poetry – Page 56 – Robert Garnham

Edinburgh Fringe Blog Part Five

Well that’s another day done and dusted. I’m really into the rhythm now. The rhythm of expectations being cruelly dashed. Yesterday’s audience was a very minimal two. I asked them beforehand if they were there to see my show and they said, no. But do carry on. Don’t mind us, we’re just here for a drink and a chat. I did a couple of poems without any microphone and then took a couple of selfies. Can’t let an opportunity like this go to waste!
I made the mistake yesterday of going to the modern art gallery instead of flyering. I mean, I’m on holiday. There was an exhibition of Joseph Beuys, one of my favourite artists. I couldn’t spend a whole week here and not see it! The only trouble with Edinburgh’s modern art gallery is that it’s such a long walk from the centre of the city. So the whole trip took about two and a half hours.
Then an offer of a gig came through, representing Team Poetry at Stand Up And Slam, which is a poetry verses comedian slam. Everybody there was so young and whoopy, and the music was so incredibly loud, and the MC shouted and wailed and I couldn’t make hear nor tail of it, but I went up and performed and the place went mad, I won my round and helped the poets win the whole contest. At the end we had to come out with slick jokes or short poems on a given theme and the theme was drinking, so I did the following haiku:
The man with no arms

Fighting in the local pub.

He was kicking off.
Which also brought the house down, and it was only afterwards, like, seven hours afterwards, that I thought about the Fringe joke competition and how it might have stood a chance in that. Had they not already done the competition at the beginning of the week.
So here I am, about to go out flyering and stuff. My legs are aching and it feels like I’ve lost two stone. It doesn’t look it, but it feels it.
Just a quick word about the show I saw last night, Dandy Darkly’s Myth Mouth. It was flipping fantastic! Storytelling and humour, camp wonderfulness and a celebration of the joy of living. Go and watch it!

Edinburgh Fringe Blog Part Four

My student accommodation is down the hill past the Scottish Parliament, turn left, then walk halfway to Glasgow. It’s a brand new building with one or two snags, the first snag being that it’s bloody hot even with the windows open, the second snag being that the sensor light in the bathroom stays on as well as the extractor fan for about an hour after use, the third snag being that it’s so far from the centre of Edinburgh. But that didn’t stop me being waken at seven this morning by what I thought was thunder, turned out it was a bloody cannon being fired. Is that normal, or are we at war? It sounded like they fired it right next to the building.
I’ve reached an odd point in the fringe, now. I don’t care if I don’t get anyone to come and see the show, now, because I’ve done it a few times and I’ve had an amazing time doing so. If nobody turns up, then I get an hour off! I mean, the way I look at it is that I’m offering to do a show at three o o’clock every day, and if no ones up for that then, OK, I’m all right with that.
I went to a few shows last night. Gary from Leeds, funny and as human as ever. Dominic Berry,enthusiastic and genuinely inspirational. I wore a tshirt advertising my show, and I thought, that’s a good move. The moment I stepped out the building someone yelled, in a. American accent, ‘Hey buddy, like the tshirt. Naaaahhht’. He’s probably a Trump supporter.
The agenda for today is a few more shows but first I’m off out in search of some modern art. Modern art is my passion and I want to see something inspirational.
Another early night tonight. I’m such a lightweight. The other night I went out with Dominic and Chris White, feeling like an old man. We didn’t even get to where we were going before I apologised and said that I really had to go home to bed, it was almost ten o’ clock. In fact, compared to all the other spoken word artists, I feel like a very old man. Even Gary from Leeds, baldies that he is, is ten years younger than me. I don’t drink, and I really can’t take these late nights. There’s an open mic at eleven pm every night by which time I’m usually in bed. Maybe that’s what’s keeping me sane?
I’m using the wifi in McDonalds to write this. I’m trying to see as much local culture as I can.

