of it someone shouted out, ‘That doesn’t rhyme’.
Of course it doesn’t rhyme. It doesn’t have to rhyme. Poems don’t have to rhyme. Ok, there was a lot of rhymey poetry at the gig where I was performing, but my own stuff seldom rhymes. Perhaps this was a ‘just helping out’ kind of heckle, and my response to it was, ‘thanks’. Which I suppose is a delayed reaction to the heckle from the last gig.
So there we have it. I’m looking forward to performing the poem again because it seems to elicit a response of sorts. Or maybe it’s just a wacky coincidence. I don’t know. I have no idea what’s going on.

10 Exciting Things You Might Not Know About Me (Number Eight will shock you!)

1- I used to babysit for Chesney Hawkes’ next door neighbour.
A long time ago, when I was studying for my A Levels, I used to babysit for a Dutch couple in a very posh house in Sunningdale. Which meant sitting in a strangers living room studying. Except there was a season of Neil Simon films on and I’d watch those instead. Anyway, when the couple came back one night they revealed that Chesney Hawkes lived next door. Perhaps I should have invited him round for a cuppa. I never saw him.
2- I used to date Michael Caine’s niece
Yes, shocking, isn’t it? I won’t reveal anything else about her except that we were good friends and I would love to get back in contact with her. Actually she might have been his cousin, but ‘niece’ sounds better. She was from Guyana, a place which I’ve felt a special affinity to ever since.
3- I was in Japan a couple of weeks before the tsunami.
The tsunami affected me deeply because all I could think about was the people I’d met and how much I’d loved Tokyo.
4- Elton John used to walk his dog past my grandparents house.
Apparently. Before he was mega famous. This would have been the early seventies before he moved to Old Windsor. I never saw him, but my sister did work experience in a book shop in Virginia Water. One day Elton John came in and bought four hundred quids worth of books. He saw another in the window that he wanted and my sister laddered her tights climbing in to get it for him. All she would go on about was her tights and I was thinking, wow, you met Elton John!
5- Danny la Rue once held the newsagents door open for me.
He was doing the summer season in Torquay and he’d popped in to the newsagents in Brixham to buy a paper. I said thank you and he smiled very sweetly at me.
6- I was almost on the David Letterman Show.
The last time I stayed in New York I stayed in a hotel next to the theatre where his show was filmed. They started the new season the day I arrived and I saw a queue, so I joined it. There were people in the queue from all over the US. You had to apply for a ticket. I got to the front of the queue and the lady on the desk said, ‘Where are you from?’ ‘England’, quoth I. ‘Hang on’, she said, ‘I’ll call the producers’. A couple of men came down, wearing Letterman baseball jackets, and we chatted, and I said I just wanted to see how the show was put together. They asked for a phone number so I gave them my mobile. I said guys I was staying next door. The producer said that his name was also Robert. They seemed very keen that I should come and watch the show but they never called. They never called.
7- I’ve seen UFOs but still don’t believe in them.
Growing up near Heathrow, you get used to aircraft and lights in the sky. One night there we two bright lights just hovering over the airport. It was kind of spooky. They then zipped to the other side of the sky and just hung there. While this was happening, there were no planes taking off or landing. I’ve got my theories, including satellites and surveillance, but if was certainly spooky. The other thing I saw was when I was at middle school, there was something metallic and pyramid shaped high up in the sky, just sat there. I have no idea what it was, but it was real, and I don’t think there were any aliens in it. What’s so fascinating about Staines that you’d travel from the other side of the Galaxy?
8- I was in a plane that ran out of fuel over the Atlantic.
Air Transat, bless them. The pilot said, ‘Personally, I think we can make it, but my first officer advises me that we should stop and take on more fuel’. We landed at Goose Bay military base in Newfoundland. A couple of years later another Air Transat plane ran out of fuel and had to glide to the Azores. Look it up. It’s an amazing story.
9- Two generations of my family were suspected of spying.
During the war, and a blackout during the blitz, my Grandmother in London accidentally let a bonfire flare up again in the back garden. An air raid warden arrested her and she had to appear at court where she swore blind that she wasn’t a German spy.
In the 1970s my dad worked abroad for the Ministry of Defence and when he flew back my mother and his brother went to the military base to wait for him. They decided to wait on the perimeter fence with a pair of binoculars. They were escorted away by the military police. They swore blind that they weren’t Russian spies.
10- My dad, uncle, grandfather and myself, (three generations), all had birthdays on January 2nd.
January 2nd, if you must know.

Rhythm, rhyme and memorising poetry.

