Next Gig: Lewisham's (Pre-)Black History Month special

This Friday evening marks the start of Black History Month at Manor House Library in Lee, Lewisham. Alongside Andrea Encinas, I'll be taking you through some lyrical stories of Afro-Caribbean experience in London. This will be a warm event, complete with Questions and Answers at the end, so pull up a library chair (or bean-bag) and come along! More details here.

Listed Buildings

to those who understand...

She says they’ve opened up a new restaurant

up on one of the top floors

up one of those new supersized shiny skyscrapers that have recently risen up

in the square mile somewhere

with a perky waiter

with a smile as opaque and crooked as the Thames

each jagged-edged tooth a borough boundary

each curling lip an M25 pile-up

She says I’d like it.

If not the waiter

then, like, at least the plates

(which I imagine will be square

or, at least, oddly-shaped

and punctuated with a dot of food

or maybe a block

or a cube

and I remember the word soupcon makes me tingle)   

She says I’ll like the concoctions too

a cosmopolitan or Manhattan

shaken to match the skyline

while I’m elevated half a mile high up from the floor.

I say elevated because we don’t say lift these days

because we’ve shifted our language into globalisms

neologisms and semi-colloquialisms we used to get corrected for

like 24/7

and sometimes I need to sift through my lost vocabulary

and wonder where the words have gone

like a song eaten

up by the cassette player

chewed tape lost

to my parents’ attic

static from the TV screen I used to feel

until the crown of my head went numb.

Before they complained we’d all been dumbed-down

when we were really young

and not just pretending

there was a never-ending stream of words

we used to parade

on the upper deck of the 123 bus

banana-yellow and painted

blue with our pre-rehearsed curses

while Year 11s smoked out of scratched windows

and you and me chanted verses

from mixtapes you stole.

There are words that have long-graduated

from sink-Estate schools

queued in jobcentres

been left unemployed

and doled out

no doubt on some Essex barstool

where women dressed as schoolgirls order

vodka and lime.

I haven’t actually been to Romford

All those years I was just passing through

somewhere between Time and Envy

just me and my portion of chips

and a shoulder bag full of dirty clothes

waiting on the Friday-night busstop

with that top-of-your-voice karaoke belting

I believe that children are the future...

I felt that line

even with tinny headphones

a shivering puffa hood

and paranoia woven around my neck.

I felt that my future would come in time

and the space between us,

between our worlds,

would collapse.

And perhaps, while the helpline volunteer

with the chirpy voice of unreason

chipped in that everything would one day be ok

in that consoling way professionals always do

I saw myself

in the future

sporting a shiny new tower for a life

with a square mile for a job

and a wife with a smile that says home.

And perhaps, after I put down the phone

and held down a dot of a tear

and forced a laugh right back at you

for the prank that you never knew went wrong

it was then I learnt to embrace long silences

for absent words

and I learnt to curse

and I learnt to downgrade my dreams from a skyscraper

to a grave where I could bury them

along with all those redundant phrases

lost somewhere between the North Circular extension

and the tension we felt on the Central Line.

I want you to know

there is no darker destination

than Hainault via Newbury Park

on a low battery

and an angry stomach

no flattery more odious than an insincere smile

and no square mile that I haven’t trod down

in this opaque city

looking for you

and finding God.

I want you to know that things get better

and that Shards of glass posing as monuments

will never rise higher than your questioning soul

and that there is a skyscraper within you

as odd-shaped and crooked

as the city you roam

and that there is a banquet on the end of your tongue

a restaurant rising from deep within

which you can call home.

I want you to pull up a seat on a barstool

get comfortable in your skin

and invite your friends to feast.

I want you to elevate yourself from under the giant thumb

you’ve created out of East End churches

and Mockney and Jafaican

and I want you to find your own language.

Then, and only then,

will you manage to order something

out of that chirpy, gravelly voice

that you can drink

Then, and only then,

can you bring up a laugh

that bubbles through the buildings

listed in your lungs

and break down the walls of this city

destroy the young boundaries that divide us

the tall towers that hide our shadows 

and find me, whole.

And Today's Random Word Is...

...Borrowing

Hmm.

Upcoming Gig... Last minute... Bang Said the Gun tonight!

Okay, very short notice but I'll be featuring at BSTG tonight in Borough due to a change-around with dates. Come along - it will great!

Poetry Update...

So, last month I left a few threads loose.

Rap vs Poetry again

First up, I wanted to comment on the Rap vs Poetry gig. Luckily, in my failure to do so, Angry Sam (is it me or does his name sound more like a rapper's than a poet's?*) gives a pretty good analysis of how the night went down in his blog.

