Tag Archives: poem

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

On being a poet at Womad. An ode to Wellington boots!

The Maori log drummers kept me awake last night. I mean, they might not have been Maori log drummers, but that’s what they sounded like. Womad does strange things to you. Yesterday, as I was walking through the campsite, I thought I heard a new Tibetan wind instrument made from yak’s horns and twigs belting out some kind of rhythmic shamanic hymn to life itself. Only it turned out to be some bloke pumping up his inflatable bed.
I think I’ve gone native. This morning, I almost went to tai chi. Instead I went to a tea shack. The pelting rain hammered on the canvas roof. I was surrounded by tea lights, lanterns, rugs, shabby chic tables and chairs. The radio was playing Leonard Cohen. I pondered on what a death trap the place might be if the tea lights got too close to the Mongolian fabrics draped in each corner.
I knew nothing of Womad before I came, except they it sounded like Gonad. And how incredibly grateful I was to be asked. For the last three days I’ve spent time with some of the finest performance poets in the country. Vanessa Kisuule, Matt Harvey, Scott Tyrrell, Chris Redmond, Jonny Fluffypunk. I arrived with Lucy Lepchani and we immediately ran into difficulty trying to erect her tent. Mr Fluffypunk came over, took one look, hammered a few tent pegs, and the whole thing looked much better. That’s the spirit of camaraderie in the poetry camp.
The poetry tent is listed last in some of the Womad promotional material. And my name is listed last in the poetry tent promotional material. Every morning, when it walk into the main arena area of the festival and see the massive stages and the tents and the flags and the stalls I think to myself, ‘I am the lowest ranking performer here. And it feels great!’ There’s probably far less pressure than being the headliner.
Yesterday’s poetry headliner was MC Dizraeli. He’s someone I wanted to see for a long time since listening to him on a cd about ten years ago. And the highlight of my festival so far has to be that he performed his hour long set in front of a crowd of about three hundred people while sitting on MY camping chair. In fact, as I type this, I’m sitting in it right now. It’s a story to tell my grandchildren. If I hadn’t brought the camping chair with me, then MC Dizraeli would have had to stand.
I’ve spent every day so far in the poetry tent, watching the performers. My own sets have been well acclaimed, and I’ve been stopped by several people who have seen me perform and liked it. That’s what makes a difference to a performer, the knowledge that someone has been touched, no matter how briefly. It was sunny yesterday and we performed outside in the ‘arboretum’. They laughed in all the right places and I felt that I could have taken on the world!
It’s raining again today. I’m not going to be wearing a jacket and tie, like the last couple of days. I shouldn’t have worn cream colored trousers, that mud is just not going to come out. The Wellington boots are just about the best thing ive bought in ages. I was watching Bellowhead the other day, they were performing on the main stage, but all I could think was, ‘I’m so glad I bought these Wellington boots’. When I get back to the real world later on, I probably won’t wear them until the next festival. But right now they are everything. Mainly because my sneakers are buggered after all that rain the day before yesterday.

Set construction and the importance of narrative (while the poet is wittering on).

Many performance poets and spoken word types see an open mic slot or poetry night appearance as an opportunity, rightly so, to show the world how good they are. There’s minimal banter, a bit of a hello, and then they launch into their work. Which is excellent, of course. Until recently, this is exactly what I’d do. Hello everyone. Here’s my first poem. It’s about ironing boards.
One of the drawbacks of this is that once the audience has got used to you and your oeuvre, there’s no real change or sense of resolution or ‘journey’. A good set has to have a good narrative, just like a book. I suppose with me the problem was that I was influenced by music more than comedy. ‘Heres our latest single . . . and here’s an old hit’.
Over the last year I’ve been working more in comedy venues and with comedians as well as poets. Comedy audiences expect to laugh, but they also expect to be taken somewhere. And the same is true of a really good poetry set. Thinking back to all of the poets and performances that have struck me as good, there has always been this carefully constructed variance and journey, linking the poems and stringing them along with extra material, comedic asides, truisms and chit chat.
I think of people like Nathan Filer, Liv Torc and Byron Vincent. They understand that the poetry should take the audience on a journey from the heights of comedy and bliss to the darkest depths. The in-between linking material adds to the whole effect. The audience is there to see more than just the poetry. They also want to see the poet.
At the weekend I performed at Glas-Denbury music festival. Tim Vosper was on the bill, and he was amazing. His poetry is fast paced, comedic, funny and clever, but it’s all extenuated by the excellent linking material which makes use of such comedic devices as the afterthought and the callback. It was all very cleverly done, and the audience loved every minute. As did I. 
Therefore I’ve been thinking more than ever of the necessity of narrative, even in the most hurried environment. Last week, I was called in to a comedy venue with forty minutes notice, not enough time to create a proper set with linking material, and while it went okay, I think it would have gone much, much better had I had time to sit and write.
This may all appear to be basic stuff, to the seasoned professional, but the results are amazing. Good set construction makes everyone feel better, and this is an area where I shall be concentrating in future. I cringe to think how many times I’ve just stood there and said, ‘Here’s my new poem . . . here’s my famous poem’. 

