Performance poet and Professor of Whimsy
Hello, you are cordially invited to spend an hour in the company of Robert Garnham, the Professor of Whimsy! Over the course of the hour Robert performs some of his best known and funniest poems. The last twenty minutes is a stand alone theatre piece called Mr Juicy.
If you like what you see, feel free to pop something in this tip jar! https://ko-fi.com/robertgarnham
The show can be watched right here. Enjoy!
Annie Edson Taylor
The first person who went over Niagara Falls in a barrel
Was Annie Edson Taylor.
It wasn’t some daredevil gentleman in a wax moustache,
It was Annie Edson Taylor.
She had grey hair and a severe bun and looked
For all the world like a Sunday school teacher,
Because she was a Sunday school teacher.
Times were hard in 1901
And she was Annie Edson Taylor.
She can be seen in grainy photos,
Her black skirts and sensible boots, and a pure white
Long-sleeved blouse done up with a collar and a brooch,
She looked like she took no prisoners.
I’m going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, she said,
And good luck to anyone who tried to
Talk her out of it.
Annie Edson Taylor.
And she would do it quickly.
Taylor swift!
Things are getting desperate and you need some dough
Fortune comes with fame it’s the only thing you know
Your life has been so normal so I guess it’s just a blip.
You jump into a barrel ride that river to the lip.
Heart in your mouth as you plummet like a stone.
The world will know your name but for now you are alone.
You demonstrate resilience, you’re ever so brave.
Perhaps you won’t be buried in that nameless pauper’s grave.
The beast she tamed was seldom forgiving but for her
It purred like a cat.
The other beast was destitution
And that was far less placid, and it roared like a tiger.
Annie Edson Taylor,
You disappeared,
Conned out of your money, your belongings stolen,
And time ran out, you faded,
Annie Edson Taylor,
Subsumed into the fuzz and static of folklore.
My mate Ethan wears shorts when he’s
Riding around on his moped.
And he thinks that’s pretty dope,
But you went over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
That’s the last time I moan
Before going to the dental hygienist .
You went over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
You were Annie Edson Taylor.
Noone can take that away,
You were Annie Edson Taylor.
You were audacious.
You were Annie Edson Taylor.
You were sixty two.
You were Annie Edson Taylor.
Sticking it to the men.
You were Annie Edson Taylor.
Queen of the mist.
Annie Edson Taylor.
You died in poverty.
Annie Edson Taylor.
1.
You know what it's like.
It's just gone three in the afternoon
And you get a sudden pang
For casserole.
Not quite as full on as a stew,
Not quite as funky as a hot pot,
Not quite as opaque as soup
Nor even a broth with its
Meaty meaty chunks,
Casserole, winter warmer,
Dumpling soaker,
Casserole casserole casserole,
Mmm mmm mmm!
Traipsing round the supermarket aisle
Where is the casserole? This'll take a while
I tell you what will a-make a-me smile
A glimpse of casserole, I would run a mile
Like a character from mythology, a personal trial
Casserole casserole casserole,
Mmm mmm mmm!
Excuse me mister manager
Supermarket manager
Where is the casserole,
Don't hold it back!
Excuse me mister manager
Supermarket manager
Where is the casserole,
It's something that you lack!
Casserole casserole casserole,
Mmm mmm mmm!
And the supermarket manager said
2.
I am the very model of a supermarket manager
We have so many bargains here we'd see off any challenger
We sell our food in tins and packs and sometimes in a canister
And if somebody makes a mess I have to call the janitor.
I am so damn professional I'm nothing like an amateur
Our shelves are always fully stocked, our sugar it is granular
I make a daily sales forecast with several parameters
We have a fine display in here of spoons and forks and spatulas
Our singles night is Wednesday the place is full of bachelors
I am the very model
Yes I am the very model
Yes I am the very model
Of a supermarket manager!
(He is the very model of a supermarket manager!)
I have so many colleagues here and staff and several underlings
I go straight home it's getting late I strip down to my underthings
I'm not about to come on to you if that is what you're wondering
Cos I'm a decent sort of chap though often prone to blundering
The music that I hear at night is shopping trolleys trundling
It fills me with a strange delight I cannot stop from shuddering
A queue of shoppers in a row, the slowest till is the one working
Our motto is Grab What You Can, a philosophy which underpins
Our shareholders and chief exec, our profits they are funnelling
I am the very model
Yes I am the very model
Yes I am the very model
Of a supermarket manager!
(He is the very model of a supermarket manager!)
But I don't know if we've got
Casss-errrrrrr-roooolllllle!
I'll ask Janet.
Oh, Janet?
3.
What?
You got any of the good stuff, Janet?
And iiiiiii-eeeeeee-iiiiiiiiii-eeeeeee-iiiiii,
Will always loooovee
Souuuuuuuuuupppppp.
