Tag Archives: art

Thoughts of a poetry audience member.

I went to a poetry gig last week, only I wasn’t performing. It was the first time in ages that I went somewhere purely to be an audience member. I thought it would be am incredibly annoying experience, being there knowing that I wouldn’t get a chance to go up on stage and do a set.

And in a way I was right in that the whole dynamics of the evening were different. Relieved of the emotions of pre and post performance, I was able to sit back and relax and watch the listen to the performers.

The first thing that struck me was just how good everyone was. There were no signs of nerves, no silliness, nothing amateurish or half-baked. Every performer was on top form. The second thing that struck me was how amazingly captivating each and every performer was. The event in question was Taking the Mic in Exeter at the Phoenix arts centre, which is nominally an open mic event, (although slots have to be booked in advance), but everyone who performed was excellent.

And this made me a little nervous. I’ve been performing poetry now for five years or so and every time I step on stage I tell myself, ‘Well, this is going to be pants’, and every time I step off stage I tell myself, ‘Well, that was pants’. Before my performance I’m usually thinking of what I shall be doing and the minor details of my set, so I don’t have much of a chance to concentrate too much on the other poets. And after my set I’m usually too relieved to think coherently.

Freed of such constraints, I was able to sit there and fall in love with every single performer. And one question came to mind: How on earth do they do it? How do they perform so brilliantly, so effortlessly, every single one of them?

I do a lot of practice and I plan what I’m doing, and I have to write out in advance my ‘spontaneous’ comments, and this kind of makes me immune to seeing my own oeuvre as equal to the others on the local scene. In other words, I’m merely trying to keep up! And sitting in the audience emphasised this, showed me that when it comes to performance, stage craft and presence, I still have a long way to go.

It’s good news for the local scene, of course. South Devon and the south west in general has the most wonderful, diverse and creative bunch of spoken word artists in the country, and im glad to be a small part of it. Watching the performers at Taking the Mic was a fantastic experience, and I urge all poets to go to gigs and just watch, freed from the restraints of preparing for a set. It’s done me the world of good, (while at the same time giving me a huge dose of the willies).

You Can’t Put Tinsel on Loneliness

Here’s my Christmas poem for this year.
https://youtu.be/QeCr-13YBEo

Poem
Amid the tinsel of a November Weatherspoons 

A cold air nip as the log fire cracks

Alone at table 67, traditional breakfast 

No one to share the superfluous hash brown with.

You can’t put tinsel on loneliness.
Twenty years of solo meals and microwave Christmas puds

And naps in party hats and texts from exes

And pondering on paperwork to pass the time

Or at least the polishing or painting of skirting boards

You can’t put tinsel on loneliness.
You can’t put fake snow on despair 

You can’t hang angst on a tree

You can’t parcel up and shrink wrap disappointment

You can’t fill a stocking with ennui

You can’t put tinsel on loneliness.
A mardy face sneering under a felt red Santa hat

Randy nights of crackers pulled, curtains drawn and candles snuffed

Christmas Eve spending the day at your mothers, as a ‘friend’

Unwrapping just the one present and finding its a tea towel

It’s the thought that counts 

You can’t put tinsel on loneliness.
Here he comes now, Josh, duty manager,

Yes everything’s all right with my meal, tell me how you’d feel

These cold mornings just expose the emptiness of the galaxy 

And the dichotomy between companionship and the briefness of our existence,

Yes, everything’s all right with my meal, but

You can’t put tinsel on loneliness.
Table for one, sir?

Leave a coat on the chair so that

Some other loner doesn’t nab your seat

While you’re ordering at the bar

The all day breakfast is only served till eleven

You can’t put tinsel on loneliness.
Back amid the tinsel of a November Weatherspoons 

Flimsy cardboard card advertising overpriced turkey

And the promise of not having to do the washing up

We timed our orgasm for the stroke of midnight

Rhythmic with sleigh bells like a radio jingle xmassified 

You can’t put tinsel on loneliness.

  

Poem (People Keep Mistaking Me For Tom Daley) 

Poem

Got mistaken again last night

For Olympic diver Tom Daley.

