Tag Archives: performance poetry

Spam Folder

Spam folder

Apologies, yes, I definitely
Would have been at the important committee meeting,
For I thrive on such and relish
Every moment in your company.
But I am human, and mistakes occur,
And when you add to this
The whims of modern technology,
It’s no surprise when things get missed.
The email
Must have gone in my spam folder.

Oh, I didn’t know it was your anniversary!
And the party you had - the garden party -
In which you were trying out your gas barbecue
And some recipes you’ve been practising
Involving hummus and pesto
And the exercise you were doing in which you were
To invite every attendee to meditate and find their
Inner mallard
Sounds like it would have been absolutely marvellous.
It’s a shame I didn’t go and completely missed it.
The email
Must have gone in my spam folder.

Oh my goodness I didn’t even know
That your daughter was learning the violin.
The school recital sounds like it would have been
Really really 
REALLY enjoyable.
Your email
Must have gone in my spam folder.

I didn’t even know that it was your birthday!
You should really broadcast these things.
And a party too? Dammit!
I would have loved to have come round yours and watched
A whole evening of The Three Stooges
And certainly wouldn’t have tried to
Gouge out my own eyes
with a garden trowel 
Or hope to spontaneously combust.
Your email
Must have gone in my spam folder.

Renewal of your wedding vows?
Bet that was good.
Spam folder.

Trombone concerto.
Shame.
Didn’t know.
Spam folder.

The whole of planet Earth
After the year 2016.
I didn’t see the notifications.
I didn’t see the memo.
The slow rise of fascism.
Environmental disaster.
International pandemics.
The inexorable and menacing rise of AI
And Taylor Swift.
I only heard about Taylor Swift the other day.
I thought it was a lightning quick haberdashery.
I didn’t get the note, you see.
I didn’t get prior warning.
I saw a Swedish man the other day
Cooking tinned pork and ham.
Using his spatula to curve it right round.
Spam folder. Spam folder.
It all must have gone into my spam folder.
Everything, the entire nature of existence.
It must have gone into my spam folder.

I’ll check it more often from now on.

Honk

Honk

Oh, when the goose is amorous,
Willing to express his tender romantic inclinations
To Mrs Goose
And love is quite the possibility,
Goose poetry forms in his mind,
And words take on extra meaning
To which he gives voice,
To goose sonnets and goose odes
To explain his heartfelt love.
He takes a deep breath 
And strikes her gentle shoulder
And says
HONK

A storm of words cascades through his brain!
He eulogises the sweetness inherent in Mrs Goose
That she should set afire his soul
With burning lust,
That he should softly purr this tender refrain:
HONK

And Mrs Goose is turned on by his words,
Turned on by the subtlety of his eloquence
And replied with great charm
And a keen eye for erotic repartee
HONK

William Shakesgoose with his feathery quill
Penned odes to love which on the page he did spill
Explaining what it mean to be alive and be free
That even today we should proudly quote he
Standing proud on that Elizabethan stage and proclaiming
HONK

Oscar Wildgoose, with a fey wave of his wing
Could reduce a room to laugher with his legendary wit
For language danced at his beck and call,
Such hilarious put downs and Bonne mots 
For he was often heard to quip:
HONK

Flying to Belgium
The pilot just happened to be a goose
Came over the tannoy to give us
The expected arrival time in Brussels
HONK

A crowd of sexed up male gooses
Gathered outside the vehicle hooter testing facility
They’re getting ever so wound up
By the sky sexuality of the
Noises coming from within.
Oh, baby baby,
Talk dirty to me.
HONK

Goose literature 
Translated for a feathery audience
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
HONK
Les Miserables
HONK
The Canterbury Tales
HONK
Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu 
HONK HONK
(It’s in two volumes)
And perhaps
A haiku
HONK

The man of my dreams, so butch and fit 
With a face like Adonis and the body of a god
Oh, I said to him, sing for me, Stefan,
Give voice to your
Rampant masculinity
And he said
.
.
.
.
HONK

Cowboys on a Tugboat / Little House, live in Torquay, March 2025

Had a great night performing at Be Spoken in Torquay last night. Here are two poems from my set, the audience was a bit sizzled so I had to belt out some old and new bangers!

Straight – The 2025 Version

Hello, I’ve recently been going through the poems from my debut collection, Nice, which is now ten years old. How did that happen!

Some of them are a little outdated because of the cultural references at the time. I’ve started to update them, because, you know, poems are never definitive.

This week I performed the new version of Straight, a banger from the early 2010s which helped me win many slams back when I used to do slams. I’d not performed it in ages but this is a rewritten version which seemed to go down well!

I hope you like it.

Robert Garnham Live at the Wardrobe Theatre, Bristol, February 2022


Live at Milk, February 2022

It’s been a couple of years and it felt very weird, but I finally got the chance to do some shows before a live audience the last week or so. The first was in Penzance, then Wolverhampton, and then finally at Milk in Bristol.

I was incredibly nervous but hopefully it didn’t show. I ran through a mix of old and new poems, and had a lot of fun, too!

You can hear my entire set below. I hope you like it. There are one or two surprises. And wow, what a brilliant audience!

I had a wonderful time at Milk in Bristol. One of the best audiences I’ve ever had! You can listen to the entire set above.