Tag Archives: theatre

Robert Garnham’s 17 Golden Rules for Getting the Most Out of Life!

Robert Garnham’s Words of Advice

1. No one is ever worth writing a poem for, though every now and then you’ll meet someone who’s worth a limerick, particularly if they come from Chard.

2. If someone tells you that they love you, it’s not always a test, it’s an affectation of the status quo, a joy delivered in the beauty of a relationship which actually works, so it’s best not to answer with, oh, that’s good.

3. Shrimp will always give you raging guts ache.

4. Hold on to your nostalgia, otherwise you’ll have nothing to be nostalgic about, except possibly for the time you used to be nostalgic about things, so maybe you can be nostalgic about that.

5. Look at your life. Isolate your fears, your demons, and anything else that gives you the willies. Engage with them and dance, and banish them with a smile and a wave and a cheer. Unless, of course, the thing that scares you the most is crushing loneliness.

6. It’s never too late to learn. It’s never too early to forget.

7. Only concentrate on that which requires no thought.

8. You might not ever mention the elephant in the room, but you can certainly wonder how it got through the door, and up the stairs.

9. Look at the mirror every morning and say, I am loved, I am loved, I am loved. At least this way you’re prepared for any other bullshit that comes along.

10. Everyone you see or meet or talk to has been born. Even Avril Lavigne. And if you think being born was difficult, try getting a mortgage.

11. Go on, help yourself to the last cake in life. Living is all about grabbing the last cake. Go on, have it. Enjoy it. The dog licked it.

12. Get up early one morning, when the dew is still on the grass, and go for a walk barefoot in the park. Let me know when you’re doing this so that I can come round and borrow your vacuum cleaner.

13.Do something that excites you every day. Subvert the rules. Turn things on their head. Naturally this does not apply if you’re an airline pilot.

14. How do we know that opening an umbrella indoors is bad luck? Who was the first person to discover this? How many similar things do we do which are good or bad luck without us knowing? Brandishing a vase on a Thursday? Sitting on a pouffe just after lunch? The mind boggles, Mrs Henderson, the mind boggles.

15. Give as much joy to the small things in life as you do to the large. Which is why me and my ex split up.

16. If at first you don’t succeed, then maybe catching bullets with your teeth isn’t the job for you.

17. If you don’t think you can get it out, why the hell did you put it in there in the first place?

Poetry has no relevance.

Poetry has no relevance. That’s what I hear a lot. Oi, knobhead! Your poetry has no relevence! That’s a hell of a heckle. From my publisher.

But it does. Poetry is useful. Honestly.

I was in an airport. Just minding my own business. Just browsing. Hanging around the arrivals gate with a sign reading JUSTIN BIEBER, you know, just on the off chance. When all of a sudden is call comes up. ‘Is there a poet in the building? This is an emergency! We need a poet!’

Turns out this plane was in trouble. The pilot had collapsed at the controls having had an allergic reaction to a Pot Noodle. And then the co pilot, on hearing that the plane was full of zither players on the way back from a zither convention, succumbed to an undiagnosed zither phobia and became a gibbering, incoherent wreck.

So I’m up in air traffic control and they’ve got a zither player in the cockpit and I’m relaying to him the types of controls that he should be operating.

The aerilon speed flaps are the colour of fine Devonshire cream in the early evening sun.

The throttle control knobs are kind of shaped like a veteran Shakespearean actor stooping to pick up a 20p coin

The rudder pedal is broad and flat like a clumsy child’s first attempt to draw a map of Utah.

The undercarriage lever looks like ennui.

And we did it, we landed that plane, between us, soothing it down to a very smooth landing lulled by sonnets and iambic pentameter, just a classy addition of enjambement on its glide slope, we landed it, oh yes, we did, and everyone was saved!

And at that moment I saw the potential of poetry in all its glory to affect the world as a power to be used for the greater good, elevating ordinary souls above the gods and deities, for are we not all messiahs of the modern age, we poets, we brave poets, pens aloft like spears of triumph!

Poetry. Is. Useful.
Hooray!

And then I got home to my normal life of crushing loneliness.

Things I think about when I’m working on a project.

Things I think about when I’m working on a project.

