Tag Archives: lgbt

Juicy – The Video of the CD!

Over the years I’ve had the pleasure of performing at many venues and entertaining audiences. I’ve been lucky enough to have some of these filmed, either as snippets, or the whole show. Collected here are some of those which I didn’t put on YouTube, fearing that to put my best work on social media would leave me with nothing to perform in public.

So here, for a limited time, are the recordings of some of my favourite poems. The audio from these and others appear on my CD, Juicy, which can be ordered here: https://robertgarnham.bigcartel.com/product/juicy

I’d like to thank those who have filmed me including Laura Jury and Danny Pandolfi

Holding out for a Hero – Bonnie Tyler Cover Version by Robert Garnham, Bristol, Feb 2022

Had an amazing time at Milk last night in Bristol at the Wardrobe Theatre and I managed to record my set. I was asked to choose a poem to ‘cover’, but instead chose Holding Out for a Hero, the Bonnie Tyler song.

Here it is in all its splendour!

Holding out for a Hero, Robert Garnham

On the road again! Penzance, Wolverhampton, Bristol

On the road again

For the first time in three years I’ve been on the road again with my comedy performance poetry. Over the pandemic years and lockdown I’d become quite used to my own company and not going anywhere, and it felt like my world had just narrowed down to my flat and the town I live in. Going places and performing no longer seemed the sort of thing that someone like me did.

The last time I had a bit of a tour was in 2019 when I undertook the Hammer and Tongue tour, performing in six different cities over nine days. This time around is less exuberant, three cities over five days, but the logistics of travelling and making connections and getting to places to perform to people I’d never met was still the same.

Indeed, I’d quite forgotten how nervous the logistical side of it can be. The first gig was in Penzance, right at the end of the country. I caught a train to Bodmin Parkway and was then picked up by Rob Barratt, and after our joint show he drove me back to Bodmin Moor, where he lives, and let me sleep in his lounge. Logistically, this was the easy one.

I then came back from Bodmin, and spent the night at my mothers in Brixham, then the next morning caught a bus, a train, a rail replacement bus, another train and then another train, each time stressing about the connections and the timings and the links, in order to get from Brixham in Devon to Wolverhampton. Thankfully, every part of the journey went well, although there was an amusing incident at Newton Abbot where we all got on the rail replacement bus, and were then told to get off the rail replacement bus, and then they said, sorry, our mistake, and we all had to get back on the rail replacement bus.

After the gig in Wolverhampton, I got the train to Birmingham New Street, waited an hour, and then caught the train down to Bristol Temple Meads for gig number three. I arrived here last night around nine, by which time I’d done about ten hours on trains and buses. Thankfully, today is a day off.

But what about the actual gigs? I’ve had an amazing time. Penzance was a joy. I performed with Rob Barratt in our show, The Two Robbies, which we’ve put on all over the UK in recent years. The venue was an arts centre / theatre called The Acorn, with a proper stage and a cabaret seating arrangement. We even had our own green room with kettle, microwave and washing machine. If I’d known, I’d have brought my laundry! Rob was magnificent as ever and the whole evening was warm and friendly. We even had our own photographer supplied by the venue!

The Wolverhampton gig took place in a nightclub, though this was at three in the afternoon. A day of solo shows as part of the Wolverhampton Literature Festival, I was incredibly nervous beforehand, but the audience was a respectable size and my show was greeted very well indeed. By which I mean they laughed at all the good bits and the applause seemed genuine and generous. I was on a high which lasted all the way back to Bristol. I then had the joy of watching Elizabeth McGeown’s new show, Cockroach, which I enjoyed immensely.

Tomorrow night I’ll be performing at the Wardrobe Theatre here in Bristol as part of Milk, but for now I have a day of leisure in Bristol, and I’ll be meeting up with my dear poetry friend Melanie Branton. Tonight, I shall be rehearsing and fine tuning my set for tomorrow.

Seriously, it feels like I’ve hardly stopped moving since Thursday morning, but today should be somewhat less harried!

I just love the life of comedy performance poet.

Whimsy in the Woods Podcast Episode One

Robert Garnham goes for a walk in the woods, reminisces about magpies, and reads a poem about the summer solstice and a petrol station.

Whimsy in the Woods Episode One

My New Year’s Resolution: To have more fun!

