Tag Archives: poet

The young man on the VHS tape : A writer’s journey.

There’s a line in one of the best songs ever written, Being Boring by the Pet Shop Boys, which goes, ‘I never dreamed that I would get to be the creature that I always meant to be’. I was thinking of this earlier today when I was going through some old vhs tapes, having borrowed a vcr from a friend for a couple of days.

As I was scanning through, hoping to see something which might inspire my spoken word shows, I found a brief clip of a video some friends had made back in the end of the 1990s. I’d just moved to Devon from Surrey and I didn’t know anyone, so, much to my family’s amazement, I joined acting classes at the local theatre. I was hopeless at the actual acting, but I really enjoyed the warm-up exercises, and the fact that I was meeting all new friends. And they were different to the friends I’d had in Surrey, who were the people I’d been to school and sixth form with. These were arty types, actors and performers, and while they were all around ten years older than myself, we became good friends.

Eventually a select few of us began to do projects away from the official lessons, and this is where I found my niche as a writer of sketches and scripts for the group to perform mostly on cassettes, hoping that one day we might get a radio show. I wasn’t keen on the performing part, but I would write all kinds of silly things, amusing scenes and monologues.

The video shows the group playing around, and then the camera pans over very briefly showing a glimpse of a good looking young thin man in his mid twenties sitting on the floor, watching everything intently, and yet with a slight hint of misery. The sort of hint of misery you get from someone who wants to perform but is incredibly rubbish, the sort of hint of misery you get from a young man who wants to come out to the world but feels unable and constrained. The young man was very good looking, or at least, i thought so, and I pressed pause. Of course, it was me.

It was a shock, more so that I hadn’t realised how much weight I’d put on in the twenty years hence. But it was more of a shock because I remember how I felt at the time, jealous of these actors with their training and their university backgrounds and their joviality and their knowledge of what to say and how to say it to gain the maximum laughs. They’re obviously performing something I’ve written, because I remember that every now and then I would suggest revisions, write new lines.

(I remember on one occasion writing a monologue about a rocket scientist who falls in love with his rocket and doesn’t want it to launch. I couldn’t see at the time how phallic the monologue was, and couldn’t understand why nobody wanted to perform it!)

But the biggest shock of all is that I now perform, and do so regularly, and get paid for doing so. Ok, so I’m not a comic actor or a playwright, but I use my mouth and the things I’ve written to make people laugh.

Sadly, I didn’t keep in touch with any of the people from the little group. It all kind of fizzled out, and we all moved on with our lives.

About ten years after the video was made, around 2008, I finally made it in to a play, a Northcott Theatre production of Sarah Kane’s Crave. The camaraderie was just the same and this time I have managed to stay in touch with some of the people in it. A year later I wrote a play, Fuselage, and amazingly it won a playwriting competition and was produced in a rehearsed reading with a professional cast. And a year after that, I discovered spoken word.

And of course, I came out. In the year 2000. The start of the millennium!

This year I’m working on my Edinburgh show, Juicy, which follows on from Static last year, and they both probably might trace back their lineage to Fuselage, and then further back to the sketches I wrote, and perhaps even further back than that, to 1987 when, as a kid, I’d crank out humorous stories on my old typewriter which I still have now and use whenever I’m a Poet in Residence anywhere.

It’s been an amazing journey, and all conjured up from that one brief image.

As another Pet Shop Boys song might have gone,
‘I was faced with a choice at a difficult age, would I write a book, or should I take to the stage?’
So I became a spoken word artist and did both!

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.

Life lessons from the British Touring Car Championship 

Last week I did a corporate gig at the Nationwide Building Society headquarters in Swindon, where a bunch of us poets were asked to write on the spot poems for staff members on whatever subject their chose. During the day I met some lovely people and wrote poems about wives, boyfriends, kids, badminton, extreme frisbee (whatever that is), and the joy of working for the Nationwide Building Society. However one young lady asked me to write a poem about the British Touring Car Championship, and she really couldn’t have picked a better person to come to.
Since before I was a teenager I’ve been a fan of the British Touring Car Championship. In fact with the possible exception of spoken word, it’s one of my obsessions. I’ve watched almost every Live face on tv and I’ve been to some of the races too. I would say that it’s a guilty pleasure, but there’s no guilt here. I absolutely adore it. We spent far more time than is healthy, myself and this young lady, talking about our favourite drivers and races. The best thing was that she wanted me to write the poem for her mum, because she was also a fan of the BTCC, and they go to several races a year.