That’s the third time this week.

The classically handsome features,

The tanned, toned physique,

That winning smile,

Just like Tom Daley.

A lot of people have said

We could be twins.

Coming out of Morrissons with a

Supermarket trolley,

Some yob shouts from the bottle bank,

Tom! Tom! Tom!

Tom Daley! Tom Daley!

It’s Tom Daley!

Swimmer bloke! Trampoline swimmer bloke!

Tom Daley! Divey swimmy divey divey

Swimmer bloke!

From the tv!

Oi!

Tom Daley Tom Daley Tom Daley Tom Daley!

He then peered at me closer and said,

Oh.

In the coffee shop,

Flapjack please and a decaf cappuccino 

The barista above the steam gurgle machine

Says, half heartedly, ‘hon haley?’

And I say, what?

And she says, 

‘hon haley? hon haley?

and I say what?

And she says,

‘hon haley.

Nothing, nothing

I thought . . .

Sitting in the coffee shop

Avoiding eye contact

Feeling

Awkward.

Tom Daley is one of my favourite athletes.

This is because of the way that Tom Daley dives.

Tom Daley climbs up the ladder and then

Tom Daley dives off of it and Tom Daley

Hits the water and then Tom Daley swims to the side

And Tom Daley climbs out of the pool.

You could buy Tom Daley an ice cream and Tom Daley

Is the sort who would say thank you for buying me

An ice cream because that’s the sort of person

That Tom Daley is.

I dreamed that he came round

And we chatted about Professor Brian Cox

And now his to shows, informative as they are,

Might be half an hour shorter

If he didn’t speak

So

Slowly

The cat wanted to go out and

Tom Daley volunteered.

Come here, Kevin, he says,

Come here.

The cats called Kevin.

Sometimes people mistake me for

Professor Brian Cox, too.

I’m not Tom Daley

But if I was I’d probably

Wear a false handlebar moustache

In public

In case someone dropped their handbag

Into a river or a harbour

And a call went up among the throng,

‘Is anyone here an Olympic diver?’

Another invitation this week

To open a summer fete.

Just wear your swim shorts, the email said,

So we can put pictures in the staff magazine.

They thought I was you know you.

I’m fed up that

People use me just as a sex object.

Turned on the tv last night.

Diving championships,

Happened to be on.

Just in time to see Tom Daley

Clambering up for another

Rocket ship from the springboard.

And the commentator said,

‘And now here’s something different,

It’s performance poet Robert Garnham’.

A walk around rainy Brixham

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

I’m only happy when it rains.

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

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

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

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

On heckling at poetry performances. 

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

 -Those who are trying to join in

– those who shout out encouragement or even displays of affection

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

1. How would you describe the behaviour of cows?

Cows line astern 

Grass munchers in a row

Like forensic detectives

At the scene of a crime. 

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

N

3. Describe the types of cow that you saw.

Fresians black and white

Flanked by invisible maps.

Half of an hour hyped up.

Are they black cows with white splodges

Or white cows with black splodges?

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

N

WTF

5. Were you aware of this before the incident?

I had a crush.

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

There once was a field of cows

Upon which I would browse

By the side of the gate

And other places on the farm

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

7. That’s not a haiku.

Oh

8. Eulogise a cow for me.

Daisy

I know this rhyme is lazy

And people may think me crazy,

Daisy

But in this rhyme I praise thee.

Says me.

Daisy

You are amazy.

9. Tell a cow joke.

In what way is a cow like my parents bungalow?

10. I don’t know.

They’re both fresian.

11. Do you have anything else to add?

I have no beef with you.

12. So I herd.
  

On the promise of anti-slams

I met Scott Tyrrell at the Womad Festival. He’s a poetry slam champion, but he’s also won an anti-slam. That is, the prize for the (purposefully) worst poem in a slam competition. Indeed, these are competitions where the poets compete to be as bad as possible.
I like the whole idea of this. An anti-slam is a chance, of course, to go over the top, and to employ all those devices which ordinarily result in cringing. I wondered also if there was a sense of the OTT in anti-slam poetry.
The idea of it perplexed me and I wondered if I could write a poem that was purposefully bad, an anti-slam poem, while still employing all the traits, mannerisms and stylings of regular performance poetry.
I’m not sure if I will ever get the chance to enter an anti-slam, but this is what I’ve come up with. It’s an ode to styrofoam extruded polystyrene.
It’s called ‘Poem’.