Lately I’ve been putting a show together. In the old days it was simple, it was a process known as ‘putting a show together’. Now it’s called ‘project management’. I’ve been to plenty of meetings where I tell people I’m putting a show together and they say, ‘oh, you’re project managing?’ And some even say, ‘Oh, you’re a theatre maker?’, which is something I’d not heard before and I had to go and look it up. But apparently I’m in project management now and the one rule for project management is that I shouldn’t lose sight of the bigger picture.

The second rule, apparently, is that I can’t just see the bigger picture.

You’ve got to narrow down and focus. But if you narrow down and focus then you lose sight of the bigger picture. So you’ve got to have one eye on the bigger picture while at the same time you narrow down and focus. Often though you may not even see the bigger picture, so you forget what the bigger picture looks like because you’ve been narrowing down and focussing, or perhaps the bigger picture has become another picture entirely while you were narrowing down and focussing, and now that it’s big picture which doesn’t even include the bits that you’ve been narrowing down and focusing on, and the bits that you’ve been narrowing down and focusing on are now out of the picture.

And then you get bogged down in too much detail. Is the bigger picture even a picture? Is the bigger picture portrait or landscape? Why am I faffing about with the narrowing down when the bigger picture needs attention too? And how big is the bigger picture and how much wider is it than the narrowing down? And if I narrow down how far can I narrow down before narrow becomes too narrow? And anyway, who’s checking on all this?

It’s at times like this that I just decide to give up and go and make a cake.

How we danced to the time of music!

How we danced to the time of music!

An autumn park an hour before dark
A council workman leaf blower and bare deciduous branches
Stark against a late low sunshine sky,
The world itself aching to monochrome, a
Glimpse of anorak amid the lengthening shadows.
It was you.

Caught up, tapped your shoulder, you turned and smile
And the years melt like Himalayan snows,
And we hug on the path by the tennis court nets,
Zigzagged and crisscrossed by chain link silhouettes.

You look good, I say, so do you, he lies,
It’s been so long, I can see in his eyes
That it takes a while for the years to unwind,
To bring the details of our shared life to mind,
He’s handsome still, but in a way much more rugged
Than the man I so often hugged as if he were the meaning
Of life
But I was young and stupid
And so was he.

How we danced to the time of music!

He says,
Let us not talk of the past,
Let us build up the present moment,
Rejoice in our shared existence,
Acknowledge the nights that would never end,
Celebrate the fact that we are still friends
And love this present time,
This moment right now,
And this moment too,
That’s what we should do.
Why?, I asked.
Ah jeez, he said.

The contentment we feel as we stand in this park,
Is more than our past, and it will make its mark,
So that we might celebrate the very essence of
Our being here
As two distinct people.
Let’s take this absolute second, this one,
And this one too,
And maybe not that one,
But this one definitely,
And rise with them above the years
We spent together.
Why?, I asked.
Ah jeez, he said.

Let us dance divine in the moment!
And twirl amid the autumn leaves!
And rejoice in the fact that
Two incredibly sexy and gorgeous young men
Can meet in a park so randomly
And not immediately ponder baser activities
As if a giant machine has zapped from us
All ability to lose ourselves to throbbing temptation,
And also,
I have a bus to catch.
Let us celebrate this!
Why?, I asked.
Ah jeez, he said.

Life is a journey we only pass once.
The skies above, weather patterns,
The subtle moving of continental shelves,
Evolution in its slow mutation,
The planets a dance in this ceaseless rotation,
The absolute thrill of being alive,
The miracle of time, the fact that we thrive
Against all odds in our permanent drive
Through time, oh, it is a blessing!
So let us, oh, let us come together
And celebrate this, the present moment, now!

Why?, I asked.
Was it really so bad, was I really so mad?
The moment it ended, did you feel kind of glad?
Did I not provide the love that you needed,
Comfort and companionship on which you feeded
Like a ravenous beast, a ghost for the haunting,
Was being with me really so daunting?
That you wipe me so brazen from your own history,
Wipe the slate clean, pretend it wasn’t to be?
But you were my lover, my one and my only,
And the nights ever since have been so very lonely
In a world that now ached, I managed so slowly
To lift my head nigh and feel slightly less lowly
That . . Hang on . .
Is this about the two hundred quid that you owe me?

I don’t know what you’re taking about, he replied,
And off he suddenly ran.