I’m a poet and I’m not at Glastonbury.

Hello.I’m a poet, and I’m not at Glastonbury.

Not many poets are at Glastonbury so it’s really not a surprise that I’m not there, and to be honest, I’m not sure if I want to be there because it’s all on tv anyway. It’s a bit like going to a motor race. You miss most of it if you actually go, and then there’s the traffic jams to contend with, and the last time I went to a motor race the person in front of me kept smoking a pipe.

But afterwards I was able to tell everyone that I’d been, and there was something about the sounds of the cars that made it all worthwhile.

Glastonbury comes round every year. And the tv schedules fills up with coverage and there are some damn good bands but most of them I’ve never heard of. That’s probably because I’m getting old, and Ken Bruce only plays certain types of music these days. I’m rather excited about FFS performing on Sunday, but I expect they won’t put it on tv.

The thing is, though, there’s a poetry stage there, and the poets who get picked are always seen as the cream of the crop, the best of the best, the up and coming and the big names, and part of me wants to be listed among them even though another part of me knows that I probably aren’t as good as they are. They’re all young and trendy and enthusiastic and I’m only one of those things, or they’re older and more established and worshiped and I’m only one of those things, too. 

So they haven’t asked me to go and perform at Glastonbury. They wouldn’t even let me be the person who says ‘One two one two’ before the proper poets come on. Because apparently that counts as a poem.

So I’m caught in this weird mix of not wanting to be there at all, and wanting to be there. I know that if I was there, I’d probably show no interest in the music or the camping or the activities or the subculture or the alcohol or the whole ethos of it, though I probably would make a handy reference map for the other performers of where the best burger vans are. Is probably just mooch around the poetry area like a ghost. Muttering under my breath. 

I’m not at Glastonbury this year. In fact, I’m at work tomorrow, and I’ve got to do the Saturday figures and there’s loads of stuff needs doing in my day job, and I think there’s some motor racing on tomorrow on ItV4.

I’m not at Glastonbury.

But I went past it on the train, once.

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.

A poem for now.

Sometimes it’s hard to look at the world and think that things are getting better for those in the lgbt community. There are still places where ignorance and superstition reign.

I recently read an article in Time Magazine about the struggle for gay rights in Africa. Indeed, it’s something I’ve been interested in for a long time. And of course, the current situation in Russia seems more ludicrous every day. It makes me realize how lucky I am to live in a place where such things are not a big deal.

This poem, which I hope to perform soon, is an attempt to understand such issues.

The doors.
For those who are the exquisite hidden in cupboards.

For those who fortune denies because they refuse to shout.

For those who would otherwise shine so bright were it not so dark and needlessly so.

For those who are conscious ever more obviously than the jaded so called moral imperative.

For those who multicolor the beige.

For those who feel that burning pounding quick-tempo heartbeat tick tick ticking absolute proof down deep within.

For those who don’t want to upset anyone.

For those who are being true to themselves.

For those who love.

For those who would dearly like to love but never will so long as they’re fumbling in the pitch dark.

For those who would spread compassion if given the chance.

For those who stand tall and proud in the face of ignorance.

For those who challenge the invented with the blinding torch of truth.

For those who caress and whisper sweet nothings and then open their eyes to find an empty bed.

For those who don’t want to shock and close the door voluntarily.

For those who care too much.

For those who feel they have no brothers or sisters.

For those who feel they are the only person ever ever ever ever to feel this way.

For those who make a thousand tiny differences a year.

For those whose revolution will knowingly take longer than their own lifetimes.

For those who would otherwise be flogged or hanged or stoned or cast from the safety of decent thought by those who profess to know the truth of words written fluently yet deliberately twisted ambiguous in order to hide the cultural anger seething beneath.

For those who delete their browsing history.

For those who try to prize open a door knowing that it will be slammed shut but keep on trying nonetheless.