https://youtu.be/DJQKEo1neUE

Edinburgh Fringe Blog Part Three

I am deep into the Fringe, now. Yes, I know that sounds weird. But I’m into the rhythm of the Edinburgh Fringe and what it means to be here, which is to say, the usual routines of flyering, exit flyering, chatting to people, finding out when other people’s shows are, and that big contentious issue, the Bucket Speech.
What is the Bucket Speech? Well, this is the free fringe, so we don’t get paid to perform, but we don’t have to pay the venue either. Because of this, we are not allowed to charge visitors entry, but we are allowed to pass round a bucket at the end. Now I was having serious philosophical thoughts about this and I decided not to do a Bucket Speech, (the bit at the end of each show where you ask for donations), and instead make the whole thing free. Yes, really. Absolutely free.
I’m not yet sure if this is a good strategy. For me the joy is sharing the words and meeting people. There’s no way that I’d recover the costs of coming here. Now it must be said that I might change this philosophy, depending on how things go.
I have been flyering. But I haven’t really done that much. Yesterday I did lots of flyering in the Royal Mile, but then got bored, so I went to the museum and I had an excellent time.
I’ve met so many friends up here, people who I know from so many different parts of the country, like Rose Condo, who I met in Manchester, Dan from Bristol, and Sam Webber, who I know from Barnstaple. Today a friend is coming up from London. It’s like the annual meeting place of performance poetry.
The plan for today? More flyering, and I’ll be performing on the Royal Mile with some other poets. I haven’t even thought about open mic nights yet, or anything like that.
And the Fringe Flu? I haven’t caught it yet.

Edinburgh Fringe Blog Part Two

Heathrow
So here I am now at Heathrow Airport Terminal Five. I stayed last night in Woking, which is one of my favourite towns and a place where I’ve spent a lot of time. When I booked into the hotel I asked if it was okay to pay with a debit card. We accept anything, the receptionist said, apart from goats.
It seems kind of unreal at the moment that I shall be performing this afternoon in another country. Okay, that country is Scotland, but when you’re used to Torbay, anything north of Newton Abbot is dodgy ground. The coach driver from Woking to the airport was incredibly jolly and rather envious of my old suitcase, which forms part of the show. You don’t see many of those, he said.
I expect the baggage handling crew are saying that too, right at this moment.
Edinburgh
It was a weird day. I mean, they talk about the madness and the insecurity which hit some more than others. Has it already hit me?
The flight was fantastic. The stewardess who found me an empty overseat locker advised me to use it quickly as those who bring suitcases on board will nab it. She was one of the jolliest people I’ve met in a long while with an evident love of life and a loud booming laugh which echoed from the galley all round the plane.
The flight was 45 minutes. It took 30 to get my case at the baggage reclaim. I caught the bus to the city centre straight to my venue, arriving ten minutes before my show. The audience seemed to enjoy it, (both of them), but I treated it as a rehearsal and afterwards pondered on a raft of changes I might make for the rest of the run. I also need to be louder. Tomorrow will be an entirely different matter.
I walked the mile out to my student accommodation, then realised that I’d left my jacket at the venue!
It was great to see Dominic Berry and Chris White, and later on I bumped into Rose Condo, Dan Simpson and Rob Auton.
It’s going to be a mega week!

