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...)

August Mega-Rant

So I started writing this last week and already I'm finding I've cooled off a bit... My opinions on things change a lot but here are some of my thoughts and, of course, I'm willing to be challenged....

A wee while ago, before the Jubilympics cast a Union-flag-shaped patriotic gloss over this green and pleasant land, I had some – limited – faith in our news broadcasting systems. The format used to go something like this: we would start with some breaking international news, before some diplomatic incident or another, followed by the national political issue of the day, other national news, an and finally... type story and sport before the local news and weather.

More specifically, if thirty-four workers from a British-owned company were shot dead by police somewhere in the world, and a further seventy-odd injured – under very dubious circumstances – unless there’s a major sporting event on, I would have expected that it would get some decent coverage right at the start of a news bulletin. But when the police chief simply states that “this is not time for finger-pointing” (although evidently it was one for trigger-pointing) I was a bit put out to see these events disintegrate so quickly from the headlines.

The Pussy Riot Dolls

Ok, I admit I can often be premature and reactionary. Also, there hasn’t been a shortage of massacre and  maybe there isn’t enough space for more misery; it’s easy to be worn down by endless and seemingly senseless violence. Much to my shame, I’ve lost track of what’s going on in Syria – from what I read and view, there seems to be a continually rising death toll and a mass exodus for those fortunate enough to be able to escape to Turkey without being sent back. But the more bloodshed reported, the more it blurs into one huge killing zone that I feel unable to do very much about.   

All of that taken into consideration, I was saddened to see such a blatant example of the sexier stories winning over. One case that springs to mind is Pussy Riot. Let’s get this clear from the start – I greatly believe in freedom of speech (which includes the freedom to blog, express controversial views, demonstrate, protest and shock or offend people, without it being an explicitly criminal offence) and I think what they did was incredibly brave. In fact, I support anyone who cares enough about what happens to them and freedom of speech in general to protest about the matter (and, in fact, I know people who demonstrated outside the Russian embassy in Edinburgh, and I support them wholeheartedly).

Having made my disclaimer above, there is little too surprising about the story: plenty of people - and many women - over many years have found themselves silenced, in one form or another, in Russia for dissidence. Somehow, the way the news has treated the story and the perverse voyeurism of these women in a glass box, the way I’ve heard them referred to as “girls”, and the opportunism of getting a few popstars to comment about it has made it a juicier story. I can’t help feeling we play with their plight as if they were Russian dolls rather than the latest in an increasingly long line of protesters trying to be heard.

All the above said, it has drawn my attention to what is going on in Russia; it’s also drawn my attention to the way we still refer to women.

Rape: a love story?

Speaking of, there have been several incidents of rape gaffes, but two in particular drew my attention in a really bad way. On both sides of the Atlantic we seem to have out-of-touch men, prone to controversy, discussing the legitimacy and authenticity of rape. I’ve learnt that supposedly intelligent people believe that if a woman has been"legitimately" raped, they won’t get pregnant. And it kind of reminds me of a quote in the Old Testament about how to assess the "legitimacy" of rape; Deuteronomy 22: 23-28 would seem to suggest that women in the country can be legitimately raped, but in the city there are no grounds:

²³ If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, ²⁴ you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the young woman because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you.
²⁵ But if out in the country a man happens to meet a young woman pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. ²⁶ Do nothing to the woman; she has committed no sin deserving death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders a neighbor, ²⁷ for the man found the young woman out in the country, and though the betrothed woman screamed, there was no one to rescue her.

It continues:

²⁸ If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, ²⁹ he shall pay her father fifty shekels^[c] of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

(NIV) 

And those verses, of course, remind me of the recent Morrocan case, where 16 year-old Amina Filali killed herself after being forced to marry her attacker. Several commentators went straight on the rampage about Islamic law but this practice is certainly not unique to Islam!  

In my last post, I mentioned that I found it a bit overwhelming to hear three poems about rape in two nights during my trip to New York last month; now I can see how it might be necessary to voice out to the public that it isn’t cool to make these judgements about the men and women who have been raped, not about the “legitimacy” of the rape, the “genuineness” of it, or any other such moral pronouncements that have no legal or scientific grounding.

George Galloway, of course, commented about how he wouldn’t consider Julian Assange to be a rapist, even if the allegations that he had sex with a woman in her sleep without her express consent prove to be true; apparently, the fact that they had had sex before makes it clear that she has consented for eternity. And that kind of reminds me of the fact that before 1991 married women in the UK could not legally prosecute their husbands for rape, and many countries still do not recognise the concept of marital rape. The consent once, consent forever principle seems to apply here.

What both men, in my opinion, have failed to see is that rape does not have to be the violent, bloody, stranger-in-the-park with a knife type of experience that get all the headlines. The law regarding consent is simple enough: all parties involved must be of legal age and able to give consent, e.g. not asleep or too drunk to notice. Of course, up and down the country there are people who have drunken one-night stands on a Friday night followed by hazy-memory Saturday mornings; consent can be a (Shade of...?) grey issue in many cases, but it is up to courts to decide in these matters, and it is only with a touch of sensitivity that we can pass comment.

Naked Harry

And then, something else that ticked me off was all of this Prince Harry stuff. And I was kind of in two minds about the story. The excuses for his behaviour go something along the lines of: he’s a normal, red-blooded (read red-headed? or at least red faced... and has been read the riot act by Prince Charles, supposedly!), single, heterosexual young man; he’s in the army (and you know what it’s like in the army, eh? Bit of harmless fun for a change); he deserves some privacy etc etc.