I’ve been doing spoken word at people for five years or so now and during that time I’ve felt s slow progression and a steady ease with which I communicate the pieces I’m performing. By which I mean, I’ve kind of fallen into a rut. I write a piece, take it to a spoken word night, stand at the microphone and read it to a room full of strangers.
In the most part this is quite a comfortable method of performing. But lately I’ve been asking myself, is it performing? Over the last couple of years I’ve been to a lot of spoken word nights and I’ve seen poets and performers who are compelling and energetic, who communicate the ideas of their work to an appreciative audience.
I’ve started a regime of rehearsals, taking the pieces I wish to perform and memorising the text, which I’ve previously been loath to do. I’m doing it one poem at a time, concentrating on the new material initially. For the last two weeks I’ve been doing my darnedest to memorise a poem which I call ‘Broccoli Philosophy’, and it will get its debut tonight in Exeter. I’ve still not memorised it fully but it gives me much more scope to be more performative with the piece. I have two more pieces which I shall be concentrating on during the next couple of weeks.
But during this process I have learned a valuable lesson, and that’s the realisation that not every piece needs to be learned. A lot of comic potential comes from having the book in my hand, and pretending to be just as surprised as the audience. Therefore I have split my poetry into two definite performance brackets: book and no book. The fact I’m holding a book reinforces the idea that I am supposedly a poet, and this works for poems such as ‘Orgasms’, in which every verse has a humorous pay off. ‘Broccoli Philosophy’ has a much more Bristol style rhythm and rhyme and that works best memorised.
Which brings me to another thing.
You know all that hoo-hah when Dylan went electric? I’ve kind of done that lately with my poetry. I’ve been watching all the young poets, and listening to radio shows such as Laurie Bolger’s excellent Roundhouse Radio show, and analysing what makes a compelling piece. Those which hold the attention, performatively, have a definite rhythm and internal rhyme. ‘Broccoli Philosophy’ makes use of this. And I’ve been taking some old poems which were passable yet not part of my official canon, and rewriting them to give them the same rhythm and rhyme. This also helps me memorise them.
So that’s how things are at the moment. Rhythm and rhyme aid memorisation. This allows me to concentrate on gesture and emotion. Which is what I’ve been working on with my director, Ziggy. It’s an ongoing project and it’s going to take a few months, but right at this moment, I’m really enjoying the process!

Edinburgh Fringe Blog Part Eight

So that’s it, then. I’ve done the fringe at Edinburgh with my first solo show. And I managed to combine it with a holiday, my first for a year or so. I think it was only in the last day when I thought, OK, better work at this. And wowzers, I spent four hours flyering. I flyerered in the Royal Mile. I flyerered in Cowgate. I went to other people’s shows and flyerered on the way out. I flyerered by mistake when I went in a shop to get some water and left my flyers on the counter. I flyerered like a machine which has been built just to flyer. And if all paid off, seven people came to the last show and they gave me money even when I did my ‘don’t worry, there won’t be a bucket speech’ speech.
Last night I had a feature slot at Boomerang Club. I’d been feeling a bit weird all day before that, what with all the flyering, and I even thought, hmmm, what if this is my last ever performance? I mean, last ever. What if I called it a day after this, after the Boomerang Club? It was only a fleeting thought, and it kind of mixed up with the knowledge that I would be going home, to make me feel unusually emotional. Plus if you’ve read my blog you’ll know that I’ve been having vision problems, which makes life difficult at times and has affected my ability to perform and read at the same time. So I did a set of all my favourite poems and finished off with my most favourite of all, ‘Plop’, which seems a good summing up of my performance career. But I also started the set with a brand new piece, which I call ‘Introduction’, a piece I wrote after my meeting the other day with a top fringe performer who really inspired me. And I thought, ‘If this is to be my last ever performance, ever, then why a, I writing new material?’ As I say, it was only a fleeting thought!
So here I am at Edinburgh Waverley station. I’m in Starbucks. And I’m feeling chipper about the future. Static is done and dusted but I’ve started rewriting it and I have a very clear idea of how it will evolve. It might still be Static, or it might be something entirely different, but it will be a different beast, and I’m really looking forward to the challenge of rewriting it, rehearsing it, learning it.

This has been the most incredible week and a huge learning experience. I’ve had so many adventures along the way and seen so much good stuff, and I’ve felt younger than I have in years, and also older than I’ve ever felt. I’ve got one or two projects on the horizon that I can’t wait to work on, performance art pieces and a multi-disciplinary piece which I’ve written and is very funny indeed, the music project, the novel, there’s so much on the go at the moment! It all makes me wonder what the next year will bring till I’m back here again.
And I remembered. Yes, I remembered. Do you recall my first blog, the one I wrote on the way to Edinburgh? I remembered the lad who came and sat with me, all those days ago, who charged his phone and we chatted. I thought I’d forget all about him, but I remember. I hope he’s had a good week, too.