The Tea Philosopher

(Poem written for my show, Spout, but ultimately not used)

The tea philosopher

The tea philosopher arrived
And sat himself down in the middle
Of the tea shop.
Dressed entirely in black,
With a beret too,
Just like the philosophers you see on tv,
He was only charging five hundred quid
For a full days philosophising,

We kept the tea coming,
Of course,
Because that’s why he was there.
Here you go, we would say.
Socrateas.
He didn’t laugh.
And he sipped it contemplatively,
And every now and then,
Jotted something down in his notebook.

At opportune moments he would
Hold his forefingers in the air,
As if to say, quiet,
The truth is almost upon me.
And we dared hardly breathe.
And we crowded in.
And we watched as he worked
And pondered
And probed the human condition
And we could scarcely believe it
At the end of the day
When he put down his pen,
Stood up, and cleared his throat
And said,

Without the spout,
The tea
Will just stay in the pot.

He then
Gathered his belongings,
Took his pay check,
And left.

That was worth it,
Then.

I’ve gone back to writing short stories! (But I’m still doing comedy performance poetry).

All I ever wanted to be when I was younger was a writer. This is really the only ambition I’ve ever had. My mother had a small bookcase with sliding glass doors and because of this, I’d always seen books as special, and as soon as I could walk, I wanted to be around books and write them, too.

I’d write at first school, filling up pages of scrap paper with words during the lunch hours and break times in which it was raining. I’ve always loved racing days because of this, knowing that I would be able to write instead of run around a playground.

I continued writing short stories all through my teenage years. My initial style was comedy and silliness inspired by my love of stand up and comedy films when I was younger. However, around 1993, something horrific happened. The horrific thing that happened was that I discovered Frank Kafka.

This opened up a whole new world to me, and I now wanted to be an existentialist, a writer of worth and note. Proust, Camus, Borges became my heroes, and I would watch the Booker Prize the same way that my friends watched the FA Cup Final. The result of this was that my writing became ever so serious and worthy and deep and, frankly, unreadable.

This lasted up to around the year 2000 when I started writing comedy short stories again. I rediscovered the art of silliness and whimsy and the joy of going to a writers circle and making people laugh. I won a few competitions, too. Nothing major, but enough to make me feel that this was something I could actually do.

In 2008 I discovered performance poetry, and then spent the majority of the next ten years writing performance poems and performing them, and amazingly, making some sort of career out of doing so. I finally got published and even ended up on the TV and this is still a surprise to me even now. You all know what I do. I make spoken word comedy shows and I take them around the UK and I’m having a whale of a time.

But . .

I’ve just taken a month and a bit off from performing. It’s the longest break I’ve had in ages. During this time, with no gigs to rehearse for or deadlines, I’ve been rediscovering the joys of short stories. And it’s all come back to me! The joy of creating situations and characters, the art of narrative, and even the joy of sitting at a desk and writing, (as most of my poems are created while standing at a music stand). Indeed, is quite forgotten how much like going into a trance it is to write short stories, to become absolutely enveloped in the story and the scenario, at one with the characters and their personalities.

So this is my big declaration. I’ve gone back to short stories! Ok, I haven’t left spoken word and I’m still creating new poems and material, but it’s a reminder that there’s something else that I can do.

The biggest thrill has come with how easy it is now to submit work to magazines. Indeed, this is something that I never used to do at all. And I am very pleased to announce, too, that I’ve already had two stories accepted for publication.

Spoken word and comedy performance poetry will continue to be my full time focus, naturally, but it feels like I’ve become more in touch with myself through writing comedy short stories, and more in touch with the dreams of the version of myself who would look out the window and see the rain and think, wow, I’m going to do some writing today!

Here’s one of my stories, on Ink, Sweat and Tears:

http://www.inksweatandtears.co.uk/pages/?p=20781

An introvert’s guide to performing

I’m not the most outgoing person. I don’t go out much and I probably have around two or three friends. I’m not a big drinker and I hardly ever go to pubs. And yet in spite of all this, I’ve managed to make something of a career as a comedy poet who stands on stage and does outlandish things and makes people laugh. How on earth did this happen, and how did it come about?

For a start I’ve always been what you might call an introvert and it’s probably still the same now. Part of working in the arts is having the confidence to put yourself forward for opportunities, and this is still an area where I struggle. I’ve never applied for funding or any other kind of sponsorship because, well, that’s not the sort of thing you do, is it? I hardly ever apply for big gigs or showcases, either. If someone asks, that’s great, and it makes me really happy for the rest of the day. But the idea of asking them gives me the willies.