My reason not to comment was the fact that I already spend too much time talking about the Royal Family for someone who claims to not care about them. But then a friend of mine made this simple comment: what if he’d been a woman? Far from being a “lad”, he would be a "slut". Let’s face it: a female Harry with naked pictures circulating the internet would be seen as an even more complete embarrassment to what he represents: the monarchy, the ruling class, the prim and the proper, an institution that not only rules over Britain and the Church of England, but over the Commonwealth too. They may have changed the succession laws so rights to the throne don't just favour first-born males, but it doesn't mean we'll see the rights to make an idiot of oneself gender-neutral as well.

It’s just another great reminder for me on how far we have to go... 

Paralympics

And then, speaking of how far we have to go, I feel a little disturbed about the way the Paralympics have been advertised. The tagline "forget everything you know about humans; meet the superhumans" was originally used to promote the games, with this video:

There's something slightly sinister for me about fetishising the differently-abled as something other than human. I originally thought the whole point of the Modern Olympics and Modern Olympic philosophy was to inspire a sense of togetherness and brotherhood. Perhaps this is not the same for the Paralympics, but how can I expect to feel any kinship with people who are not human but "superhuman"? 

I'm know I'm being very sensitive on wordplay and it's actually a cool advert, plus they've seemingly dropped the "forget everything you know..." part, so I'm happy to be corrected when I say it still makes me feel uncomfortable. 

Now I've got all of that off my chest and put the world to right, I can sleep happily :)

COMING UP: This month in Poetry...

Er, yeah... em, Merry Christmas (and Ciao, Edinburgh)

As expected, tonight has been a bizarre night, full of lots of tinsel, spray on beards and general weirdness added in! Pass the parcel didn't go as planned but I hadn't actually ever directed a pass-the-parcel game, only participated... and several years ago. However, it was an action-packed night with two other poets I'd not heard before whose words will stay with me beyond Edinburgh, so there's a bonus!

Armed with few self-indulgent references to two of the poems I perform most frequently, and no idea how I was going to inject some festive spirit into my performance, I wrote my first ever Christmas poem today. Unfortunately, I was unable to perform it at the gig, although I managed to get it out at the Free Fringe Spoken Word Awards afterwards so, voila, here it is:


Crepe Paper Hats

They asked me if I had a Christmas poem
So I said... Ho ho ho no!
I cannot not mince my words into pie-sized sound bytes
I get bored of these charades
Find it too hard a task
For you to ask me to cast a jingly glow over my words to mask
The serious word play crocheted into its foundation

My words are not turkeys to stuff full of James Bond clichés
Reruns of Star Wars
Or Home Alone 1, 2, 3, 4... and how many more before we realise
It isn’t that entertaining watching mothers abandon their children over Christmas
Especially when you’re a child who just wants to be left alone?

But if this were to be a Christmas poem
I’d say this isn’t just any Christmas poem
This is a choice selection
Of cluedo, monopoly, monotony
And a lobotomising litany of all the films you’ve ever seen since you were five
Like the Never-Ending Story has really never ended
Just waited for you to return one year later to the bum-shaped dent on your mother’s sofa
You created at the beginning of time

Only each year it gets wider
Like an (unnamed) relative’s yawning mouth as she reaches out
With her bingo wings to retrieve another glass of Bailey’s

This isn’t just any Christmas poem
This is a carefully basted cut-and-pasted
Stitch-work of all the ghosts of Christmases past and present
That present itself annually...
Like the present they keep asking after
Like how are you to say you left the sweater

On the tube the following day?
But yes you really love it! And pink is so your colour!

This isn’t just any Christmas poem
This poem should be hanging off trees
And dancing in drunken office dos
Releasing itself from the grip of tongues
Loosened by libidinous Lambrini
And peach schnapps

This poem is more polished that the Queen’s Speech
More out of reach than those Ferrero Rochers way up above the cupboard
Your mother had been leaving for a special occasion

This poem, as violently sudden as an invasion of bombs on Lebanon
As a boxing day hangover looms
And your brother enters the room and says lets switch off the news:
Your nephew wants to watch cartoons

 This poem should be a Carol
A lullaby and hallelujah nativity scene
Printed on a last-minute card
You forgot to send before the last Christmas post

This poem is a ghost of white baby Jesuses
Decorating the walls in the Halal burger bar

This poem should be a Carol
Although if it has to be a man
It should be a Cliff
Hanging onto the charts with a dodgy rendition of
[sung] Our Father Who Art In Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name...
And if Pussy Riot can be jailed for defaming Christ
Then we should let Sir Cliff Richard suffer the same

This poem is a shameful gluttonous, overrated, belly-bloating
Feast you need to sink your teeth into

And this poem isn’t just any Christmas poem
And if it were to continue
You would have to release another notch on your belt
Ease yourself down into your chair
Borrow a pair of reindeer antennae
And tune in to the tinny tinge of tinselated references
Injected into its rump

But I shall leave this poem here as just a stump
An unwanted turkey drumstick chucked out
Onto the (Only Way Is) Essex asphalt
An unwanted burp emanating from a mouth that has already said too much
Drunk too much
Been fed too much
And as such, before I venture into territory I dare not tread
I shall leave this poem here
Like a crepe paper hat hanging over an embarrassed head

Upcoming Gig: Utter! Xmas special tonight @ Edinburgh Fringe

MERRY XMAS!!

 

 

Xmas comes early tonight with some elf-friendly poetry and festival frolicking before we all head off to the Spoken Word Awards. 

 

Utter! Xmas will be a lot of fun, despite the disturbing picture (sorry, all I was able to upload quickly now). I'll be at the Banshee Labyrinth at 7.30, so come along if you can... and if you can't, Merry Xmas anyway!

 

More info later, otherwise check out Utter's Edinburgh webpage.