Category: New poetry

Demeter In Winter

Have I really not been in touch since November? So sorry, been a bit distracted, got a new spoken word show on the go…

GOTH In WinterThe initial idea was pitched to Radio 3 for their Verb New Voices commission last year – I got down to the final three, but wasn’t selected in the end. So I’ve been mulling over how to take a short radio piece and turn it into an hour spoken word show. Still not quite sure, but research and development has so far thrown me into the on-coming traffic of FAR TOO MANY IDEAS, to the point where I’m deliriously uncertain what I’m even writing about any more – the impact of the built environment of mental health? Greenham Common and feminist approaches to creative non-violent protest? Greek myths about spring? Rape culture? Yes, probably/possibly/definitely/maybe…

Lucky me, I was given a week at Caedmon Hall in Gateshead, and a most welcome wee pot of money, by NEADN in order to be confused in a more productive manner, with the helpful input of director Matt Cummins and composer Ed Carter. This is the first time I’ve had the luxury of a residency at this early point in a project’s development, so I wan’t really sure what to do with it. Let’s face it, this is only my second show, and the first one was autobiographical so I kind of knew how it was going to end, which seems like a bit of a cheat in hindsight. Anyway, if you’re massively curious about what goes on during a residency, here’s what I managed: in five days

  1. ‘Found’ DeDe’s posture and way of moving through experiment and rehearsal
  2. ‘Found’ DeDe’s voice through performing a poem in her body – learned the poem by heart
  3. Wrote a short scene between DeDe and her daughter and had a good old think about how that might be performed
  4. Researched Greenham Common protests and wrote a ‘found’ poem using first-person accounts of demonstrations
  5. Wrote a ‘found’ piece using The Handbook Of Urban Survival and started blocking out possible ways of performing it
  6. Took walks around Gateshead guided by local residents, looking at areas that were meaningful to them, places that ‘worked’, places where they felt uncomfortable, discussed the impact of their environment on them
  7. Took solo walks as DeDe and documented it with photos and notes towards further poems
  8. Took lots of video footage towards a possible future filmpoem/AV aspect to the performance
  9. Spent a day taking field recordings and learning how to make simple, layered soundscapes to accompany poems
  10. Recorded two poems and made two different sketches of the same poem with different combinations of field recordings
  11. Was videoed doing an interview about the residency
  12. Met with GIFT to chat about possible audio-tour presentations of the show as it progresses

You can keep up with the explosion of my head via the Pinterest board for this project, where I am randomly scrap-booking images and preoccupations as they assault me.

Poems from the ‘yuff

Heugh Battery gun emplacement, Headland, Hartlepool. For years I’ve been pronouncing it ‘Huff’, but I’m not from round here. It’s ‘the ‘Yuff’, and it’s where the first deaths on British soil took place in WW1 – at 8.10am on Wednesday 16 December 1914, when the town was bombarded from the sea. Over 100 people died, did you know that? Then the German ships went and knocked seven bells out of Whitby and Scarborough.

HeughAnthology

I’ve been part of a monthly writing group since January, bent to the task of researching and responding to the personal histories of those involved. We’ve put together this anthology, and we’re launching it with a reading at Hartlepool CFE at 5pm on Thursday 11 December. You’re most welcome to come along, and maybe buy a book – they’re most reasonably priced, and there are four poems in there from me. Here’s the titles, to create intrigue…

Night In The Barracks

The Margarets Go Digging Sea Coal

Etta Harris, Junior Mistress, Finds the Kingdom Of Heaven

Playing Soldiers

New poems

Very happy to have a poem in Alliterati issue 15, available online now at http://alliteratimagazine.com/issues/issue-15/. Nice to see fellow poets Carmen Thompson, Jane Burn and David O’Hanlon in there as well.

I also had a couple in issue 2 of Lunar Poetry, which you can buy very cheaply at http://lunarpoetry.co.uk/Buy.html.

Fringe Review 5 – 6 – All Days Become One Day

I’m home, I’ve slept for twelve hours, I’ve failed to keep a daily blog. But here’s the round-up of what I saw on Friday and Saturday.