Edinburgh Fringe Blog Part One

Well here I am then, on a train heading to the Edinburgh Fringe. Well, almost. First of all I’m going to Woking to spend the night in a room over a pub, and then tomorrow morning I will be flying up. It was either that, or fifteen hours on a coach. In fact it’s cheaper this way than getting the train. How ludicrous is that?
So how am I feeling about all this right now? There are several emotions. I’m nervous, naturally, that everything is going to go tits up. Nobody will show up for any of the gigs, and when they do, I fall into that age old trap of being crap. I’m excited, because this is the Edinburgh fringe and a lot of my friends will be there. I’m also grateful that I am able to spend an entire week immersed in art and culture.
I’m also nervous that the logistical arrangements I’ve made will fall apart. The accommodation, the travel, the train, the plane.
So here so am, then, on the train, and I’ve managed to get a high profile seat in first class. It was a whole three quid extra to get in here, and I feel privileged, because they don’t just let anyone in. That three quid means a lot.
And I’m the only one in here as the train leaves Exeter, which makes me feel kind of poncey. But then a lusciously blonde muscular lad sneaks in and plugs his mobile phone into the charger. A minute or two back he’s later to look at his phone. Then he slides in, commandeers the seat for himself. Good move!
And oh mamma, what a good looking chap he is. Amazingly he offerere me a Fruit Pastel, and then we get talking. Where are you going? Woking? Me too! Where do you live? Paignton? Know it well! What do you do? Spoken word artist? I’m a property developer. And we chat for ages, about books he’s read, his love of To Kill a Mockingbird, his skills as a weekend surfer, and then it starts to get embarrassing. Whenever I try to relax he asks something else, and all the time I’m looking at those luscious legs.
At Honiton he gets off and meets a man on the platform who gives him a suit in a bag. He gets back in and looks at the suit, the tie, spreading them out on the table. Very smart! We chat some more, and then the man comes to check the tickets.
You’re in the wrong section, he says. Please move back to the standard class.
I’ve still got two hours of this train ride to go, but I’m already thinking, ah, yes. The adventure has begun!
And will I still be thinking of this blond lad in seven days time?

https://youtu.be/YjpL6VZtC78

Paignton station.

Exeter St David’s station.

Cargo vessel. (A new poem).

Cargo vessel
On a millpond sea inky black

Reflecting stars in all their celestial

Magnificence,

The container vessel MSC Mercury Thora Hird,

Hulking, it’s behemoth hull

Silent as a ghost

Ploughing between continents with

Crates of tat,

Plastic merchandise, dodgy exports.
I creep past creaking metal boxes,

Alone,

For it is a sultry night,

The hot metal deck throbbing,

Equatorial,

Towering containers intersecting,

Stacked upwards all angular,

Forming skyscrapers and city blocks,

Grid iron walkways,

An imaginary city

With a population of one.
And the breeze

Which whistles through.
I find a private place,

A rectangular courtyard of my own

Near the bow, stark,

That I might lay here

Surrounded by right angles

And commune with the sighing wind.
Deep powerful engines

Throb through me

Pulsing their diesel propulsion

As I stretch out flat on the deck

Coated thick sigh non slip paint

The stars above unmoving

The universe

So soothing.
Where have you been?

– Right here.

What brought you back?

– Why not?

What is the mystery of your life?

– That I should exist at all.
Are you Marcel Proust?

– Yeeeeees.
The sea heaves like a breath exhaled.

Containers groan with obviousness.

Stars in all their beautiful magnificence,

Omniscient.
-I bit the Madeleine.

And things were never the same.

I threw it all away
I think of you every day.
– I think of you

I think of us.

I think of the

Baron de Charlus.
What are you doing here?

– It might be that I stop clocks

Like that time

At the Shanghai Docks.
Didn’t I see you

By the light of the moon?

– Off the coast

Of Cameroon.
Down in the boiler room?

– My heart went boom.

Titty boom.

Titty boom.
Nights in lonely cabins.

My formative years at navel college

The whole time

Gazing at my belly button.

Then an apprenticeship

On a battleship

Learning the ropes

On the HMS Hindrance,

Lonely bunks and

Shirtless hunks

Dockside manners and

Gangplank dreams

A life surrounded

By seamen.
-Dance with me

To the music of movement

We all carry baggage

And various cargoes

Dance with me

To the memory

I’m serious

Delirious

Dance with me

In the midnight burn

This may be the bow

Of the ship

But I’m really

Quite stern.
Marcel

-What?

Do you love me?

-Do I not?

Is this the end?

-Mother used to read me bedtime stories.

Former glories.

-Big verdant palms.

Conservatories.

– Shall we get this hot dance done?

You and me and the wind.

-Begin.

Begun.
The tinny tap of workboot on the moving metal floor speckled damp by sea spray and hardened salt in this dank deck quick step so very much like falling through someone else’s dreamscape look at me now I got the rhythm baby I got the moves not like last week when I threw my back out oh how I have put everything into this ship, every emotion and every aspect of my being, oh, the hull is the sum of my parts.
I wind my way

Back through the darkened blocks.