So today I performed my annual New Year’s Day poetry extravaganza. And as I’m staying in Brixham at the Muv’s, this took place in the room at the back of her garage where I normally rehearse, a place I have nicknamed the ‘Sunrise Rehearsal Studio’. I can make as much noise as I like in there and nobody can hear me, because the room is not attached to or near any other building.
The day before, I’d kind of made a New Year’s Resolution, which had two parts to it. The first is to concentrate more on comedy poetry, the second is to have fun performing. The first part of this resolution has come about because I feel that, over the last couple of years and especially since lockdown and the pandemic, I have spent most of my time doing things other than comedy poetry. And yes, while it’s great to experiment and try other things, I was just kidding myself that any of these were worth unleashing on an audience. Serious poems, serious pieces of writing, various artworks and ideas which had at least taken me out of my comfort zone, were the speciality of proper artists and proper poets who have made a career out of such a manner of expression. The one thing I’m good at, hopefully, and known for, is making people laugh through poetry and performance. And I hadn’t done nearly enough of this since the end of 2019.
The second part of the resolution is to have fun performing. I know this sounds a bit weird, what with my performance being very silly, comedic and clowning, but I’d spent far too much time concentrating on performance and theory and effect and not nearly enough on enjoying the process.
So today’s gig in the Sunrise Rehearsal Studio allowed me to have fun in the silliness of what I was doing and, hopefully, in such a way, connect with the audience. And once I’d made this pact with myself to enjoy what I was doing, well, wouldn’t you know, I started to really enjoy what I was doing!
2022 is here, now. And I have no idea where it will go or what will happen. I have a couple of projects on the go which might lead to something wonderful, or then again, they might not. But I’m determined that I shall have lots of fun along the way. I hope to see you out there in poetry land, too.

Happy new year to everyone, and here’s to a better future!

No change in status, a poem about Tokyo

No change in status

Midnight in Tokyo, the hotel reception
Too opulent for jet lagged eyes,
This fool holds breath as from speakers,
The Blue Nile’s Tinseltown in the Rain,
An unusual choice in this disjointed dance.
I’ve hardly seen the neon and it’s almost
Tomorrow and there’s a problem with my booking.

Which makes me wonder who I even am,
Because the computer does not recognise my
Existence, and the receptionist explains that
Luckily there’s a spare room on the 36th floor,
No longer quite so happy so lucky so chipper,
And I’m admitted entry but I must promise to pay,
Mister, Mister, Mister . . . Sorry,
What was your name again?

The following day I begin to disappear, which
Makes shaving quite difficult, and I slide
Through the lift doors down across the marble foyer,
Find an adjacent supermarket and buy
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE HECK IT WAS
For breakfast but it comes with chopsticks and there’s
A boiled egg plonked in the middle.

Ghosting through the Ginza several months
Too early for cherry blossom, I forget my name
In the crowded lanes, become translucent like a
Discarded thought in front of a travel agent
Advertising holidays in FUCKING PAIGNTON I KID YOU NOT,
And then in this city of technology and robots to a
Tourist office on the 15th floor of a skyscraper
Run by a Nanna and Grandad who pass me a free map
As if it were a precious gift and I bow on receiving.

The coffee shop patrons are taken aback.
You can see the coffee and muffin pass right through me.
It’s impolite to stare and it really doesn’t help matters
That I keep humming Tinseltown in the Rain,
Even though there isn’t any tinsel
And it was perfectly dry though somewhat overcast.

The wind sighs, ‘Have you ever been?’,
And I reply, ‘I am being now’,
And the wind sighs, ‘Are you being now?’
And I reply, ‘Have I ever been?’
And the wind sighs, ‘That’s only for you to
Decide, oooooooohhhhhhhhh’, and I really get it
That people think there are other worlds.

Isn’t it the dream of every spirituality to become
Nothing but a thought?
I achieved it so well that they might think about
Dedicating a place of worship in my honour, except
By now I had no name and I’ve never been a big one
For shopping, or drinking, or sexual conquests, so
I wasn’t even just another geezer on the Ginza.

A certain stylised frisky-whispered kitty cat in a bow tie
Explained via speech bubbles that the building to my left
Escaped being bombed by the Americans.
That thing I had this morning with the boiled egg in it was
Actually quite nice, and I texted a friend back home and
He replied, ‘I can see right through you’.

I’d always wanted to be a nobody, but now I was a no body
And it was the most weight I’d ever lost in one go.
Maybe this whole thing would have been better if I’d shared it
With you. I’ve walked around so many cities solo, like
Prague, and Reykjavik, Singapore, Lancaster, and never
Once heard The Blue Nile played as if they were
Just like any other band, gotta hand it to them.

‘No change in status’, said the lady on reception,
By which time I must have been merely a
Distortion of reality, a blurring where my outline
Would have been, an opaque mistake, and I rode
The elevator to the 36th floor and someone was playing
Bagpipes and you know really it hadn’t been a bad day
With the exception of my gradual philosophical psychological
Complete super disappearance.