After my final show on Friday I took my only trip out to the Stafford Centre in New Town to see Hannah Chutzpah’s ‘Asking Nicely’, a show about permission delivered from a feminist perspective, which sounds like it might be short on laughs but which is actually full of light-touch humour and bubbly poems. This is a show that falls into a model I have decided to unilaterally declare as ‘the poetic lecture’. Basically, a poet takes some of their existing work (and maybe writes some new stuff too, ratios may vary) and links the poems together with a unifying theme, often one that links to their own lived experience. Tina Sederholm’s The Good Delusion, Rose Condo’s The Geography Of Me, and Sophia Blackwell’s Becoming Wonder Woman would all fall under this heading. The best ones are marked by several common features – clarity and coherence of the overall structure, non-threatening audience participation activities, effective use of props. Of the ones I’ve seen, Hannah’s has been most obviously set up as a pseudo-lecture, with white lab coat and all, and I really rather liked that. I also really liked her hand-drawn A2 sketchpad illustrations! And I’ve found myself looking around for any instances in my own behaviour where I seek permission, so it’s made me think. Belter.

So, whizz back up towards Cowgate, filling a stray half-hour with a dip into a real lecture from the Sceptics Society about de-bunking psychics and alternative therapists, part of the science and rationalism strand within the PBH Free Fringe. Very enjoyable, and funny, it was a bit unnerving to see so little difference between this and some other stand-up shows! Hmmm. (Starts thinking about lecture formats for next year’s Fringe…)

Then on to see ‘Shame’ by John Berkavich at Underbelly. Berkavitch has no need of little me reviewing the show, there are plenty of reviews to be read here, and all you have to do is mention his name to get an immediate gush of how fantastic the show is. It is, it’s bloody impressive, slick, super-high-tech in comparison to nearly all other spoken word shows (it’s not Free Fringe, obvs), massively entertaining and ultra-cool the way he uses his breakdance team of three as Greek chorus/living stage set. I particularly liked the way they transformed into a cappuccino machine at one point, a bicycle at another. So what is this mean little corner of me that wants to break it down? Mini-meanie-me. I’m just going to say it – take away the dancers and the tech, and this is a show with good but not amazing writing, well-delivered but sometimes with an unlikeable and confrontational tone, using a cut-up flash-back narrative structure that is now standard in contemporary theatre, dealing with an emotional subject in a fairly glib and superficial way, using anecdotal examples that are uniformly predictable. Phew. And now I wait for the gods to strike me down. Don’t worry, my opinion has as much weight as thistledown.

That was Friday.

Saturday started off as a shitty, shitty, upsetting day for me for various reasons that I won’t bore you with. However, I made two excellent decisions – firstly to drop in on the Scottish National Gallery for their Edinburgh Art Festival exhibition ’25 Years of Contemporary Scottish Art’, and secondly to go to ‘Talk About Something You Like’ by Byron Vincent at the Pleasance. Sitting in a room for an hour laughing till I piggy-snorted at stories of someone else’s enduring mental health issues proved a real tonic. This show has all the real bravery (ugh, horrid word), the genuine honesty and vulnerability that Berkavich claims at the end of Shame, but I don’t believe Berkavitch for a second. So he was a bit of a shit. He’s not lying in front of me re-enacting his failed suicide attempt, breaking my heart and still fucking making me laugh. ‘Talk About Something You Like’ takes its title from a set of hilariously inappropriate ‘top tips’ for patients incarcerated in a secure mental hospital, where our hero spent time after being sectioned. Vincent’s trademark talent is for gallows humour delivered in swooping, hyperbolic, surreal similes – seriously, he’s so very good at it. And yes, it’s all true, so you have to laugh or else you’ll cry. Fuck it, do both.