For those who paid the ultimate price.

For those who resort to secret languages and those who give in and try to decipher filled with the eager promise of just knowing.

For those who are afraid.

For those who never will.

For those who see the world quivering ecstatic and reach out with trembling fingertips ever so eager to be a part yet knowing deep down they never will because they are really not as brave or as fortunate as those who color the world with love. 

For those who hide behind masks of dubious preferences just to make it look like they are one of the crowd.

For those who are furious.

For those who are curious.

For those who log on with an alias.

For those who dance ecstatic the most writhing sexual beautiful hypnotic dance but only to themselves alone alone alone in the mirror.

For those who feel that everything is hopeless faced with ninety six percent against, newspaper editorials, fuming spitting evangelists, political bullies, idiots with guns and clubs and religious texts, charismatic spirituality, cultural commentators and peddlers of hated.

For those who burst out so fast that the world never could catch them.

For those who burned up too soon.

For those who took a chance and flowered briefly then disappeared leaving behind them the hint that if done differently it might actually work.

For those who are vehement in their love.

For those who are just plain unlucky.

For those who are scared.

For those who are scarred.

For those who would otherwise be sacred.
You are the real

And your time will come

When superstition loses and common sense takes over.

Pile up your love right now

So that when the doors finally open

It will all come tumbling through.

Poetry Takeaway and Bang Said the Gun 

It’s been one of those weeks. One of those surprising weeks. To be honest I’ve crammed so much in that I really have been waking up wondering where on earth I am. But that’s the life of a modern performance poet, it seems. The hard part has been fitting it all in with a normal nine to five job!
On Sunday I went up on the train to London to help out with the Poetry Takeaway project at the Camden Roundhouse. Run by Michael Bolger, this is a unique happening in which poets are tasked with writing poems on demand for members of the public. It usually operates out of a takeaway burger van, the poems being wrapped as if they were burgers or hot dogs.
I felt very privileged to be asked to contribute to this. My shift featured Peter Hayhoe and Jemima Foxtrot, both of whom I hold in very high esteem. Indeed it was a huge joy finally to meet Jemima.
My own stint started well enough with a young lady who wanted a poem for her boyfriend because she loved him so much. It was all very touching, and she loved the poem that I wrote for her. The second person wanted a poem to help her decide which of the two men she was currently involved with that she should choose to spend the rest of her life with. It’s quite a tall order for a poet to decide on such matters, but I took all of her information and I wrote a poem which did it’s best at least to describe the situation.
And it seems that this is a by product of the project. The poets get told things that nobody else would hear. People feel that they can open up to poets, and tell them their deepest, darkest secrets and fears. At times I felt like a psychoanalyst, or even a detective, piecing together the relevant information.
The stint over, I caught a late night train as far as Bristol and stayed overnight in a hotel next to a Mexican restaurant. When I opened the curtains at five AM, footage of a mariachi jazz band was being beamed on to the wall of the restaurant. I wondered where the hell I was. I caught the early morning train in to Paignton, and work.
That night I guest hosted the Artizan Comedy Night in Torquay. I even debuted some comedic material. I thought I’d be pants, but people quite liked it. The comedians were all very good and I felt honored to be associated with them.
On Thursday I caught the train up to London again for my guest slot at Bang Said the Gun. When I first started spoken word in 2011, people kept saying that Bang was the place to aim for, and that you only arrived as a poet once you’d had a slot there. For years I kept trying to win a slot there by entering the weekly slam. On one occasion I happened to win, but because it was running late and I had a train to catch, I had to leave before the end and only found out the next day. The second time I entered I felt very ill with a virus and again, had to go back to the hotel. The third time I entered I came second to a guitarist.
I felt incredibly honored to be asked, even more so that Laurie Bolger, the evenings host, played a game with the audience called ‘Robert Garnham Or Judy Garland’, in which an audience member had to decide whether a quote was from Judy Garland or myself.
The night was the usual mix of noisy mayhem and energy, spellbinding poets and spoken word types, comedy and laughter. Just how they manage to keep it all up week after week remains a mystery. It really is the best poetry night in the country. Headliners Candy Royalle and Inua Ellams were fantastic, professional, and almost hypnotic.
My set was greeted fairly well. I was unusually self conscious, in a way that I hadn’t been while performing for about four years, and even worse, I performed the wrong version of Beard Envy! The audience must have wondered who the hell I was, inflicting such material on them, but I had a great time. The way that some of the poems were greeted with hooting and the rattle of the shakers made me feel that anything in life is possible. It was a wonder I got to sleep that night.
Thanks to everyone at Bang for the opportunity. It means more to me than you’d ever know!
And then a night in a cheap hotel followed by a cheap flight back to Exeter the next morning, for another day at work. My mind really does feel like it’s been in a blender this last week.
And tomorrow? Tomorrow I performing twenty minutes at the Respect Festival in Exeter. In a field. In a tipi.