The version of me who appears on stage is nothing like the version of me who exists ninety nine percent of the time. The persona I’ve created is just that. I don’t even wear the same sort of clothes on a day to day basis. And this is interesting, because for the ninety nine percent of the time that I’m not performing, the very idea of it also gives me the willies. It’s not my natural environment. Again the thought comes to mind that this is not the sort of thing that should be happening to someone like me!

Social media creates avatars, versions of ourselves that we want the world to see. I see poets and comedians in the real world acting more or less the same as the version of themselves that appears on stage, and to this day it makes me wonder where they find the energy. My other little rule is that I never mention my comedic poetic adventures in ‘real life ‘. I’ve never shown any of my friends any of my books or videos, and frankly, if I did, I’d feel very embarrassed indeed, and as for my family, well, Ive never even mentioned it to them at all. For a start, nobody is interested. It’s like living a bizarre double life, like some kind of poetic super hero.

But that’s what makes it so amazing. Right at this moment, reading this, I wonder how on earth I can possibly stand in front of strangers and not completely clam up. I go through a comprehensive sequence of preparation methods before I perform, including putting on a costume, doing my hair, changing my glasses, lying on the floor, doing breathing exercises, and then listening to very loud music. I think it’s fair to say that I’m not a natural performer!

Often, though, I’ll be on a bus, or doing my laundry, or walking home from work, and I’ll think of what I’ve done and what I’ve achieved, and it really makes me smile. Sure, it feels like it’s been done by someone else, but it’s a person I know really very well. This last year I’ve worked very hard on my performance and next I need to start working on being a bit more forthcoming and what my dad would describe as ‘pushy’. I’m like the kid in the corner who wants to join in but is too scared of the big kids.

I was chatting about this to another friend, who’s a poet, and she reckons it might be a class thing. I don’t have that middle class sense of entitlement that some of the bigger names might have, nor do I have the confidence that I have a voice that should be heard. I take great comfort in those who are naturally quiet, who seem to have made a successful career, and have done so through a mix of intelligence and luck, and I think, oh, I think, wow, I, too, had been really lucky!

Festive Greetings!

I’d just like to wish everyone I know a wonderful festive period and new year.

2019 has been mega for me and there are several things I’m proud of, such as my show about tea, (Spout), the little web series I made, (Unbearable Lightness), a little book I made of previous show scripts, (Gazebo), and other projects too, such as In the Glare of the Neon Yak performed with the jazz band Shadow Factory, and my one-off show The Moon Wrapped in String, which I performed with violinist Sharon Hubbocks. On top of this, I undertook my first tour of the UK, which was hard work but flipping amazing!

And there’s so much to look forward to for 2020. I’m putting another collection together with Burning Eye for 2021, and I’m working on a new show to accompany the book.

The other things I’ve been up to is that I’ve been doing a lot of writing. I got in to performance poetry more or less by accident and chance, and before this I’d always written comedy short stories and scripts. Lately I’ve been returning to these and finding my voice again as a writer. That’s the reason why I’ve been a bit quiet lately on the performance front, I’ve fallen in love with narrative and stories again and I’ve been busy working on short stories.

Naturally this is a time when you look back. The sad passing of Melanie Crump was a shock to the Torbay spoken word scene. We had a few lovely events including one at the Blue Walnut Cafe in honour of her and her work. I do believe that Torbay has the most diverse spoken word community in the country with the emphasis very much on comedy and humour, and long may this continue. It’s also incredibly supportive and friendly.

I’ve read a lot this year, as ever. I recommend books by the wonderful Melanie Branton and Becky Nuttall, Tom Sastry and the forthcoming collection from Tom Austin. Jason Disley’s CD is amazing, a mix of jazz and voice, and the DVD from Jamie Harry Scrutton showcasing his amazing animation. In fact, there’s so much good stuff out there that I’m sure I’ve missed something.

As a lowfi Christmas special, I’ve made a recording of my show, Spout, and you can find a link to it right here: https://youtu.be/EtBTc7ANM6M

I hope everyone has a great year next year, and thanks for everything. See you out on the road very soon!

