poem – Page 52 – Robert Garnham

Ant – A solemn investigation

It has been apparent for some time that a solemn investigation were needed into the effects, physical and psychological, of an ant crawling on someone’s hat. Seeing it as upon myself, (the theme, not the ant), I set out, in a somewhat grave manner, and yet bravely, into such an investigation.
The manner this investigation took soon revealed itself to be poetical in nature, and within a couple of hours I had completed a poem based on the theme of having an ant crawl on someone’s hat. Yet this did not fully satisfy me, and a further poem was written.
At this time, I was bitten by the bug, (again, not the ant), and more poems began to arrive. The theme of an ant on a persons hat soon took over my life and all of my creative output, until such a time arrived that I could think of little else. Indeed, the poems began to resemble a Groundhog Day syndrome, the same repeated themes, the same story with different outcomes, different languages and tones, until within a month I had thirty such poems.
The good people at Mardy Shark publishing soon recognised their worth and a pamphlet was soon produced, titled, simply, Ant.
Ant stands as the zenith of my creativity, a full flow measure of poetic and literary sensibility, all inspired by the horror and the bizarre situation of having an ant crawl on ones hat.
You can download the Kindle version of Ant herehttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Ant-Robert-Garnham-ebook/dp/B071JDZJ7X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1497201234&sr=8-1&keywords=Robert+Garnham+Ant
Or you can send off for the physical version here http://www.lulu.com/shop/robert-garnham/ant/paperback/product-23218401.html

I’m suddenly all in favour of poetry slams (now that I’ve won one)

I’m suddenly all in favour of poetry slams (now that I’ve won one)
A couple of years ago I decided that I’d had it with poetry slams. This wasn’t because I kept losing, though I did crash out of the preliminary round of the Cheltenham All Stat Slam coincidentally the week before I made this decision. It was more a creative decision. I’d found that I was writing poems just to fit in with the whole slam ethos of a quick three minutes of ranting. And doing slams around the place, I’d seen a lot of ranting.
I cut myself off from the slams, and quelled the need to do slams. I was asked to judge a couple of them, the Exeter Poetry Slam and the Poetry Island Slam in Torquay, and judging them was even more nerve wracking than being in them. The need for consistency and objectivity mixed with the emotional side of seeing people perform and knowing that they were heading for a low score, knowing that I was about to completely shatter their evening.
It’s not that I had a bad record in slams, either. The first slam I entered was the Exeter Poetry Slam about five years ago, and I joint won it with Daniel Haynes. I came second in the Bristol slam the next year, and second at the mighty Swindon slam. A team I led won a team event in Exeter, and then I won the Spokes Amaze slam, also in Exeter, coincidentally at the same venue as the Exeter Slam and the team event. And in Edinburgh myself and another poet won a slam against a team of comedians.
But a moral idea asserted itself, that poetry and spoken word are art forms and cannot be judged or given points as in a sporting event. Every spoken word piece is a valid piece of art and the circumstances of its performance, audience, composition and meaning are different under so many conditions that it’s almost impossible to see it as a constant piece. Art should not be judged, i told myself.
Moving away from slams the last couple of years was one of the best creative decisions I’ve made, as it allowed me to concentrate beyond the slam format. Consequently I wrote short poems, long poems, comedy pieces, songs, mimed pieces, musical and prop pieces, without even thinking each time as I sat down, hmm, how will this go in a slam? It also allowed me to look beyond writing for a youthful slam audience and more for the regular poetry-loving gig audience member. No need to shock or preach, just to entertain and to write humorous or thought provoking pieces.
Lately there has been a glut of slams in South Devon as a means to find slam champions for a bigger event at the GlasDenbury Festival. As a judge at one of these events, and as a special warm up act at another, I was able to see that these events meant a lot to the competitors, and that they were hugely entertaining. For reasons which I’m still not sure, I put my name down for the Totnes Slam, then spent the next few days worrying that it was the wrong thing to do, whole obsessively timing my poems and practising, just like the old days. And wouldn’t you know, I won it!
So now I’ve completely changed my mind again and I want to get slamming again. The only difference this time is that I have more pieces in my back catalogue, and if a piece just happens to fit the slam ethos, then that’s fortuitous. I’m still going to be writing outside of the slam conventions, but yes. I’m back.
Slams are all right.

Poem : A true story

I don’t often write pieces about true events, but this is one.

Poem

Two complete nobhead amateurs,
Bemused by shuttlecock shenanigans,
Intent only on fun,
A modicum of sporting pride,
The promise of a burger
In the pub over the road,
Having a laugh in the
Provincial leisure centre.