I was immediately Jealous!
The BTCC is amazing. The racing is pure and much more brash than open wheel categories, and the personalities are less robotic than in other sporting series. In fact the drivers seem more human, able to express their frustrations or their joy in a way that other sports seem to shun. The cars are recognisable, too, and the circuits are less clinical than those in formula one. There std three races during every meeting, and they are all shown live on ITV4, so on the day of a meeting I’m usually glued to the television for most of the afternoon. It’s heaven.
I’ve always been a fan of certain drivers. In fact, that’s another good thing about it, the drivers seem to hang around for decades. Jason Plato has been in it and winning regularly since the mid 1990s, and all of the other top names, such as Matt Neal, Colin Turkington, Rob Collard and Gordon Shedden, have been in the series for over ten years. In fact Rob Collard is one of my favourite drivers, we’ve often chatted on Twitter and he would probably win more races if he could qualify better. He’s one of the best overtakers in the business.
Obviously, I’m not used to writing about the BTCC. I’m a spoken word artist, and the community to which I belong is similarly small, welcoming and human. There are parallels between going out into a race and going out on stage with a mic. When I see a driver pull off a great overtake I often think, hmmm, that’s the same feeling I get when the audience reacts to a good line. I know just how they feel.
Except I don’t, not really. Motor racing is different, and I can only guess at the forces and the fears of stepping into a car and racing it hard. Those who are at the top of their game are very, very good and put in a lot of work to be so, and in a way, this is the same as with spoken word, or with any pursuit.
So I’ll be watching the races on tv today thinking of the young lady from Swindon with her mother.

An Interview with Paul Cree

When I was in Edinburgh this year I shared a venue with Paul Cree. When my two audience members left, his crowd would come in, and a couple of times I stayed too and watched his show. It was fantastic, one of the best and most original slices of poetic life, suburban grit, humour and truth that I’d seen in a long while. And Paul was incredibly supportive too, we’d help each other leaflet the street outside and on a day when it looked like I’d have no audience, he rustled up six people to come and watch.

Anyway, I thought I’d send him some questions and see what makes him tick as an artist and performer, particularly as it’s good to hear from a fellow Surrey spoken word artist!

– How much of your material is based on real life? The characters in particular seem well drawn and remarkably believable.
Lots of the material is based on real life, by default I always draw from my own experiences, mainly because I don’t really know a lot else. I haven’t travelled much or lived outside the south east of England, however, within that small limited range that is my little life and surroundings I find many things which to me are poetic and inspiring. I have a minor obsession with moterway service stations for instance. Large up Fleet Services on the M3, looking like the forest moon of Endoor in Return of the Jedi. Often with the characters I’ve written, one person might be an amalgamation of two or three different people whom I’ve known or encountered. It’s bit like those miselaniois bits of Lego I’d use to make spaceships when I was a nipper
– You find humour in every day situations. Do you store things away for future use?
Yes i do sometimes store things, write little notes etc. I’m naturally a worrier and an observer, as well as being quite silly but I often worry that if I find something that really amuses me or interests me, if I don’t write it down il forget it. Through years of working a bunch of jobs I didn’t like, offices and call centres etc, I was able to condense ideas into short sentences, like a mental zip file, via a quick trip to the carzy, though I couldn’t do it to often as this would arouse suspicion about my toilet habits. Upon getting home, I could later unravel the sentence and expand on what I was thinking. It’s was worth running the risk of the office gossips thinking I had a bowel problem for the sake a good idea. 
– How do you go shout putting a show together? How long does it take?
I don’t have a particular process for putting a show together. It really depends what the show is. I try and find the process as it goes along. With my first show, A Tale From The Bedsit, that was really just one long, linear, monologue but I had a very specific idea about the staging of it, so spent i spent (including the writing) probably over two years writing that then working with Stef O Driscol putting it all together. With CD Borderline it was a lot faster as my idea for the format of the show was very simple and I already had a lot of the material written. The rest was just putting it on its feet and trying out deferent combinations and finding out what worked best.
– Who are your artistic inspirations?

People, places, my own intravertness, rain drops on windowpanes . Rappers, comedians, motorway service stations (fleet services is my favourite) boredom.
– How does the real Paul Cree differ to the stage Paul Cree?
Not too far removed as most of the material is based on my own experiences. 