A Nicholson Street saunter took me up to Kingshall to see Fringe First award-winning play ‘Confirmation’ by Chris Thorpe, sometime partner in crime with the spoken word loveliness that is Hannah Jane Walker. It’s about confirmation bias, the human tendency to see the world in ways which reinforce our prejudices, assumptions and received beliefs. Chris seeks out someone who is ideologically as far away from his own belief system as possible – a neo-Nazi, but an intelligent one – and the two of them talk, exposing both the unbridgeable rifts between their world views and also the surprisingly extensive areas of overlap. For a more in-depth look at the piece, including Chris’ own thoughts, please go here, and then for god’s sake SEE THE SHOW. Really. It’s mind-blowingly good. I’m still finding it popping up in my head for another little chew-over. Please go.

And that was all I could manager before the BBC Slam final, where I got to the last bout but lost out to worthy opponent David Lee Morgan, whose show ‘Pornography & Heartbreak’ I’ve already mentioned on a an earlier blog.

Things I didn’t see and should have done, and now feel very guilty about – ‘Be Kind To Yourself’ by Tim Clare, ‘What The Fuck Is This’ and ‘Crap Time Lord’ both by Richard Tyrone Jones, and probably a metric fuckton more. But enough. It’s good to be home. Godspeed to the manics still up there doing the full run, you have more stamina than me, mateys.

 

Fringe Review 4 – Lost A Day

Yep, no review from Wednesday because Wednesday was all about me, me, ME! Best audience figures of my run so far, and then narrowly pipped in my BBC Slam heat. In between the two I went for a lovely long lunch with my mum and good friend Christine, and I didn’t think about poetry at all. So there.

Yesterday I only managed to see two shows, both on at the Banshee Labyrinth back-to-back. The first was Pornography and Heartbreak by David Lee Morgan. Morgan knows that this is a difficult show to sit through, and he gives the audience permission to leave if they need to, which is generous of him because they do leave when they really should stay. He’s doing something rather magnificent here, in the land of cheap sex jokes and bullshit titillation, crappy comedians scoring laughs with obscenities, shows called Sex With Animals, and all the other unnecessary burlesqueries. He’s being truthful, unflinchingly looking at what must be a typical hypocrisy – the gap between a principled man’s outward attitudes towards women, and his fantasy life including his relationship with pornography and prostitution. The show has a simple device – lights on when the narrator is talking straight, ‘dark’ when we see into his hidden thoughts. I know people have been and may well continue to be offended by some of the material, but this is not pornographic, it is explicit and there is a difference. Essential viewing.

Following on from him was Becoming Wonder Woman by Sophia Blackwell, which really is about a personal journey towards self-acceptance and confidence. Blackwell is a top-notch poet, there are many pieces in here to enjoy, but I was a little disappointed by the show overall. She does link moments of personal growth to elements of Wonder Woman’s mythography, but the linking spiel in which she does so felt under-scripted, over-hasty and rambling, full of ‘kinda’ and ‘sort of’. Her own experiences were presented as the main point of departure, so that Wonder Woman became a submerged thread, a tag-on costume gimmick, rather than a driving structural device.

Today I have my final show, and hope to get to Chris Thorpe’s show at the Northern Stage camp in Kingshall; Asking Nicely by Hannah Chutzpah and 13 Years An Artist by Mark Mace Smith (both at the Stafford); and maybe I’ll finally stay up long enough to see Tim Clare’s hit show Be Kind To Yourself. Wish me luck…

Fringe Review 3 – From Birdman to ManBat

A damp dash across George IV Bridge, dodging Taiwanese dancer-drummers in full costume, weaving through dawdling tourists encased in pac-a-macs, to reach Electric Circus – which looked as shut as the face of a bored teenager at a careers talk. So I slipped into Fruitmarket Gallery and wandered through a forest of “ladders, inlaid with silver squares”, the Jim Lambie exhibition reminding me of my own writing about the paddy fields in Goa. One audience survey questionnaire later and the venue was open for Jack Dean’s Threnody For The Sky Children, and in I blundered to a pitch-dark room where a shadowy figure in a bird-mask was doing something indistinct to the accompaniment of grinding electronica.