I must admit I’m winning,
Beating him as I invariably did,
Being such a sleek and agile sportsman,
Muscly, well proportioned,
The badminton bat an extension of my
Actual psychology,
You couldn’t get anything past me.

We didn’t take it seriously,
Like the time, accidentally buying
Different strength shuttlecocks,
Watching them sail over the other three courts,
Whoops.
Only once, our first game,
He sat in the changing room afterwards,
A towel over my head as he uttered
Just the two words.
Well played.

I serve. He misses. We laugh.
I serve. He misses. I laugh.
I serve. He misses.
His racquet whips the air,
Hits at nothingness.
I serve. He hits it.
Whacks me in the face.
He laughs.

He serves. I hit it. He misses.
And so it goes on, I’m like a
Badminton gazelle, my muscly well-toned legs
Able to counter any attack.
He serves. I whack that mother.
Ooof, right in the goolies.

Deep in the game, now.
I am about to serve,
He lifts up his tshirt, wobbles his
Spherical beer belly, shouts,
Wa-haaaay!
Mesmerising, his stomach gyrates and convulses
Like a crocodile trying to upchuck a half digested zebra,
It completely puts me off my serve,
And as a scream rings out from the next court,
He laughs as I go to serve again.

She runs across our court.
That’s put you off again, hasn’t it?, he says.
We both laugh and i try a third time,
But something isn’t right.
A man, on the court adjacent,
Is on the floor.

He’s hit the desk, stone cold dead.
I run over, as do others.
He lets out a groaning grasping breath.
A hero from another court begins CPR,
While I run back, phone for an ambulance,
Fingers fumbling in the jacket I’d
Slung over the net post,
As if subconsciously anticipating this.
The first aider arrives.

We can’t stay here, I whisper.
I push the net post,
Then we go and sit in the changing room
Where we might philosophise,
Wonder if it’s the way he would have wanted
To go,
That badminton was all he lived for,
Trying not to think of
His family.

You never know when life
Might suddenly cease.
And we were having such a good time.
My face still ever so slightly stings
Where the shuttlecock hit it.
I can still hear his last breath.

Your belly, I tell my friend,
Would’ve been the last thing he’d seen.
He smiles.

The game is obviously a forfeit
And one changing room locker
Will remain closed for the end of the day.

Thoughts from on the road

I’m on the road at the moment, with three gigs in three towns over three days in three different parts of the country. It isn’t normally like this. In fact I can go for months on end before there’s anything outside of South Devon.
And it’s the weirdest feeling, because a lot of effort goes into travelling around, and it’s all because I stand on stage and say vaguely funny things and try to make people laugh through poetry. In fact, if you’d told me ten years ago that I’d be doing this, I’d have laughed, derisively.
But this time has been different, and I find myself clinging on to every moment. I don’t know why this is. Perhaps it’s because I’m getting old. Perhaps it’s because I still can’t really believe that spoken word is making me do all these things. So I concentrate on small details, such as the carpet pattern in the venues where I perform, the people I meet, the things that I might not necessarily remember.
Last nights gig was in the function room of a hotel in Bristol. It was the most unexpected space, in an urban environment, looking more like a Manhattan loft or comedy club than the function room of a family pub. As the night wore on a full moon drifted past the window, which only seemed to add to the candles and the fairy lights and I thought, hmmm, this is a good existence. We all came together and made an evening for people to enjoy. This night will never, ever be repeated exactly as it is right now.
I spent the night in Bristol and now I’m off to London. I’m looking forward to having a good old poke around Tate Modern this afternoon before the gig, no doubt enhanced by the anticipation of performing to a new audience.
It’s the people you meet that make the journey worthwhile. That’s where the anticipation comes from. It doesn’t even have to be because of the spoken word, it’s the idea that I, and others, have travelled to a specific place to be sociable and cultural and to share enthusiasm. As I sat on the station at half eleven last night in Stapleton Road I wondered where I would be in twenty four hours time and who I might meet.

‘Nice’ is one year old!