A Song for Love and the Tundra (A poem for Christmas)

A song for love and the tundra

It’s a cold night.
Each chilled breath vapour cloud
Looks like a cartoon think bubble.
Frost gnaws like a zombie rabbit.
Certain things shrivel up.
But I don’t mind.
I’m on the station platform,
The steel sided sleeper service carriage to my right,
Windows lit, inviting.

My cabin awaits to protect me
Against the endless harsh tundra.

I clamber back on board, the cold
Swirls around me, the ghosts of
Fussy butlers. I traverse the empty
Corridors, narrow, labyrinthine,
I’m a ferret in a metal warren,
The buffet car decorated in fairy lights and tinsel
As fellow passengers raise a toast to the holiday season,
To the northern lights, cheers!
To polar bears, cheers!
To the warmth of new friends, cheers!
And off we go again.

Flicker flakes of snow skitter the window
As I lie back on my cosy bunk,
Warmth radiating from mechanical vents
The breath of a tame robot,
Yet no comfort do I feel as thoughts
Sting more than the frost, the sudden idea,
That I
Am the only gay in a thousand mile radius.

No glitter on the tundra, no mirror disco balls,
No Hungry love puppies feeling mushy in the slush,
No buxom gay seeking company in the Hudson Bay Company,
No life no joy no dancing nothing, nothing nothing,
And then,
As if seeking comfort through the pursed queenly lips
Of those generations who quivered
In shacks and igloos and on sleds and kayak,
I picked up my phone
And logged in to Grindr
Hoping to find in this endless nothing
Love sublime.

Yet
The screen is blank.
Yet another silent night.

Through the cold deep night comes the mournful whistle
Of the lead locomotive, the railroad line a straight parallel beam
Across endless tundra, incredibly straight,
Unwavering, resolute in its adherence to what should be.

Bugger,
I whisper.

But then, oh, then!
A Christmas miracle!

A flicker of wifi some signal of the soul
As I stare out at the show,
My mobile phone is aglow!
And a lone face of beauty manifests on the screen,
It feels like a dream
He’s the cutest I’ve ever seen,
And his name is a cry for the centuries,
A beautiful poetry which lights up my day,
DildoSlut4000, and he’s only
One hundred and fifty metres away!

Hark! The herald angels sing,
Glory to this sexy thing!
Like three kinds following the yonder star
I get up and stand in the carriage of my car,
My Grindr app raised on high
Like a diamond in the sky,
App with royal beauty bright,
Come back to my cabin and spend the night!
Like lovers of old we’ll dance and pray,
He’s only one hundred and fifty metres away!

The night breaths a chill yet the warmth within
Propels me from my cabin,
Along the carpeted corridor as the train rocks,
Eager, phone raised,
Past windows still and each a cold black canvas
With flickers of frost on the frames,
Guided by this handsome avatar and I run
As the metres tick down, one hundred and fifty,
One hundred and forty, one thirty five,
Good evening Mrs Higgins, yet, it is chilly tonight,
One hundred and thirty, one twenty five . .

As I hurry in through my heart beats insane
In time with the onerous chuffing of the train
And a sleigh bell jingle from the depths of my brain.
One hundred metres remain!

Through the buffet I go and the train begins to slow,
As o envisage his kiss in this land filled with snow,
My own Santa and his sack and his jovial ho ho,
This long cruel slog to be with him and his Yule log,
That we might dance divine, our hearts entwined,
That I might enjoy
My very own feast of Steven,
Fifty metres, thirty, and ten,
I check my phone again.
The night is dark by my heart is aflame.

But what’s this?
I’ve run out of train . .

A locomotive cul de sac,
Yet I can’t go back.
No sexy stranger, no gay in a manger
Do I see in this empty carriage,
Just my own reflected in the dark, dark glass,
Looking out on a world of endless snows,
The train, it slows, it slows, it stops.

Ladies and gentlemen.
We’ll be stopping here at Elbow Junction
For around half an hour or so.
It may be called Elbow Junction
But the joint is hardly rocking.
Stretch your legs if you like.
Watch out for ice.

A desolate scene, this
Mid journey pit stop.
A frost sparkled platform
In a landscape bereft of hope.
The train, a ticking tensing metal beast,
An eerie interloper,
Metal sides shining in a faint lunar glow.
I clamber down, my phone throwing out
It’s own corona of electric light.