On cutting out the inner editor 

Lately I’ve been trying to write poems that are almost exact copies of those by another poet. In fact it’s been an obsession these last couple of years. I’ve been taking his poems, breaking them down line by line, syllable by syllable, to see how he gets the desired effect, then subtly changing bits here and there and adding distinct touches so that they don’t look too much like the original. The poet I’ve been copying so deftly is Robert Garnham.

I should explain that I am Robert Garnham. You probably know this already. It’s a little trick I was playing on you. But I should also explain that my work, my oeuvre has, inevitably, changed over the last few years. I know more about writing now, more about poetry and comedy and what makes people laugh. I now sit down and write poems with a specific idea and target in mind. I want this poem to make people laugh. I want this poem to be serious, I want this poem to be short, sharp, funny and with a pounding rhythm. And all of this has advanced me beyond those early years when I’d just write a poem for the thrill of writing a poem.

I’ve finally cracked it. And how have I done it? By disengaging my brain while I write. It’s an amazing system. I come up with the idea and then I just write, ignoring the inner censor, the inner editor who wants a specific, desired effect, and it really is most liberating. The poems of the last few years have been some of my best work, but they’ve been more like tightly structured pop songs rather than jazz improvisations. There’s not much wriggle room. I’d also been trying to write in order to fit in with certain types of poem rather than be myself. I’d see poets on YouTube and at gigs and I’d think, hmm, what can I adapt from these wonderful people?

For the last few months I’ve banned myself from thinking along such lines. This has had a profound effect on my enjoyment of performance poetry, it’s let me sit back and enjoy or relish other people’s performances without analysing every small detail. When I first started performing I had never seen any other performance poets, and this gave me an incredible freedom to do what I liked. By disengaging my brain and cutting out the inner editor, I’ve been able to reconnect with this part of my voice. It also puts me under less pressure to write.

Martin Hodge, an appreciation.

Martin Hodge was one of my favourite human beings. We met at a gig at the Bike Shed Theatre in Exeter, he came and sat on the same table as myself and a friend, and told me that he really liked my performance. He was so wonderfully sincere and immediately charming, and we exchanged email addresses, Facebook friend requests, all the normal modern means of connecting.
A couple of days later he sent me a text message asking if I’d like to appear on a radio show he was hosting, Listen Out, on Phonic FM. It was a radio show dedicated to Exeter’s LGBT community, and I jumped at the chance. I’d never done any radio work before, and I was incredibly nervous, I also had to journey up from Hayle in Cornwall, where I’d been staying with my parents.
But Martin was fantastic, we sat and had a pre show drink in a small pub on a Sunday night, and he completely put me at my ease. The show went very well indeed, and even though I was only on in the first hour, he invited me to stay for the whole programme, sat in the corner and listening to the music. Just before my section, he played Will Young, a beautiful song which even now reminds me of that night.
That was the first time I was his guest, and over the years I would guest again on both Listen Out and, when that had finished, The Respect Show. Martin was so genial and supportive, he got me a gig at a Phonic FM fundraiser at the Phoenix, and we’d keep bumping into each other at various events in Exeter. He was a keen fan of music and his knowledge of the local scene was almost encyclopaedic. One of the last times I saw him, he gave me a Pet Shop Boys cd, because he knew they were my favourite band, and he’d always play one of their tracks when I was on his show.
Martin was the most relaxed person I’ve ever met. Nothing ever seemed to faze him. He was the sort of person who could make anyone feel calm, his measured, genial tones perfect for the radio. He was incredibly generous too, with his praise, his time, his willingness to share his knowledge of music and the technology of radio work. I’ve never known someone with so many friends, either. It seemed that everyone in Exeter connected to music knew him, worshipped him, smiled at the mention of his name.
I last saw him just over a month ago. Croydon Tourist Office had a live gig on the Respect Show, and I’m sure it wasn’t exactly what he’d been expecting, but he seemed to enjoy it and immerse himself in the craziness of our act. I saw him briefly afterwards, as he walked past us, a cheery word or two and he was gone. That night we exchanged text messages, in which he thanked us for coming on the show.
Martin had so many friends, and it’s them that I’ve been thinking of the last few days. He will be so missed by so many people. His work in promoting music and encouraging people to have a good time will go on, you can still hear him on the archived pages of his radio show. To his family and loved ones I extend the deepest condolences, and to Martin I say simply, thank you.