The lights went up on a jumble of boxes, the attic where our hero was holed up escaping – an apocalypse of mutant animal-people on the rampage? Or was it the disintegration of his own mind as his relationship broke to pieces? A weird and wonderful poetry-play ensued, the attic (and the hero’s mind) illuminated piece by piece by precarious desk lamps, the dystopian futureworld outside revealed through mock broadcasts and powerpoint lectures, funny and disturbing by turns. I think you ought to see this. Then we could have an argument about what it all meant.

The rest of the day was far more normal by comparison. Ran into Monkey Poet on the street and thus performed an impromptu set at his showcase twenty minutes later, like you do. I stayed on after my show to see The Geography Of Me by Canadian-born poet Rose Condo. She’s what I privately term a ‘gentle rhymer’, which I know may sound patronising or even derogatory but that’s not my intention. What I mean is that she uses rhymes, but they are softly subsumed by her delivery so that we are aware of experiencing a poem without losing the sense of just chatting with someone lovely. Her show is about her experience of being in various places, both literal and metaphysical, and with it she has created a very warm place to be. 

Another jaunt to JibbaJabba gave me the welcome chance to test out some slam poems before my heat tomorrow, as well as the pleasure of hearing a set from Steve Urwin and a great double act from some Australian ‘bush poets’ who want us to insist that fries are called chips. Hear, hear. Then off to a charity gig at Canon’s Gait featuring Kate Fox and Phil Jupitus among others, a welcome hug from the delightful Ben Mellor (looking extra beardy), and finally back to the Banshee yet again for the final night of Grave Invaders. Excellent, massively enjoyable performances from DJ Mixy, Mark Grist and Tim Clare sharing their experiences of touring the UK looking for the graves of famous poets. Highlight of the show being the rap battle between monsters dreamt up by school children – ManBat, the Space Unicorn and Mr Herring the Maths Teacher. Epic dissing ensued, and Mr Herring won the day with some truly awful fish puns. 

Phew. Can I sleep now?

Fringe Review 2 – Rain Didn’t Stop Play

Arrived yesterday, train pelting through a black cloudburst over Dunbar. The hems of hurricanes are soggy places.

Had a great time with Matt MacDonald at his showcase, taking it in turns with him, Jenni Pascoe, Mixy and Robin Cairns to be talented, funny and profound. We were incredible. You’ll have to take my word for it, as there were only 3 witnesses in the audience and 2 of them have gone home now.

The rest of the afternoon was spent settling into my digs and repeatedly pacing the main drag from Cowgate to Tolcross, past where all the lovely bookshops live. Managed to catch Sophia Walker’s other show, last year’s smash ‘Around The World In 8 Mistakes’, which was fab the first time and is now even better – the emotional texture more defined, better use of pace and vocal changes, lots of physical storytelling. It’s an autobiographical piece about the many countries Walker has lived in, and the reasons behind each move. England, America, Belgium, El Salvador, Vietnam, Russia, Uganda…take a guess which one wasn’t a mistake? Nope, you’re wrong. At times sobering, at many points laugh-out-loud funny, this is is still up there as a must-see show.

Finally I dragged my knackered self out to see Jess Holly Bates’ ‘Real Fake White Dirt’, and man, am I glad I did. I almost don’t want to tell you about it because it was her last show of the run and you’ll only be pissed off you didn’t make it. Bates is from New Zealand, and her show is a stunning exploration of cultural appropriation, continual colonialism and white identity. This sounds heavy, the kind of thing you might hear in an academic lecture, and a very funny mock lecture does form part of the text. But this is not a heavy show, it is fleet-footed, intelligent, full of strangely beautiful poetry that slaloms effortlessly around obvious exposition and grabs you right in your non-rational cognition. Bates plays words, phrases, associations like a jazz legend plays scales, using tangents and ellipses to convey a sparkling, energetic map of mental and emotional connections. More than that, she is in complete control of her presence as a performer, altering body and voice clearly and cleanly with breath-taking swiftness and definition. And she’s bloody funny. Amazing stuff, a masterclass in what spoken word could and should be.

