TONIGHT! RRRantanory Little Stories

The Tea Box is hosting some solid storytelling tonight with Paul Eccentric.

It's going to be great. It's going to have Anna Le, me, some stories and poetry, and the opportunity to buy tea... what more do you need on a Friday evening? Come along!

And Today's Random Word Is...

...Ram

(Great. Yet another thing to bleat about) 

What I Was Going to Add (giving props where due)

...I was fortunate in the last Slam I was at - the two poets that touched me the most were the ones who approached me afterwards (even though, in the post-performance adrenaline rush I didn't say so in as many words). I'm learning to change my habits, but if someone or something makes me think, I usually slink away and ponder it for a while - and I don't tell them directly. Likewise, if someone I don't know comes up to me after a poetry set and says they like a poem I've performed, I get mildly embarrased about it, even though I appreciate it later. In fact, having someone I really respect and admire comment on my blog once almost crippled me for about a week, which is weird, considering part of the reason I write is to be heard.

So anyway, there were these two poems that I connected strongly with. The first was by a poet from Bath, Thommie, and it was a desperate poem about heartbreak and the various ways in which she could cure it by finding a religion. There was some sharp humour there too - one line went something like: "Who cares if the Pope was a member of the Nazi League? I don't want a Pope. I want a higher being". There was something honest and raw about it... and yeah, I found it touching, and it's stayed with me all week. I'll try and link the poem when the video comes up from the night, and maybe I'll write more.

The other poet, Ben, was from Birmingham and he did a seriously humorous take on the role of swearing on the mic - "F-bombs" and all - and how some people are too precious about it.

Fuck and Shit 

So, great, it's a family event, you've been told, just as you get on the stage, and you have to mentally scan everything you'd planned to say, just in case it might be deemed offensive. The problem is, when a family has to rely on a poet's auto-censorship skills in order not to be corrupted, there's a real issue!

I'm mostly against censorship because it's difficult to draw the line. I'd prefer if people weren't bigoted, racist, sexist, violent, homophobic or just generally ignorant and foul-mouthed just for the sake of it, but I don't believe thought and expression should be over-policed. An easy way to deter people who are truly offensive is to boo and heckle. In my experience, poetry audiences are far too polite... I even once sat most of the way through a poem at a slam where the poet seemed to be justifying his sexual advances towards some of his (teenage) pupils and, aside from a few shocked faces, no one challenged him. But, crucially, the poem contained no swearing, so it was permissable. In fact, there are situations I can see where his poem would be allowed and one of mine (Tell Me...) wouldn't be, because of the word "fuck" at the end (which I have, unfortunately, had to alter a few times for "family-friendly" occasions).

Part of the reason I had to end the poem like that was because it reminded me of a teacher - also a clergyman at the time - who gave a talk in an assembly when I was at secondary school. I was maybe twelve or thirteen at the time. The details are fuzzy because I was switched off and it was early morning, and he was boring. He said something about world poverty and starving children and help and doing something, or even just caring about it and then at the end he said something like "most of you don't give a shit". He finished: "In fact, most of you are more interested in the fact that I've just used the word shit and you haven't even got a clue what I've just said". He walked out and, I believe, he quit his job soon afterwards.

I still, to this day, feel like a real shit after that speech. He was right. Unlike other schools I've worked at recently, it was a bit of a shocker if one of our teachers swore - let alone a religious one - in an assembly and in front of other staff, including our stern headteacher. And so we talked about it all morning. Had he finally lost it? Yet the really important message - part of which I recall was about engaging in the world beyond our petty squabbles - had been completely eaten away by that self-same pettiness and lack of outward thinking that he was talking about in the first place. We were using much more offensive language between ourselves - and sometimes at teachers - both inside and outside of the classroom so we had no right to be that sensationalised by one word.

What I love about (good) Spoken Word is its rawness; it's all about the poet and the mic, without all the frills of music and props. If a poet is going to express themselves fully, they should have the right to swear and holler all they like. If what they say is truly odious, they should be challenged or shouted down. Of course, children should be encouraged to engage with poetry from an early age. They should also be protected from topics they're not ready for.

But, leaving behind what should happen is the basic reality that if you limit the types of words poets are allowed to use, you are watering down freedom of expression, which in turn can mean patronising an audience with words the poet thinks they should say, rather than the ones that they have. Because children often swear themselves. And they know adults do. Creating a veneer of prudishness only protects those who wish to deny those two facts, in the mean time, distancing others from the real essence of Spoken Word. Of course, everything in moderation, but I think I'd rather children hear adult language in the context of creative performance than only elsewhere.   

Promises, Shpromises...

Yeah, I know... I said I'd be showering the blogosphere with lyrical wit and generic musings and other such labrish on a regular basis but, you know, everything in its time. The past couple of months, for me, have seen a lot of change - and I'm hoping for the better - and so I'll be sharing some of that in due course.