No Janet, the other thing?
Oh yes.
(To the tune of Alejandro, by Lady Gaga)
I've looked everywhere
In the stock room
But I haven't got a pack n't got a pack.
In the freezer
In the stock room
Not even in the chiller on the shelf.
You know that I love casserole,
Hot like stew or a sausage roll
At this point I do suggest
Pot Noodle
Don't look like we
Have got any
Casserole -ole,
I'm not your babe
With casserole
Haven't got none,
Not in a pack
Nor in a box
Just a small back
We haven't got
We haven't got
Any cass'role.
Any cass'role
Any cass'role
Cassy cassy cass'role
Cassy cassy cass'role
Any cass'role
Any cass'role
Cassy cassy cass'role
Cassy cassy cass'role
Stop, please!
Just let me go!
I've got a spillage in aisle six.
4.
Tell me young man,
Why do you like casserole so much?
I live a life devoted to it
And it often gets me grumpy
That a common misconception is
That it's cold and ever so lumpy.
A casserole is different
And lifts me high anew
It fills me with a warmth inside
That you don't really get with stew.
And stroganoff can bugger off
Please take away that bowl
And if you really love me true
Just give me casserole.
I spent a night of bliss with Trish
So sexual so winsome so fetching
She gave me a plate of beef bourgignon
I spent the whole night retching.
Casserole casserole casserole
Just the sound of it makes me tingle.
Casserole casserole casserole.
It's probably why I'm still single.
5.
I'm sorry I can't help you
With that food that you do seek
The only thing that I suggest
Is to come back next week.
Our casserole it takes its toll
And I really don't want to harm ya
Perhaps young man I could tempt you
With a chiller fridge lasagne?
6.
Dinner.
I want for dinner
A dish that I can have with wine
It's the one thing on my mind.
Hunger.
Increasing hunger.
An empty stomach makes a growling sound
It's enough to bring me down.
This supermarket hasn't got any casserole.
And now I will take my leave!
Came in
Around 3.30
Thought it would only take a smidge
Headed to the chiller fridge
Empty
It was so empty
A gap where obviously it should have been
Everyone could hear me scream.
This supermarket hasn't got any casserole.
And now I will take my leave!
Stocktake,
The latest stocktake
It says you had some yesterday
Now they all have gone away
Checking
The best before date
This supermarket
Hasn't got
It hasn't got
Any casserole
This supermarket
Hasn't got
It hasn't got
Any casserole
And
Now
I
Will
Leeeeeeaaaaavvvvee!
7.
But they had some in Aldi.
Hello, here’s what I got up to in Torquay last night. The poems I performed were:
Badger / EastEnders
I Wish I Lived In A Bungalow
Seaside Soul
Instructions for my Funeral
Light Verse
Made For Each Other
Greetings puny earth people.
I come in peace.
Take me to you leader!
Actually, maybe not,
I’ve seen him in action.
Take me to the most
Significant person,
According to your Earth transmissions
Take me to Rylan!
I am Zignor,
Of the planet Pupaluvious 5,
Which orbits a star
Which until recently was called
PUV 621R
But
Thanks to someone on your planet
Buying its name as a fiftieth birthday present
It’s now called
Barry Jenkins.
All hail Barry Jenkins!
May death come quickly to his enemies.
I arrived just after lunch
And I shall now attempt
What appears to be your common greeting
As it was the first thing said to me
When I arrived.
‘You can’t park that there, mate’.
I have come to spread a
Message of peace
And if anyone says I haven’t then I’ll
Punch their lights out.
I saw your planet from
Across the vast emptiness of space
While lying in a field on Pupaluvious 5
And my first thought was,
Oh, I’d love to go there
And my second thought was
Someone’s nicked my tent.
Pupaluvious 5 has eight moons.
You’ve only got the one.
Half of it was in shade tonight.
I suppose
It’s just a phase it’s going through.
Your puny planet is
Ripe for alien invasion.
We just don’t want to.
It’s a sleepy backwater
With terrible parking.
It’s kind of the solar system’s equivalent to
Newton Abbot.
And every time we visit
We feel we have to have a damn good shower.
As I say,
It’s the solar system’s equivalent to
Newton Abbot.
It smells a bit.
Newton Abbot.
I suppose on your planet
I’m known as an ET.
Oh look, I heard someone say just now,
An ET.
Someone else said,
What’s ET short for?
And he replied,
Because he’s got little legs.
I offered to take him
To see Jupiter.
He replied that if he wanted
To see a gas filled giant,
We’d visit his Uncle Darren.
But here I am,
I come in peace.
Here I am
Don’t call the police.
I’ve travelled far
In an interdimensional zone
On a spaceship made for one
I was very alone
I tried telepathy on Donald Trump.
All I got was
The engaged tone.
I leave you now, my interstellar friends.