‘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

The Day This Summer I Almost Gave Up On Spoken Word

It’s been a strange year for a lot of reasons. Professionally for me, it’s been a very good year with lots of opportunities and reasons to get excited about the future, some of which I can’t reveal right now. But just a few months ago it looked very different.

I was reminded of this by the retirement of Nico Rosberg, the current formula one world champion. For those uninitiated with motor racing, he won the world championship after a thrilling duel with Lewis Hamilton, reckoned by many to be the best driver in the world today, then promptly announced his retirement. It was a brave and honest move.
This summer I performed at the Edinburgh Fringe. I was only there for a week, but the usual Fringe madness was endemic, the seemingly endless cycle of promoting and leafleting, flyering, talking, then putting on a show in front of three people at the most. I was getting audiences at least, but I was not having the best of times, in a noisy venue which was very supportive and friendly and yet wholly unsuited to my show, which demanded long periods of quiet. Consequently I did not enjoy the experience. However, I did appear at a few other shows, as a guest at Stand Up and Slam, which my poetry helped the Poet team to a resounding success, and at the Boomerang Club, where I headlined on the very last day of the fringe.
By this time I was feeling a little frazzled by the whole experience. I’d also had one or two problems, such as losing my passport, so while I should’ve been flyering and leafleting, I was making phone calls and stressing about the passport, because I had a trip to New York and it was looking like I wouldn’t have a passport in time to get there. I’d also had to move accommodation for the last day of my stay due to another procedural problem. So it was all quite stressful.
On the penultimate night I thought, hmmm, why don’t I give it all up? The possibility of a promotion had come up at work, and this would mean less spoken word, perhaps I ought to go for the promotion and not do any spoken word at all, become a professional and competent retail manager instead. And as the penultimate day wore on I thought more and more that this was the right decision.
So I planned the set for the Boomerang Club in the knowledge that this might be my last ever performance anywhere. And where better to do a last performance, but headlining in Edinburgh? It would be a great story. Something to remember for the rest of my life while ploughing ahead into the beauty of a career in retail.
On the way to the gig from my new lodgings, I walked along listening to music, walked past the Courtyard, and someone recognised me from the Stand Up and Slam event, they acted as if they’d just seen a celebrity. It made me feel good.
The show went well and I finished on my poem ‘Plop’, which I normally start routines with. I did this because it was a little symbol to myself, a little nod. The show went very quickly, and I sat down and thought, well, that’s done then. And now I’m a retail manager.
Getting home to Devon took about twelve hours and when I finally arrived my mind was blank. But then something weird happened the next morning. It was like my brain had been wiped, that the whole future of spoken word seemed a blank canvas on which I could completely start again.
And instead of retiring, I found myself acting as if I was a complete newcomer. I set in motion a system of rehearsing and concentrating on performance skills. I decided to try and learn all of my new material. And I decided to have fun. Why should I stop doing the only thing I’m halfway decent at?
And I decided not to go for the promotion.
It’s a gamble that has paid off. I’ve got a few opportunities and projects which are quite advantageous, financially, and I’m even considering reducing the number of hours I do in my day job to accommodate these. This whole half year has been a complete reinvention. And of course, I had a fantastic gig in New York, once I’d sorted my passport out, winning over a cabaret crowd in Greenwich Village right next door to the Stonewall Inn. 
It’s been a weird year, and I’m so glad that I didn’t Do A Nico!

Make your own Robert Garnham Poem with this Automatic Robert Garnham Whimsy Generator

Make your own Robert Garnham Poem with this Automatic Robert Garnham Whimsy Generator!

Your birth month:

January : An ocelot

February : A badger

March : A haberdasher

April : A lollipop lady

May : A dental hygienist

June : Jeremy Clarkson 

July : Mark

August : My Aunt

September : A duck wearing a Groucho Marx moustache and glasses

October : Another badger

November : The bus driver

December : TV’s Alan Titchmarsh

Your eye colour:

Brown : is playing a trumpet.

Green : is getting a refund on some trousers.

Hazel : is sneezing.

Blue : Is looking for the tv remote

Grey : has a dodgy stomach.

Other : is fumbling for some loose change.

Birth order:

Eldest child : Look out,

Middle child : Get ready,

Youngest child : Eat some cake and

Only child : Hang on a sec.

Hair colour:

Blonde : They’re coming after you next.

Brown : There’s bound to be an argument.

Red : They’ll send you a Facebook request.

Grey : run!

Black : did someone say ‘plop’?

Bald : Fetch a bucket.

Other : Put the kettle on.