Poem
Packaging!

Cardboard!

Delivery note!

Box!

Polystyrene!
What are you going to do with all that

Packaging, that styrofoam extruded polystyrene?

Where are you going to put all that styrofoam extruded polystyrene?

This whole room now is filled with styrofoam extruded polystyrene.

We could fill up a bin bag with styrofoam extruded polystyrene,

And then the bin, but there’s so much styrofoam extruded polystyrene

That the bin will be filled with styrofoam extruded polystyrene.
I see you every day ensconced in your styrofoam extruded polystyrene.

With the sultry glare of a rather more sensible

Justin Bieber and the irritability of styrofoam extruded polystyrene.

You have the tenacity of a lion and the litheness

Of styrofoam extruded polystyrene,

The durability of styrofoam extruded polystyrene, the reflexes of a cat,

The longevity of styrofoam extruded polystyrene.

How you glide like a swan made from styrofoam extruded polystyrene,

With your dreams of kings and queens and styrofoam extruded polystyrene,

Knights of the round table, chivalry, jousting tournaments

And styrofoam extruded polystyrene,

Bounding like spacemen on the surface of a moon

Made from styrofoam extruded polystyrene,

How can I see you?

How can I see you?

How can I see you,

Amidst all that styrofoam extruded polystyrene?
Everywhere everywhere styrofoam extruded polystyrene!

To the left, styrofoam extruded polystyrene!

To the right, styrofoam extruded polystyrene!

Give me your hand darling

And I give you styrofoam extruded polystyrene!

What’s that on the ceiling?

Is it coving?

Is it a lampshade?

No, it’s styrofoam extruded polystyrene!

Corn flakes, Weetabix, Frosties, styrofoam extruded polystyrene!

Rain, rain, rain in the morning,

And in the afternoon it’s styrofoam extruded polystyrene!

Hanging in the doctor’s waiting room

With a cold with a chill with a runny nose

With a broken leg with a funny pain in the ear

Is it a fever, is it flu,

Is it an allergic reaction?

No, it’s styrofoam extruded polystyrene!
Stay calm big fella stay calm

The master of the hounds has a particularly

Malevolent stare

Cracking his whip and barking his orders

Taking out his shiny new pistol

And aiming it

Fetch me that blunderbuss big fella

Its wrapped in styrofoam extruded polystyrene!
Squeaky squeaky squeaky

Big white blocks rubbing together

Like Arctic sea ice

Crumbly crumbly see how they snow 

Caught on wind caught on eddies

Pooling in a mini vortex on the kitchen floor.

styrofoam extruded polystyrene.
(Use voice changer) 

Give me your styrofoam extruded polystyrene.

I want your styrofoam extruded polystyrene.

I’ll do anything for your styrofoam extruded polystyrene.

I can’t live without your styrofoam extruded polystyrene.

Dancing in the nightclub swirling gyrating

So sneaky sexual hearty pumping hear

The rhythm thump with styrofoam extruded polystyrene.
My heart is lonely.

The nights are long.

The world is dark.

Nobody hears my song.
 styrofoam extruded polystyrene 

 styrofoam extruded polystyrene 

 styrofoam extruded polystyrene 

 styrofoam extruded Polystyrene

The Singular Conundrum of High Concept Poems

It’s funny the way things go. Poems, I mean. I often feel that the best poems are created when two or more ideas come together, and this always excites me. And indeed, some of my best loved poems and the ones I love performing the most are these types.
Yet lately I’ve had a trouble with three or four poems which have been perplexing me greatly. And these are conceptual, a conjoining of several themes and ideas. Indeed, part of the problem seems to be that they are purely ‘concept’ poems and as a result they exist more as mathematical experiments, scientific poems with no heart.
Take the one I’ve been working on lately. It’s called Poem’, but it also has the subtitle, ‘I can’t believe you would rather go rock pooling than come with me to the circus’. The moment I started working on this I felt rather proud of it and several verses seemed to write themselves, and at the end of each day I’d relax, happy with my efforts and my intellectual prowess at having created something so wonderful as a poem about a couple arguing over going rock pooling or going to the circus.
And then I put it aside for a while.