Once again, sorry about those
EarthLink satellites I hit on the way down.
Roswell was an insurance job.
Let me finish with this saying
From my home world,
‘Flooga zappy looppa-looga’,
Which roughly translate as
‘Geoff, your
Tentacles are showing’.
Doreen,
Beam me up, Doreen!
Yo-Yo: Ruminations of an Accidental Poet, published by Puddlehopper, is now available to purchase! Telling stories from fifteen years as a performance poet. Festivals, fringes, fleeting appearances on TV, filming, faffing around with props, flopping at slams, it has it all! Essays from Write Out Loud, Chortle, Litro Magazine and and Torquay Museum’s lecture series, and some written specifically for this collection. Plus one new poem! Details on how to order this book will be revealed shortly.
Here’s the blurb:
In 2008 Robert Garnham thought he’d give performance poetry a try, having never heard of it before. What followed was to be fifteen years of crazy poetry adventures in all sorts of different venues. These collected essays describe, with humour and warmth, gigs in every part of the UK (and further afield), shenanigans at music festivals, angst at the Edinburgh Fringe and every conceivable type of poetic misadventure.
‘As Robert Garnham has been a huge influence on me as a comedy spoken word artist, I read this collection of essays with great anticipation. It didn’t disappoint! A wonderfully entertaining read’. (CLIVE OSEMAN).
You can order the book from this link:
https://robertgarnham.bigcartel.com/product/yo-yo-ruminations-of-an-accidental-poet
Robert has the chance to be on prime time TV! What could possibly go wrong? A comedy poetry show about not becoming famous.
Join performance poet Robert Garnham for his new solo show, Bouncer. When Robert is asked to perform on the UK’s biggest TV talent show, he dreams of fame and fortune and never having to leaflet in Edinburgh again! But of course, these things never go the way you want them to go . . . An hour of storytelling, poetry and comedy about fame, and hope, and dreaming.
‘Playful, warm . . Funny and always surprising’. (Write Out Loud)
‘Wise’. (Word NYC).
‘Clever and entertaining’. (Barnstaple Theatrefest).
‘There’s warmth in his whimsy, it’s sturdy not flimsy’. (Matt Harvey)
‘Witticism, wordplay and wistful romanticism’. (Dandy Darkly)
On a cold, January evening, I caught a train from Devon to London. I was looking for some sense of magic in the air, a barely-perceptible tingle as if fortune were tickling my conscience and smoothing the way to a stardust future. But the train was cold, and dinner was a chicken tikka pasty I’d bought from the convenience store next to the station.
The countryside was hidden in darkness. Beyond the reflection of my own face I could make out tiny villages, clusters of lights in the middle of nowhere, lonely cow barns lit up against the frost, and I thought, do any of these people also dream of everlasting fame?
If you enjoy this video, feel free to pop something into my tip jar: https://ko-fi.com/robertgarnham
If you would like to see a short documentary / video diary about the process to learn Bouncer, this can be found here:
This is a poem about a man who’s obsessed with his record collection. Taped live at Exeter’s Taking the Mic, November 2023. I hope you like it.
Rekkuds
I like my rekkuds
I’ve got one or two
Playing my rekkuds
Is something I do.
They’re mostly jazz,
The rekkuds I play.
Whenever I listen
The world melts away.
I went to the rekkud shop and I said to the chap in there, I said,
I thought you liked jazz?, and he said, I do like jazz,
And I said, if you like jazz so much,
Then how come you ain’t bought any of these rekkuds?
I like my rekkuds.
33 rpm
I go home at night
I’m surrounded by them.
I went to this party and this bloke says to me, got any
Kylie Minogue?
I said, bugger off with your Kylie Minogue.
I like my rekkuds.
They’re mostly jazz.
I play them loud
So I can hear them
When I’m having a wazz.
I went to the hardware shop the other day and I bought a bucket,
Just a plain ordinary bucket, and when I paid for it,
The bloke behind the counter looked at my bucket
And he said, ‘Enjoy’.
How the bloody g hell am I meant to enjoy a bucket?
I like my rekkuds.
Of that I’m quite certain.
I play Frank Sinatra in the shower.
I face the vinyl curtain.
I saw a friend of mine, I asked him what job he had now,
He said, beefeater. He meant the restaurant but I said, oh,
You mean the Tower of Lunnon? Nobody laughed.
Why didn’t you laugh, I asked my mates, you miserable lot.
They said,
We would have done, if we’d have known it was funny.
I like my rekkuds.
I left a Thelonious Monk rekkud in the car.
Someone broke in
And added two more.
I treat my body like it’s a temple.
Shame it’s been
Converted into a Wetherspoons.
I like my rekkuds.
I like this poem.
I’ve made it to the end, for once.
Must be some kind of
Rekkud.