Here are two of the poems I wrote at Poetry Takeaway. I’ve changed the names of the recipients.
 Poem for Matthew from Natalie
How can I express my love for you, Matthew?

How can I express the fulfilling

Breath of life you instil in me

That I should feel so entirely complete

My lovely boy, Matthew.
I want to show you in a poem

The joy that keeps on going

But you know and I know and it’s the

Knowing that keeps on growing,

My lovely boy, Matthew.
How can I express the absolute

Peace I feel in your company,

The fact we are both wired in to the

Very real was of now

And I know it’s weird

But I really like your beard,

My lovely boy, Matthew.
I love you lots and lots

My heart is tied in knots

Like a room scattered

With discarded yoghurt pots

I gaze in them and it reminds me

That our love is meant to be,

My lovely boy, Matthew.
How can I express my love for you, Matthew.

I hope this poem will do.
Poem for Rem from Ben
Have you ever noticed football referees?

have you ever noticed football referees?

Refereeing, that’s their job,

They’re football referees,

Running around but not getting a

Single shot on goal.

Have you ever noticed that

They’re frequently bald?

Have you ever noticed

How angry they are?

Have you ever noticed football referees?
Probably not.

But if they didn’t exist

There would be chaos.

Nobody to call the shots.

There’d be an empty gap,

A referee sized gap.
Rem, when you left,

When you moved away I felt the

Same chaos inside.

You were my referee, I based

Everything on the feelings I had

Within.

You weren’t on my team but

I Could always sense you

Running along beside me.
I couldn’t tell you.

I couldn’t express myself.

And now you are gone.
The opposition is in their

Predictable attack formation

I keep towards the side,

Away from the game

Away from the game.
What were you thinking, ref?

What were you thinking, Rem?

An Interview with Richard Thomas

I’ve know Richard Thomas for as long as I have been performing. Indeed, he was almost certainly one of the performers at the very first gig I went to as an audience member. He very quickly drew me in to his world of imagery and humour, strange juxtapositions and asides, in a manner which I found most compelling.

We both did the same literature course with the Open University, and it was through this that I discovered we both admired the poetry of Frank O’Hara and the music of British Sea Power. Because of this, I have always followed his career with interest.
His first published book, The Strangest Thankyou, came out almost two years ago now. It contained some wonderful poems including the delightful ‘Flamingo’ as well as more serious pieces, and others written after trips to Rome. I read the book twice over the course of two days, and then my mother borrowed it too. I was jealous that the cover was orange, because Frank O’Hara’s book Lunch Poems also has an orange cover!
One of the things I really admire in Richard is that he is so very different to almost any other performer both in his style of reciting, and in his subject matter. To watch or read Richard is to visit a strange new world, only to realize at the last moment that it’s a world you’ve always known. 

I’ve known you for almost six years now. You were one of the first poet performers I remember seeing. How did you get in to writing poetry?

I had written lyrics here and there for various bands I had been in. The more I wrote, the more I realised I enjoyed playing with language, so I started to keep a notebook and would just write very stream of conciousness type stuff in it. Eventually, and mainly through the Open University course you mentioned, I learnt how to shape those ramblings in to actual poems, and it went from there.

How important is the performance aspect of your poems?

For me, when I write poetry, performance is the last thing on my mind, bar perhaps a couple of poems I have written. I think this is probably because I got in to poetry originally from a page-poet’s perspective, and I wasn’t aware of any performance opportunities in my area at the time. When I moved to Totnes, that changed: I did my first open mic and got hooked on the buzz it gave me. It still very much felt important to me, though, to keep writing primarily for the page, as seeing my poems in print was the dream. So I continue to do that, and then when I am performing, I will pick out the poems that translate on to the stage best. Half of my poems I have never read live. I quite like the idea of doing a live set of poems I would never usually perform, to see what happens, but I am yet to muster up the confidence.

Your book The Strangest Thankyou was one of the reading highlights of my year when it came out. How would you describe the new book?