I've found a video of Kat Francois during the final battle round and I only wish you could see some of the audience's expressions:

Let's just say none of the poets pulled any punches, while some of the rappers were far more respectful!* In any case, poetry won this time but it was all good - both rap and more conventional poetry (bearing in mind that rap is actually a form of poetry) have a lot to learn from each other. I think I said as much on NTS radio's Re:Versed show a few days beforehand (check August 13th show) but I can't be sure any more.

*that's what the night was about: flipping expectations.

Freeee-style

In the run-up to the Rap vs Poetry show, I'd been writing a tailored poem for almost every gig I've performed at. For instance, at a student union gig at University of London, I researched some of the history of its colleges beforehand and wrote something just before the gig... What came out was something that surprised me (in a good way) but I'll probably not use it again, at least not in its current form.

Likewise, at Sage & Time's birthday in July, I was lucky enough to be one of the final poets, so I managed to incorporate some of the themes running through the night into a birthday poem. I've found it pretty exhilarating writing up until the last minute and delivering a personal response to the theme of the evening.

My Christmas poem (which I put most of up under my Edinburgh post) once again was a reaction to the night itself; there are few occasions where I'll reuse it but I'm glad I was able to come up with something for the night, rather than rock up to a show and recite from my back catalogue regardless of what the night's about. I hope that I can continue to do this!

Guernsey

Being in Guernsey for five days and part of the team organising their first ever schools' slam has been especially rewarding. At the very least, you feel a great degree of responsibility when bringing in concepts for the first time. One teacher introduced us, excitedly, as rappers: "Today, class, you're going to learn how to rap slam [does hand movement]". Needless to say, the kids were a little less excited when we said they didn't have to rap but we were really going to take them through a bunch of poems, and get them to write their own! All in all, it went well and I learnt a lot.

I feel this deserves another blog post but, for the moment, I'd like to end this with a pic from near the coast, where I stayed up till sunrise after a particularly deep conversation.

Spoken Word Educators Scheme

This also deserves another post, but so you know it's coming, I have new employment and new studies coming up in the horizon... Yippee! (horizon - see what I did there with the pic and everything?) I shall def fill in this space within the next 24 hours so please come back!

A'ite. Arrivederci!

And Today's Random Word Is...

...Tin

(Does what it says, really)

Next Gig: Canterbury Street Slam on Sunday

So, on Sunday, I'll be trotting off to a sunny Canterbury for the Wise Words Festival. Yes, you could call it a pilgrimage of sorts, or an arts extravaganza bursting out from the usual libraries, cafes and pubs you'd expect to find them in and hitting the streets instead.

I'll be slamming along with Peter Hayhoe, Paul Cree (I'll probably rob the former and pay the other), Emma Jones (of London Slam Team fame. Whoop whoop!), Paula Varjack and Christian Watson. If you haven't heard them, where have you been?

More info on the festival can be found here, plus you can engage with them on the twittersphere, as demonstrated below:

And Today's Random Word Is...

...String

(in case you don't know what this is about, every few days I pluck a word out of the ether with the help of the trusty Random Word Generator - in my 'links' - and, voila! Sometimes I use it to string together a few sentences in a freewrite, sometimes I use it as a spark word, sometimes I'm too tied up with work to do anything with it, other than announce what the word is, and sometimes I repeat it out loud as I'm walking through the streets and no one else has any idea why).

Mind (The Gap)

Another freewrite, just written now... I'll work on this in the morning. 

My mind doesn't work nights

Gets phased by off-licence strip lights

With thousand-watt bulbs

And unforgiving staff

And my mind doesn't laugh 

Not enough these days

Doesn't spend enough time in comedy clubs

Watching half-crazed clowns

Making fart jokes and anecdotes about TV shows

I should know but don't watch

My mind doesn't have a plot

To lose

Doesn't have feet to place

In others' shoes

Or a cubicle in which to change

In fact

My mind doesn't give a shit

It doesn't need to be changed
And powdered and wiped

Doesn't need to be freed

To run riot

Doesn't need to fight

Doesn't need to have an eye

For an eye's sake

Because my mind doesn't do nights

Doesn't like this shift

This shake

Of midnight makeshift landscapes

Threatening to make it slip

Make it lose its grip

Flip too much

Make quick misjudgements

That only fit the rhythm of jerky nightbuses

Snaking down avenues

It would never use come daylight

This time of night

My mind skirts bruised surfaces 

Gets dirt in its tyres

Gravel-punctured and hurt

And creates skid-marks

On paper

And, later, they'll call this a joy-ride

And Today's Random Word Is...

...Deficiency

(And I'm sadly lacking the wherewithal to comment any further...)