Would you believe it’s been a year since my first collection, Nice, came out? It hardly seems it. I’m immensely proud of it and every time I see the cover I really have to remind myself that it contains all my own work.
I was a weird kid. While all my friends wanted to win the FA Cup or Becky fighter pilots, the only thing I wanted was to be a published writer. I just loved the idea of holding a book knowing that it was representative of me and my imagination. And all through my teenage years I would write, bashing out short stories and novels on an old typewriter, which I still have, and all to no avail. But the dream persisted.
I was in Bristol when I got the email saying that Nice was going to be published. I was getting ready to support Vanessa Kisuule at Hammer and Tongue. I did a camp little dance around the hotel room, and Vanessa was the first person I told.
So Nice was launched last year, the official launch being on January 8th. I’d chosen the date specifically because it was David Bowie’s birthday and that his new album was coming out the same day, so that I could always remember the date. Naturally, people remember the date now for different reasons, but it was a great night, performing poems from Nice supported by all my friends. I’d had a book signing a couple of weeks before in my home town of Paignton, but the official launch was the big event that I’d always dreamed about.
The book still seems fresh. There are stories behind some of the poems, of course. Personal stories. I purposefully only chose upbeat, vibrant, funny poems because I imagined the book as being similar to a dance record. Clive Birnie told me that he saw Burning Eye as a record company and the books as albums, so I thought, well, let’s have a dance record, with computerised disco beats and flashing lasers. Let’s give it a throwaway title. Let’s not get too bogged down. And I think Nice has achieved this.
The last twelve months have been amazing, I’ve been all over the Uk with a back pack full of Nices and it’s been so well received. I’m still incredibly happy with it.
So pick up your copy of Nice today! It will help you get through those winter blues, I assure you!
http://burningeye.bigcartel.com/product/nice-by-robert-garnham

This year’s advent calendar

Well this year’s advent calendar was a strange one. Here’s every day in it’s unusual glory.
Today’s advent calendar picture was of a duck wearing a Groucho Marx moustache, nose and glasses.

Today’s advent calendar picture is of a clown waving his big shoe at a smoke detector
Today’s advent calendar picture is of the Easter Bunny trying to keep two sides of a build-it-yourself shed upright while Marilyn Monroe reads the instructions.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of the seven dwarves waiting, angrily, at a mobile chip van, while the lady serving, who for some reason is a panda, is looking at holiday photos being shown to her by Snarf from Thundercats
Today’s advent calendar picture is of Gandalf at the self service Tesco machine
Today’s advent calendar picture is of an advent calendar
Today’s advent calendar picture is of Vladimir Putin eating a Pot Noodle
Today’s advent calendar picture is of sixteen Laurels (from Laurel and Hardy) and Sid James queuing at a self service cafeteria.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a frog trying to push a sofa up a flight of stairs, backwards, sweating profusely.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of an igloo, a bin with contents strewn around, and a polar bear flaked out by tranquilliser dart.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a Peruvian brown bear wearing a scarf scraping frost off the windscreen of a parked car with its engine running.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a sneezing unicorn.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a badger and a rabbit having a row about who gets the last chicken mayonnaise sandwich in the chiller cabinet while TV’s Victoria Coren Mitchell sneaks in and grabs it for herself.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a stack of suspended ceiling tiles, £11 each plus postage and packing
Today’s advent calendar picture is of the nativity scene. (Bit early but there you go).
Today’s advent calendar picture is of fifteen donkeys wearing sombreros and a man at a stall trying to sell them more sombreros but the donkeys are having none of it.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a badger getting a refund on a pair of trousers.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of Lord Byron on roller skates in a crumpled heap next to a slightly dented Ford Focus.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a panda in a library reading a Will Self novel, double checking some of the weightier vocabulary in a dictionary.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of Mr T from The A Team at the boating lake in the park, rowing a rowing boat past some rhododendrons.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a squid waiting in the queue for the Primark changing room with a Tigger the Tiger onesie.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of Darth Vader in a lightsabre battle with Alan Bennett.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of Michael Portillo looking very grumpy on a rail replacement bus. Oh, and why not, Skeletor from HeMan is sitting three rows behind him, eating a Pot Noodle.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a confused ostrich.

On getting nervous at poetry gigs.

Last night I caught the train to Torquay and walked from the station to the Blue Walnut. It was seven years almost to the day since I started performing which means I’ve done the walk from the station regularly all that time. The road is steep and at one point it does a switch back, like a mountain road, and there are steps cutting through so that the pedestrian doesn’t have to follow the road and has a short cut. When I first started performing, I used to be so nervous walking this route that I would follow the road rather than take the short cut, because it prolonged the moment that I would arrive. In fact I used to be so nervous that before a gig, I would spend an hour in my flat lying on the floor staring at the ceiling, trying not to think about it.I chatted to Tim King last night and we both said how nervous we were before the gig. Perhaps it’s a good sign, being nervous. But even after all these years I feel something deep within, some fear of the unknown, of mucking it up, of being humiliated in front of a room full of strangers, of being exposed as an incompetent who’s only blagging his way through spoken word events.