Thanks, Robert. I remember you telling me your mum enjoyed it, too. Three of my friend’s mums have read it. And I think just one of those three friends has read it themselves (yourself). It’s good to know your audience. Perhaps that is why my new book is a collection – a pamphlet – of poems about babies. A subconscious effort to satisfy my target market. But seriously, it’s a little more than about babies, though it is that. Zygote Poems is about a young man’s journey in to the unfamiliar realms of fatherhood with the effects of anxiety. It uses phonetic language to both convey that effect, and at the same time mimic ‘baby talk’. There are some other fun techniques employed, but I guess I shouldn’t give too much away. Selling poetry books is hard enough. I think, though, this new pamphlet is my most focussed poetry so far.

Can you describe the writing process for it?

I wanted these poems to be as candid as possible, and given the subject, they were all personal. So to start with, it was a case of writing down every significant thing I could think of as I looked back over my journey up to that point. As I originally wrote it for my degree dissertation, I had to write a certain number of pages. So I worked out what kind of balance I wanted in terms of the content – what moods I wanted to give – and I drew up a table, dropping each significant event in to a particular mood box until I had filled the table with an equal amount of each. And then I went about working my way through the table, writing each poem that needed to be written. It got very mathematical, but it was a pretty interesting way to go about writing a collection of poems, and felt right for the to get the result I wanted. The hardest part was to write as candidly as possible. My mind often told me to censor stuff, so it took some redrafting to get all the poems as honest as possible, without them becoming unreadable.

 How would you describe the content of your poems? Are there recurring themes?

The new pamphlet is all specifically themed, but I guess my poems do generally repeat certain themes, often without me realising. This is probably to do with the fact that I usually write whatever is on my mind at the moment of holding the pen. The Strangest Thankyou was a lot of love, lust, loneliness and confusion – even the surreal impersonal poems abour Flamingos, dancing butchers and dogs eating figs conveyed a sense of trying to understand the world and its obscurity. I think that had to do with the mindset of being in my early twenties, and I guess certain subjects tend to occupy the mind more than others at different ages. I like that idea: that my poetry up to this point could be read as being written by someone in their twenties, purely by the themes most covered, and that my thirties, forties, etc, will bring about their own re-occuring themes. I think this also helps me deal with the idea of ageing – being intrigued as to what poems the world might draw from me as time goes on – I look forward to poems more than I do birthdays. That wasn’t meant to sound as melancholic as it did…

Is humor important to you?

Definitely. I think humour is important to any art form to some extent, whether you’re Charlie Chaplin or Marina Abramovic. And even Beethoven was a prankster. There’s that story about him, as a kid, putting a whoopee cushion on Mozart’s piano stool, isn’t there. There’s no whoopee cushions in my poetry, but I like to think there is humour. Not in all my poems, but where it lacks, I try to make up for it with a sense of absurdity. I think humour can help a generally serious poem breathe, and lift it from the page. It helps the poem transcend from writer to reader.

You’re obviously a big fan of the beat poets. You even had a beard at one time. And it was a nice beard, too. How influential is Ginsberg both in your writing, and also modern poetry?

I have had two significant beards in my life so far. I think you saw the first. The second was a much better effort. That is a benefit of ageing. That beard was going places until I chopped it off. I have yet to properly grieve the loss of it. Who handed me that pair of scissors? Ginsberg had a great beard, and was a great poet, and I think I owe a lot to him for both of those things. Kerouac, Corso, di Prima and the others have been a great influence too. I discovered them at about twenty two, and really felt my poetry take a change of pace when I did. I remember the first time I read those lot – it felt like I had never read poetry before. I felt a different level of excitement for poetry, and it was around that time that I started to write ‘proper’ poems and do readings. Ginsberg was a huge influence on poetry, both then and now. I really believe him and his friends were game-changers, and had a significant effect in moulding the shape of poetry to come. Even for those who dislike him or the other beat poets – a negative influence is an influence nonetheless. But I think Ginsberg in particular proved that you could really say and do whatever you want with poetry, and it needn’t conform to certain ideals or standards. Amongst young poets today, I think this has particular resonance, knowing that there aren’t boundaries, and that poetry can say anything you want it to say.

Who are your favorite poets, both dead and alive?

Well, those that I have mentioned are favourites, for sure. I am still yet to read anything that gets me on the same level as Gregory Corso. I also love Sylvia Plath, Shelley, the Surrealist Poets, Leonard Cohen, and as you mentioned, Frank O’Hara. I have recently been getting in to Arthur Rimbaud and Ronald Duncan. The latter of which I found by grabbing a load of free poetry books from a box outside a lecturer’s office, and when I started reading, couldn’t understand why I had never come across him before, as his love poems remind me a lot of my own. Especially when he lived fairly local to us, too – North Devon I think.