And then when I read it again, it felt me cold. I mean, the whole idea of it, the poem seemed too forced.
I think the problem was that it was not speaking from my heart. I have no interest in either circuses or rock pooling, I just liked the idea of these concepts being forced together. I didn’t care about the characters in it. All of the references to rock pooling and circuses seemed forced.
This doesn’t mean that the poem is dead. Far from it, the whole thing is very much alive, even if it currently resembles an old car in a garage, in several bits all over the floor. It’s become like a puzzle which has to be solved, and I’m looking forward to getting underneath its skin!
There are two other poems. They are so old that they’ve been following me around for years. Indeed, one of them gave me the title for my first book. ‘Sofa Phobia’ is a true poem about my own phobia of common sofas, and ‘Moist Robot’ is about a robot which sweats a lot. It seems that every few months I might rewrite one or both of these. The problem, again, is that they seem too high concept.
But I’m plugging away at them.
So for now, here’s another high concept poem which I might come back to. It’s about tortoises.

WAKE UP TORTOISE WAKE UP
Bringing the tortoise out of hibernation.

Wake up tortoise wake up.

Four months of slumber now he’s ready for the summer.

Wake up tortoise wake up.

Enmeshed in hay, time to see if he’s okay

Wake up tortoise wake up.
All winter tiptoeing around the bastard.

Don’t wake the tortoise, that’s what I kept repeating,

Shaking my fist at low flying planes

And castigating anyone who sneezes loudly

That amorous couple upstairs

Whose lovemaking wakes me,

Banging on the walls shouting, Don’t wake the tortoise!

To which she shouts back,

That’s what I’ve been trying to do all night!

And he replies, That’s it, you’ve put me right off, now.

Wake up tortoise wake up.
Your life is a mystery, Mister Tortoise,

You don’t tell me anything about yourself.

All those years I spent

Trying to get you to come out of your shell.

Wake up tortoise wake up.
Your such a good imparter of wisdom.

We hang on your every word.

I’ve never forgotten the lessons that you taught us,

Mr Tortoise,

Or those shopping expeditions,

The things that you bought us,

Mr Tortoise.

Or the fishing trips to the riverbank

The things that you caught us,

Mr Tortoise,

Or the myriad of times we were lost

And you sought us

Mr Tortoise,

Or the times that we fell out

And you fought us,

Mr Tortoise,

Or that lovely iron gate

That you wrought us,

Mr Tortoise.

You look nothing like a porpoise,

Mr Tortoise.

(I’ve run out of rhymes).

Wake up tortoise wake up.
I hope you don’t mind

But my mate Jeff borrowed you

Mid January

And gaffer taped you to his forehead

So he could go to a Star Trek convention

As a Klingon.

He met Uhura.

Wake up tortoise wake up.
You just sleep there,

Don’t worry about me.

You just have yourself a little snooze,

I’ve got figures to crack on with,

And a job and rent to pay

And a boss who’s got a face like a 

Warthog with a slapped arse

And an ex who keeps

Sitting outside my flat

In his Mazda

You just sleep there tortoise tortoise 

Slumbering through Christmas which means

You missed my aunt getting drunk on sherry

For the eighth straight year

And all those repeats

You just sleep there

I’m okay

Because the earth it spins on it’s axis

And the stars align one more time

And the seasons crack on as if fate

Were but a ghost hanging with a finger

Outstretched saying, hey, you,

Your life on this earth is but a fraction of a second,

A minusule nothing in history.

Wake up tortoise wake up.
Wakey wakey

Tortoise tortoise

Reminds me

I must go out some time

And buy a 

Cornish pasty.