A wooden hut, a shack, a cabin, mismatched timbers,
Makeshift windows and a slanting front door
Shrinks back from the platform as if afraid, yet
No station building is this, a light within
Hints at some kind of life, domesticity
In the frozen north.
The door opens and any hope
That this might be the home of
DildoSlut4000 evaporates as
An old man shuffles forwards,
Long flowing beard and the kind of face
That looks like it needs ironing.

Sayeth he,

I’m a track side shack dweller,
Yessiree I am,
A track side shack dweller,
Big beardy man.
I’m a track side shack dweller,
Never going back, fella.
City’s full of crack sellers
A track side shack dweller,
Is what I am now.

Hey there young man,
Why do you look so glum?
You’re not the one who’s cold all day
Everything’s gone numb.
Living in a track side shack
Certainly ain’t fun
Hey there young man,
Why do you look so glum?

I’m a track side shack dweller,
And you’re a tourist guy.
Off to see the polar bears?
And really, god knows why.
What’s that that you got there,
The things you city folk buy!
An app, you say? Let’s have a look,
I don’t want to pry . . .

Oh . . .

A toothless grin from my ancient companion,
A scratch of his unkempt hair, a rustle as he
Nustles the stubble of his beard,
He shuffles In a half circle, comes back and looks again.

Who is it?, I ask, suddenly perplexed.
Now there’s a face, says he, I haven’t seen
For quite a while.

Have you ever felt magic on the breeze in the night?
When the only sound is the majestic barking of polar bears,
Or geese in flight,
The lonesome whistle of distant trains?
When the jiggling wiggling brilliance of the aurora boealis
Seem scant compensation for an existence which drains
Every last hope of love?
Have you ever slept fitful as the frost creeps in,
Shrunk back from the world beneath a pile of bear skin,
Felt the abject loneliness of no one else around,
Startled, alert, at the slightest sound?
Have you ever felt the man sized gap where love should be?

Past midnight now, it’s Christmas Eve.
And that, my young friend, is the train driver,
Steve.

He told me he’d been taken off his route,
He told me this
Just before he gave me the boot.
His face may be, but his behaviour ain’t cute.

At this, like a phantom, a man obsessed,
My elderly companion runs down the track to the engine car,
And I follow, careful not to slip on the ice
Catching up just as he bangs on the locomotive door,
His fist a blur, shouting obscenities into the night.
The door opens, and there he stands,
DildoSlut4000.

You bastard! You fiend!, the shack dweller yells.
I don’t understand why you had to lie!
The nights I’ve spent, wondering why
You’d just disappear,
And twice a week these ghost trains would halt
And I’d stay in bed, my heart would jolt
On hearing your horn in the middle of the night.

(And also, I give a little wave.
Hi!)

He steps down from the cab, this saintly man,
His face a benevolent mask, the symmetry of his features,
The classical beauty of his earlobes, he
Stands forlorn before the bearded individual,
And then, like lovers lost, all rancour forgotten,
They throw their arms around one another,
A smothering of sobs and limbs and apologies.

(And also, I give a little wave.
Hi!)

Through the still of the night
comes the cry.
Allllll aboard!
And I clamber up to the carriage
Feeling within a renewed understanding
Of the world.

In the warmth of my cabin, I let out a sigh,
It is not for me to ponder on why
But revel in a world in which love
Is always worth the try.

We pull out from Elbow Junction, and pick up speed,
And soon into a flurry of snow we proceed this Christmas Eve,
And sleep begins to overtake me,
And the miles seem somehow less empty
Than they had been.
For Christmas is a time of togetherness,
Nevertheless, I feel hardly blessed ,
And as I undress I feel bereft.

But simultaneously lifted.
For who knows what led to
This romance,
The track side shack dweller
And DildoSlut4000,
Spinning their love into the winter gloom,
Two hearts empty that both found room,
A soul afire in this great northern sublimity,
Then it could also happen to me?

And as Christmas Eve asserts through the night,
My senses take flight, and I dance an inner dance
Happy on love that it should find a chance,
Even in this ceaseless gloom,
A lonely cabin,
A tiny room,
A cold steel train
And the northern lights a flicker.

Two souls reconnected after years apart.
How glad I was I’d played my part.

(2019)