What are your plans for the next year or so?

I am currently doing my MA in Creative Writing, so that, along with being a father to a toddler, is definitely keeping me busy. I have Zygote Poems coming out in June via Cultured Llama, so I hope to be promoting that as much as I can. I’m also working on various other writing projects: a short film, a children’s story and another poetry collection. Sometimes I wish I could just focus on one thing at a time, because I am sure life would be a lot easier that way, but my head refuses to work in that fashion it seems.

What advice would you give to anyone who’s always wanted to write poetry?

Read every type of poetry you can get your hands on and get started. The bigger the palette, the bigger the picture. Forget about trying to make it good, or what you think your neighbour, or the local baker, might like to read, and just write. Quality will come the more you write, and it’s important to be honest in your writing. The best and most genuine stuff will come when you are just trying to please yourself.
  

 The Strangest Thankyou is available for £8.00 from: http://www.culturedllama.co.uk/books/strangest-thankyou

Zygote Poems will be published by Cultured Llama in June 2015.

http://www.richardchristopherthomas.wordpress.com

Why I really, really rather like Bristol.

I really like Bristol.

No, that’s not a euphemism or Cockney rhyming slang.
Since I started performing poetry all over the place, I’ve had the chance to visit towns which I never would have done for any other reason. I’ve seen Wolverhampton, Swindon and Manchester. Guildford, Berlin and Barnstaple. And all in the name of poetry. 
But there’s one city which seems to have become a talisman, a good luck charm, and that’s Bristol. Good things have happened to be on many occasions in Bristol, poetically speaking. And I have never been there for any other reason than poetry.
When I first started performing around the Torquay and Exeter area, Bristol poets were held in awe by the local hosts and promoters, and we would regularly see people such as Nathan Filer and Byron Vincent, amazing us with their skill and commitment and their sheer brilliance. Consequently, it became a kind of goal to aim for, and Bristol itself stood as a beacon of poetic endeavor to which we should all aspire.
The first time I went to Bristol was for the Bristol Slam. Indeed, this was my first ever slam and there were many names there who would go on to be friends and colleagues in the poetry world. People like Vanessa Kisuule, Tim Vosper and Stephen Duncan. None of them knew me from Adam, and amazingly, I came second in the slam to Stephen. We went for a drink afterwards, the euphoria ensuring that it wouldn’t be able to get to sleep!
The next time I went to Bristol was to Acoustic Night at the Halo. It was a birthday present to myself a little journey away, and some of the Bristol slam people were there and they remembered me. Tim Ledwitch was as brilliant as ever. Amazingly, the host of the night liked me so much that he offered me a co-headline set for a couple of months later on! The euphoria ensured that I wasn’t able to get to sleep that night.
The next time I went to Bristol was to do the headline set at Acoustic, and it went very well indeed. The euphoria ensured that I wasn’t able to get to sleep that night.
By now I was zooming about all over the country and building up a reputation as a comedic poet, so the next time I came to Bristol was to support Vanessa Kisuule at Hammer and Tongue. I made a little holiday of it and stayed in a nice hotel, and I was just about to leave for the gig when I got an email to say that my first book had been accepted for publication! I remember dancing around the hotel room in my very camp manner indeed.
And then the gig itself went very well. The two Tims were there, and Graham Chilcott, and everyone was most complimentary about my set. The euphoria ensured that I wasn’t able to get to sleep that night.
Last night I was back in Bristol again, headlining at Milk. It was a fantastic night, filled with talent and friendship. All of my Bristol poetry friends were there, and my set was greeted marvelously. I didn’t get much sleep last night.
There is a constant criticism of Bristol poetry, that there really isn’t much variety, and that it is youth orientated, slam-style, three rhymes per line and too deeply serious for its own good. Last night at Milk there was plenty of variety and styles of performance, and it was great to see Samantha Boarer, who I really do admire in a deep and special way. She’s just about one of the funniest people I know.
So Bristol remains for me a city devoted to, and standing primarily for, spoken word and performance poetry. Indeed I cannot see it except through this lens. I’m sure I will be back there again very soon, and when I do, I shall take some sleeping tablets.
I also like it because someone has spray painted, in large letters, the word ‘Arse’ on a wall next to Bristol Temple Meads.