The tall gleaming bridge,

The accommodation decks,

Letting myself back in to its

Industrial brightness.

Fluorescent lights and safety valves,

To the recreation room.

Sailors, deck hands,

Engineers and navigators in their

Jovial down time

Look up as I enter all

Camaraderie and brotherly love.
Heyyyy Robert,

Did you hear about the

Documentary I watched set at a

Corn Flakes factory?

It’s on again next week.

It’s a cereal.

Professor in the Bathroom – A film diary

The last few months I’ve been working on a short film with film maker John Tomkins.
Professor in the Bathroom is based on one of the poems from my collection ‘Nice’, published by Burning Eye Books. The idea of a professor trapped in someone’s bathroom gave John the idea of making a film with the restrictions evident in the text, a whole film shot in his bathroom!
The first thing we needed was an actor and John contacted Lee Rawlings. Lee is an amazing character actor, singer and full-time librarian. John and I met up and looked at the poem, working out how we might shoot the film, and I suggested he watch the film ‘Amelie’. We then went to Exeter and met Lee, by which time John had watched Ameile and was filled with inspiration about camera angles, cinematography, and all that kind of stuff.
Lee was amazing and very much interested in the project. A couple of weeks later we all met at his place of work after it had closed, and we spent the evening working on rehearsals, camera angles and the logistical side of things.
As a writer, I didn’t really have much input at this stage, so for me it was fun to sit back, watch them work, and make the occasional wise crack. I took some amusing photographs, too. The process was very valuable to the outcome of the film in that both John and Lee became very familiar with what they wanted from it.
A month or so later we all met at John’s house in Paignton. John had spent the intervening weeks looking at people’s bathrooms, but there were logistics involved. Like, if we borrowed someone’s bathroom, what happens when they need to use the bathroom? John concluded that his own bathroom was aesthetically and practically the place he was looking for.
At home, I recorded the poem and supPlied it by email, and then we all met up for filming. There were so many little bits which needed doing, so many small problems to create the illusion we needed. I found some free standing wooden shelves which stood in for the medicine cabinet, through which John could film as if from inside the medicine cabinet. Lee provided lots of pill bottles, and I had to find the meats and crisps for the professor to eat from underneath the door, a job made slightly harder by the fact that Lee is a vegetarian. The most cunning prop was a long piece of wood which John painted, which stood in for the bottom of he bathroom door.
Filming went very well. My job, as production assistant, was to carry the lighting equipment. Every angle in the bathroom necessitated Lee, John as cameraman, and myself with the lights,,all crammed into that tight space. It’s amazing what just one small poem can end up precipitating!
Once the filming was complete, John spent a couple of months editing, blending in the original soundtrack provided by a very fine musician, and some sound effects of the professor, provided by Lee post-filming, grunting and making strange noises into the microphone in John’s editing suite. My own part in the film may have been small, but it needed rehearsing, (I’m not an actor), and then my lines re-dubbing, which meant I had to go to John’s and match the words with my lip movements. Which is quite difficult!
So Professor in the Bathroom is completed and will soon premier at the Torbay Film Festival in late August. And I can’t wait for you to see it!

The Most Signficant Full Stop (Part Thirteen) and a general description of my current eye problems.