I am still alive, honest…

Yep, so have been mostly living on my other blog www.themooncannotbestolen.wordpress.com for quite a few months now, and will be blogging there again soon when I take the show back to Edinburgh for the PBH Free Fringe (come and see it! 2pm daily, 11-15 August, Royal Oak)

But to let you know what’s going on, and give you a little window into the life of a not-very-productive poet, I am currently:

Writing about a poem a month for a WW1 project about the bombardment of Hartlepool, to be featured in an anthology, launch date 11 December.

Completely failing to write anything decent for the Bloodaxe Archive project, in which the Newcastle Centre for Literary Arts is asking poets and artists to ‘respond creatively’ to a whole bunch of boxes full of manuscripts and ephemera from Bloodaxe Press.

Frantically compiling and editing 48 pages of performance poems for Burning Eye Press, who have shortlisted me for a possible collection publishing deal in 2015.

Completely failing to write anything at all for the very good online project ’52’, run by Jo Bell with weekly prompts that are excellent and which I am ignoring, guiltily.

Panicking spectacularly about competing in my first ever slam, which of course is not a nice local slam but the friggin’ BBC Slam in Edinburgh – my heat is on 13 August, if you want to come and see me crash out in style!

Yep, that’s about it. Oh, and learning to drive.

Remiss – miss me?

I feel guilty – I have been more attentive to my Moon blog than to this one. I’ve had plans! An essay/review on sonnet sequences in the work of Eleanor Brown and Patience Agabi, for example. That’s a particularly good figment of my imagination. I have been reading rather a lot of poetry…

Image

Or I could tell you about the agony and the ecstasy of the everyday poet? For example – I recently had a poem shortlisted for the York Literature Festival. In the last 50 of over 900. But didn’t win. I had poems rejected by Alliterati and Butcher’s Dog magazines, but had ones accepted by Streetcake and When Women Waken. 

I’m writing poems about the WW1 bombardment of Hartlepool – they’re pretty nifty, but I can’t share until the end of the year when they get published in an anthology. And I’m writing poems in response to the Bloodaxe Archive, but they’re all pants so far, so I’m not gonna show you.

OK, how about this little smidge, written in response to a prompt from the fabulous 52 project, on the subject of ‘praise’.

Praise After Bad Times

No balance to the meal

without a pinch of bitter.

The hunkered marriage-bulb knows

to bide the blink of winter.

Kisses re-risen, purple mouths

open gold tongues.

The patiently espoused

Worth our weight in saffron. 

Verbatim

So here’s the thing – when I’m stuck on a poem it stresses me. If I give it a rest, I stress about not writing. Then my head explodes, I get a cold and my eczema burns my entire body to a Frazzle (the bacon-flavoured corn snack we all love and miss). However, I just found Verbatim Found Poetry blogspot, and now in just a scant half hour I have ‘written’ and submitted three poems, and can relax…

Here’s what treasures lie nestled within any self-respecting pretentious, superficial style magazine’s pages…

Wardrobe Mistress

My mother is ninety and likes

To wear a nice dress.

But she is tiny.

 

Size ten, and only five feet tall, she likes

Colour, nothing too clingy.

And needs a collar.

 

She would also like some nonslip

Ankle boots that are

Size four and a half.

 

Please help.

 

Nobody seems to cater for

Small, slim people of a certain age

Who are not terrifically flexible.

 

Do not want low necklines.

Do not like black and beige.

 

The Problem With Red

How do you wear yours?

I’m talking about red.

On a dress?

Probably.

On a coat?

Likely.

Any other way?

Other

Than on your lips?

Maybe not.

 

I don’t know many women

Who wear red.

Despite Valentino’s best

And beautiful intentions as a blonde,

I’ve always found it brassy.

It’ s a colour that says

Attention!

When you don’t always want

Any.

 

I’m getting my head around red.

By wearing it with things

I do like.

Silver shoes,

A berry knit,

Things

 

I’d enjoy on any day of the week.

 

Invisibility Cloak

Beau Brummell said

If people turn to look at you on the street,

You are not well-dressed.

 

And that’s my philosophy too.

 

We live in a postmodern,

A dangerous world.

 

As William Burroughs noted

The secret of invisibility

Is seeing another before he sees you.