London Team Slam


Meanwhile, some good news for this week: somewhere in London (Tooting to be precise) there is a gold-sprayed Action-man-style trophy with dangerously jerky arms to certify that the London Slam team won a prize at Bristol's first National Team Poetry Slam. Phew! If that statement needs any more emotion, there's a tear-inducing video to come, once I can deal with my computer problems... In the meanwhile, let's be content with a couple of pics:

If you've seen my previous blog about slams (link later) you'll know that I don't like when they're taken too seriously. In my opinion, it's a great way of sharing words in a competitive, non-pretentious and non-rambling way (more than three minutes, dude, and they deduct points!). Slam has its flaws but also its beauty, just like any other poetry format. It's also rare to stick together a bunch of people from cities I've never visited in the name of poetry.

Ok, time for me to reset this computer, unfortunately, so will have to continue this later!

Ciao for now

Updates are coming real real soon...

That's right, thick and fast, they're coming! But need to wait for a video or two to upload and I have work on now so should be with you later tonight/early tomorrow.

And Today's Random Word Is....

..Temper!!

Listen to me roar!

Grrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A right royal cheek!

So, last weekend - as in the really long double-bank holiday weekend that ended last Tuesday - I was mostly in Sussex poeticising to the festival masses at Meadowlands. It started pretty bright and sunny and ended damp and cold, as all bank holidays should. More pics will emerge over time that weren't taken on a shaky camera phone, but irreverent poets, papier-mâché griffins and bell towers with disco balls aren't bad ways of summing up my experience.

I got carried away in my dislike for anything Jubilee-themed, spurred on by the fact that it was impossible to get away from it; suddenly, the most un-patriotic people I know were digging up Union flags from nowhere and following the long parade along the Thames river. The news was suspended - at least on the BBC - until Tuesday evening and I felt like an alien for being detached from it all. Even the criticism the BBC received was largely to do with how the river pageant was covered rather than the fact that nothing else was covered at all until it ended, including deaths in Nigeria and Syria... all irrelevant.

One of the poems I performed was written in the car park outside Sainsburys on my way down to the festival and sums up how I felt at the time:

How can we complain?
Two wet bank holidays
We wouldn't get
If our reigning Queen
Was deposed or guillotined

I suppose I can't be mean;
To oppose innocuous waving of flags
Over tepid tea
Sounds bitter to me

You see maybe it's my jealousy
Maybe it's treachery to suggest
That to invest in true Britishness
Ought to mean less
Of the monarchy
And not more
Parades to be rained on by reality

Maybe it's a fallacy
But can we really call this democracy
When it's surrounded by the hypocrisy
Of hereditary privilege?
And would it be wise
To swap our Gracious Queen with her pomp and pride
for Royalty-free lives?

I don't know
But while my cucumber sandwiches get soggy
And my Pimms and lemonade gets flat
And everyone gets dressed up in the Union Jack

Part of me envisions
A Jubilee with no monarchy
Where we do not celebrate dynasties
Congratulate inequalities
Which are regenerated with each new generation
And venerated without hesitation

Let's question our current situation
Reassess the equation
And not get hung up the hype
Blown about like cheap bunting
On the jubilee wind
Blindly following
Swallowing the saccharine sentimental celebration

For we are subject to no one
But our own whims
We are Kings and Queens
In our own rights
We should celebrate our own lives
And think twice
About these parasites

Although yes, an extra bank holiday is

Rather nice :)

 As my change in tone suggests, despite my feelings on the matter, I'm prepared to accept that I'm the odd one out. So, on Tuesday, I ended up walking through a street party and smiling back at people who wouldn't otherwise have looked my way were it not for that warm blur of good feeling passing through (some) streets.

And meanwhile...

the festival season has sprung up quicker than my tent on a rainy day. I won't be that busy with poetry gigs over the summer but I hope to go up to Edinburgh for a couple of days... So I was happy to see AN ENTIRE SECTION dedicated to Spoken Word. How this has come about is explained in detail here. 

As I keep commenting, spoken word/performance poetry seems to be taking on a different hold now in the UK. But as the link shows, that creates whole new problems. It is interesting to see, for instance, that Bang Said the Gun continues to self-identify as "comedy" rather than "spoken word" - and understandably too; the concept of comedy appeals to a much wider audience than "poetry" or "spoken word", which can sometimes sound too clever or high-brow for what the terms actually describe. 

I often get asked to explain what performance poetry is exactly and how that differs from written poetry. I now always use comedy as an example. A joke can be funny written down, yet it takes on another quality when it is told; a comedian can manipulate sounds, volume, tone, timing and body language to convey a joke and this is where the difference lays. 

Spoken poetry is, in many ways, more immediately accessible than written poetry, and a lot of other art forms; it is now for the rest of us to catch up and embrace it. And maybe one day, perhaps, comedy acts, theatre acts and musicians will be begging to be included in the "Spoken Word" section.