I’ve spent most of the last few months looking at full stops and insignificant moments. In an attempt to prove that nothing is truly insignificant, (especially where it is imbued with more significance than it should otherwise have), I have been focussing on full stops and magnifying them until they take up most of the sight.
A couple of weeks ago I woke up with reduced vision in one eye which meant that the very centre of my vision in my left eye was similar in proportion and design to the very full stops that I’d been magnifying. Needless to say it was a spooky coincidence, and it put me off the Significant Full Stop project for a while, because it seemed too weird to be looking at the fuzzy images of full stops through fuzzy vision, therefore adding further fuzziness to the project.
I have since undergone various tests and appointments during which the doctors and hospital have concluded that the condition is temporary. It’s called Central Serous Retinopathy, and it affects white males between the ages of 30 and 50, of which I am. It’s caused by too many steroids in the system, which the body produces naturally to counter stress. I’ve not been aware of being under any stress, but hey ho, if that’s what they reckon then I’ll go along with it.
The bad news is that it might last half a year.
So now I’m looking at insignificant things through different eyes, literally. I’m imbuing everything with a Significance than they should otherwise have, because for a while I was afraid that I would never see again. There were paint splattered dots on the floor of the eye clinic waiting room. The nurse had given me eye drops which had unfocused my eyes but I could still see the dots, only just. They reminded me of the floor of Manchester Airport. I was conscious that they were there, but my mind was filling in the details. The dots might not even have existed at all. But my brain told me so.
Part of the condition, apparently, or at least with macular degeneration, is that the eye will, every now and then, hallucinate and see things which aren’t really there. The eye will half see something and the brain will fill in the gaps. I will be seeing things that aren’t even there. Of course, I still have one functioning eye, so this will probably not happen, which is a shame. I’m rather looking forward to the hallucinations.
So for now the exact details of the original full stop exist in memory more than anything else, because even looking at it properly will not give a true representation of its real state. For some reason this is far more exciting than any of the experiments in magnification, because it exists far more vibrantly and explicitly in my imagination than it ever did on the page.

The Most Signficant Full Stop (Part Twelve)

For the last couple of months I’ve had a bit of a thing with full stops. You might have noticed. I’ve been obsessed with small events and how they have incredibly significance for only a very short period of time. A full stop on a piece of prose can be likened to walking through a town and scratching one’s arm, brushing a strand of hair from ones face. At that exact moment in time, which only lasts for less than a second, they are the most pressing concerns imaginable, only to be forgotten less than a second later.
For the purposes of this project, therefore, I have been giving full stops far more significance than they ever had, and expanding them to cover the entire screen.
It is therefore somewhat ironic that yesterday I woke from a normal nights sleep to find that I’d lost some vision in my left eye, and that everything I look at has a perfect round circle, very much like a full stop, right in the centre of my vision. The fact that this perfect circle resembles some of the art work that I have been creating is somewhat ironic.
Indeed, ever the optimist, I see the large circle in my vision as a piece of permanent conceptual art which is now with me all the time, (unless the hospital can sort it out for me). Which then led to other thoughts: what if it were possible to beam artwork directly into the vision of the viewer, that they might have it automatically plastered over their vision? A Jackson Pollock migraine, a Rothko headache.
I have attempted to recreate some of the variations of the circle theme that I have been seeing below. And if you look back at some of my previous posts about the Most Significant Full Stop, they do seem freakily similar.

The Most Significant Full Stop. (Part Eleven).

Yesterday I extrapolated a full stop from a text of writing, and then using screenshots, managed to magnify it to such an extent that it took up nearly the whole screen.

In doing so I was imbuing the full stop with far more significance than it might otherwise have. The next step was to print off the full stop on to some A4 paper, and affix it to an ordinary wall on the back of a shop, down an alleyway, in Paignton, Devon.

The full stop was certainly striking and again this imbued it with far more significance than it should have had. After all, this was just an ordinary full stop taken from some text, typed with no idea that it would be such a statement of intent, typed merely to aid the comprehension of the text.
Kafka’s father said that he was ‘morbidly preoccupied with the insignificant’ and I believe I understand what Otto Kafka was alluding to in the sudden elevation of this full stop.
The next part of the project was to reassign the full stop with its original intent, that of aiding in the comprehension of text. By taking photographs of the full stop as it hung on the back of a shop in an alleyway in Paignton, I was able to stand further away and keep on taking photographs, until the full stop was just a dot again.

Using poster making software, I coloured in the photograph with the exception of the full stop.

I then added the full stop back into some random text, where it once again functions as a full stop, and not as a statement of insignificance. Can you spot it?