The biggest fear is probably of completely losing touch with everything. With the audience, with the words on the page, with the whole situation. The line between being in the audience, being a normal member of society, and being a poet, particularly a humorous poet whose job it is to make people laugh, is very thin. Anyone can do it. I did. I made that leap after coming along to a poetry night.

But there’s a suspension of disbelief inherent in being in the audience, and this is the thing that keeps me going. They’re not judging you, they’re there to have a good time and they want you to do well, particularly if they have paid to get in. The moment you step in front of the microphone you are on show, and everything you do comes through the filter of being there. Actions become acts and words become performance. The promoter has chosen you to be there, an instance of curatorial design, you have been hand picked and therefore judged as worthy to be on show. The audience knows this.

But that doesn’t stop me from being nervous. Even last night, cutting through and using the short cut on the way to the Blue Walnut, I felt that the walk was quicker than usual and I felt a bit cheated because of this. But it wasn’t as bad as it was in the old days.

A brief overview of the Devon poetry scene

Over a year ago I was asked by a magazine to write an article about the Devon performance poetry scene. They didn’t use it. So here it is in all it’s magaziney glory.
Jackie Juno is at the microphone reciting a poem. In gothic, black clothing, ankle boots and a pink feather boa, she doesn’t exactly look like the average poet. The audience is totally at her command and the room buzzes with hilarity. The poem is about Newton Abbot, and when she delivers the final line, there is laughter and thunderous applause. This is just an ordinary night at Torquay’s ‘Poetry Island’.
For the last six years I have travelled the country as a performance poet, delivering sets of whimsical and funny verse to audiences from Edinburgh to London, Wolverhampton to Swindon. Audiences everywhere tend to be enthusiastic for this niche blend of comedy, spoken word and poetry, and most cities have a certain style on the local scene which seems distinct to that area. A lot of London performers are influenced by rap, while Bristol’s thriving scene borrows the three-rhymes-per-line inflexions of hip hop. Yet I am constantly both delighted and perplexed by the diversity, flavour and creativity of the Devon performance poetry circuit.
It’s hard to pin down what it is which makes it so distinctive. Each poet is as diverse and as individual as the next without following any trend or local characteristic. As a result, the local circuit has become truly unique.
Some of these poets are starting to become recognized further afield. Ashburton’s Lucy Lepchani has recently been published by Burning Eye, the top publisher of performance poetry in the UK, and she performs regularly at festivals such as Glastonbury and Womad. Her poetry is about motherhood and nature and takes on feminist and political themes.
Tim King’s poetry is political, social and thoughtful, tackling issues such as drug addiction and child abuse, often performed with a ukulele or a loop pedal for added effect. Plymouth’s Richard Thomas has just had his second collection published by Cultured Llama Books, and his wry poetry about fatherhood and nature has seen him win praise from some of the top names in poetry. And my own oeuvre has taken me to the Edinburgh Fringe and some of the biggest poetry nights in London. We all have different styles, motivations and influences in our chosen field, yet we all come from a relatively small population spread.
What is it about the Devon scene which makes it so vibrant and diverse? For a start, there are an abnormally high number of monthly spoken word events in Devon. Because of this there are plenty of opportunities for local poets to try out new material in a supportive atmosphere. It also gives a chance for big names from further afield to visit, see the local talent, and invite them to gigs in London and Bristol.
Also, there is a culture on the local circuit of developing new talent and encouraging first time performers. Chris Brooks, the inaugural host of Poetry Island, would run workshops and courses to develop and hone the art of performance poetry, while most venues welcome new performers. The co-host of Exeter’s ‘Taking the Mic’, Tim King, is eager to give a platform to new voices.
‘Our job is to make sure they have a good experience as possible and keep coming back, learning and improving. It’s a very rare newcomer who fails to entertain at all’.
Tim reckons that the diversity and creativity of the local scene is due to the ‘tradition of openness and experimentation exhibited and encouraged by those who run local poetry events’.
Gina Sherman, the south-west coordinator for spoken word organisation Apples and Snakes says that, ‘Maybe it’s the sea air, the creative spirit and the down to earth people that make the Devon performance poetry scene so welcoming, intelligent, inclusive and witty’.
Whatever the reason, it’s clear that the local performance poetry circuit is going from strength to strength and developing an identity all of its own which has to be seen to be believed. Come along to a poetry venue yourself and you will not be disappointed!

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.

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!