Hello,
Here’s a poem from my show, ‘Bouncer’. It’s about identity, and not feeling like you fit in, and not being called Zach.
I hope you like it.
There’s a divine madness about the fringe. It’s so big that it brings out the despair in us all. How can one possibly compete with all of the other shows that are on at the same time? At the last reckoning, possibly six hundred going on at any one moment. Or was it six thousand? It couldn’t have been six million, though at times it seems it.
The venues are tucked anywhere throughout the city. If you stand still for long enough, you become a venue yourself. Underbelly have already contacted me about using space inside my backpack. It’s a new stage which they want to add to their roster, and advertise as The Cow Bag, and then rent it out to theatre companies. But then I moved, and they lost all interest.
There’s a piece of wasteland outside my student accommodation. It’s overgrown with vegetation and bushes and I stopped and looked at it and I thought, yes, there it is. The last place in Edinburgh which hasn’t been turned into a venue or a bar or a festival village. And just as I was standing there looking at it, someone tried to flyer me.
Because that’s what Edinburgh is all about. The flyering. You can have the best show ever written, and you can perform the best anyone has ever performed, but it’s the flyering which ensures people get in to see it, and it’s the flyering that ensures that the show is a success. Which is great if you have a passion for flyering, or if you have a theatre troupe filled with sixteen incredibly enthusiastic and young performers from middle class universities, with floppy hair and high cheekbones and winning smiles, but when you’re a lone operator doing it all yourself, from a seaside town in Devon, then the odds are already stacked against you.
Which is to say that I hate flyering. People scare me. The general public are frightening. I want to be polite at all times, but the moment I steel myself to smile and say hello, some young buck with an improvised opera jumps in and flyers the person that I’m just about to flyer. It’s a dog eat dog world. And also, my brain doesn’t move as quickly as some. I see someone coming and the words kind of tumble out in a nonsensical jumble. You wouldn’t think that I’m a performance poet! ‘Hello there. Yes, what it is, you see, I’ve written this show, and . . .’, by which time they’ve already walked away.
Consequently, I didn’t have much of an audience for the first couple of shows. One person turned up for each, and I knew each person. They were friends. I think my show is good, but they probably would have come even if it was just an hour of me on the stage doing armpit squelch farts. But there’s a guy from Cambridge University who’s already doing that, and he’s winning rave reviews.
I decided I needed a flyerer. I had no idea that you could just hire a flyerer. I thought only the good shows had a flyerer, because why would a flyerer want to flyer for something that nobody had heard of? But I went online and I made contact with a couple of flyerers. The first two didn’t turn up, on consecutive days. But the third did. And she’s wonderful.
I’ve had an audience ever since. She really knows how to bring in the people. I don’t know how she does it and I don’t really want to ask. Naturally, I was worried that she would take my leaflets and walk off and dump them in a recycling skip, but I actually saw her at work several times, and it really did fill me with glee.
We got chatting one day, my flyerer and I. She’s actually getting married in a couple of days. She’s getting married right on the Royal Mile. I even thought about popping along, or at least exit flyering the service. That’s how grateful I am at all of the flyering that she’s been doing.
The show is going well. In fact, the show is going really well. The last three shows have been absolutely wonderful. Great audiences, and I’m so comfortable with my performances. I know it inside out and I’m very happy with it. I think it’s the most accessible show I’ve done at Edinburgh, (which is code for the fact that this is my first show which doesn’t have an LGBTQ theme or gratuitous references to sex). It has: three costume changes, some choreography, a song, a high note which I try to sustain for twenty seconds, and I get to do a lot of acting, too. So yes, I’m very happy with it. From an artistic point of view.
I have a little post-show routine, now. If it’s a good show, I go to my favourite place at the fringe, which is the bar of the Circus Hub on the Plains, and I sit and have a cola and just relax. It’s a great place, because it doesn’t get as busy as the rest of Edinburgh and I can just take in the sunshine and listen to whatever’s going on inside the Big Top. There’s also a stall nearby which sells, quite frankly, the best sausage rolls I’ve ever seen.
So that’s how things are going, as I enter week number two. What will this week bring? Will audience numbers go down a bit, now that the weekend is out the way? Who will I get to do the flyering when my flyerer gets married? How does my show stack up against the six hundred that are also on at the same time? (Someone the other day called it ‘light and lovely’, which I kind of like). And at the end of the day, does any of this mean anything?
They always say that you should ask yourself why you’re coming to the fringe. Is it to get noticed? Is it to refine a piece of work? Is it to meet new fans? To be honest, I’m not sure why I’m here. I think it’s just the challenge of putting on a show, and writing it, and memorising it, and all of those other things. Or perhaps I’m just here to join in this merry dance, to at least say I gave it a bash.
My show details can be found here: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/robert-garnham-bouncer
Robert Garnham