I had a fun night reading as guest poet at poet Angela France's Buzzwords series, in Cheltenham last night - it's a tight-knit group of serious, local poets, who gather for workshops, open mics, and guest readings, every month, back of a pub. The sound system is professional, and the listening mostly very attentive. The poets presented a strong field during the open mic. They also buy books, a good sign. But, what is it with poetry events? I know it's not just me.After a long (40 minute) reading (I was asked to do that much), which had gone over well an "actor" in the room sidled up, fixed me with that gleam I know so well, and began to tell me how to "improve my reading for next time" - offering some unasked-for tips. Never mind that it was now 10 pm, I was tired, and looking forward to the justly-deserved after-reading pint.
Poets, it seems, are afflicted with such amateur critics, because, I suspect, few who attend such events fathom the effort, energy, and skill, that goes into planning a serious, engaged, longer set (choice of poems, themes, tempo, inter-poem banter, or not, etc.). To the uninitiated, or the plain egoistic, poetry readings are simply an excuse to make another St. Anthony pin-cushion out of the visiting guest poets.
Should poets create some form of Etiquette? Like - if you want to say I was a bad reader - don't. Or not, please, 30 seconds after stepping down from the stage, tired.
Comments
Angelea and her mob, i was very surprised being honest.
I met her at Ledbury poetry fest in July, where i had decamped to experience the soul of poetry in the foothils of the welsh marches, and it is a perfect town.
i got there on the saturday afternoon and headed straight to the Horshoe pub and partook of the westons 8.6 percent 500ml two pound seventy locally brewed cider and after pitching my tent, returned and had a top night.
i was the only poet in the place, and talking to the locals, very much got the impression that the superstars who haunt there gifting the populace their vatic utterance, don't do much voluntary community work, and to a man and women, the local Homen mob, the festival is for outsiders who drive in from the surrounding places and do whatever it is that happens when the UK's hottest gobs gather to blather.
it was the sunday i first met AF, stood outisde the royal oak having a fag, and a hippyish fifty year old (looks 21) drove post in a typical hippy vehicle and clocked me and i clocked her and she pulled under the arch of this ancient coachhouse, out of my sifght and two minutes later i am straight in boring the socks off her.
Dave Reeves of *Being John Ruskin* fame who Rupert L (before he wound down) publishes. Rupert of course being Robert Sheppard's publisher, who was my Heaney to me as Muldoon, if we take it that H in this sense would be a key poet of the British Poetry Revival on the demo with Mottram worshipping at the photocopier with Bob Cobbing.
So, we did the workshop and Dave did his fifty minutes, as i read the sunday papaers round the corner, listening, hearing every word. Dave being a bit static, and not having a vid to capture his magic, i just let his spell filter through, scrub across my hangover until i had my four mihnutes of fame at the open mic, after a load of very talented regulrs from Cheltenham and i was like you, surprised they were so good. And amngela, she wasn't interested in putting herlsef forward and hogging the vibe, but a true gentlewoman, a real lady and it was clear her buzz comes though being in a group of poets who couled hold their own with any other mob.
i ended up getting a lift to the campsite an half hour walk out the town, off a fella i'd first seen on the saturday night at a community hall barn dance, who wasa right spacer ina brilliant way though he wasn't everyone's cuppa on the night due to his performance style (eyes closed, swaying and reciting from memory) i thought he was ace, and he was as mad as me, but from a physwics background, a sixty year old imp in a clapped out van he dossed in at the lodge place i had pitc hed my new two man tent i got for the do.
The next night it was back do9wn to earth and the local scene as run by a woman in her late nineties by the looks of it, and it was there i met the only other person who had arrived with the same idea as myself.
Roland MacMurran, a north Herefordshire fella who had just finished his painting degree (first) who had a bit of the ted hughes going on in his accent, which confused me at first as i thought it might have been a acon, but it turns out his folks are scottish, and after a poem or two, could see it was genuine.
We were the stars of the night. i sis about six minutes and a bit at the end when some old dears, after the older one running it asked if anyone wanted to do any more and there were no takers, these two who i could see written on their faces, that perculiar small group of oap poetry politics where all is sparrtows and clunky moons in june, a lot so dire it was touchingly reassuring to be there, as i realised angela's mob are a one off rather than the norm, and so i got to sopin another one.
Me and roland having just met, and the others being senior middle england types with mortgages and seriious lives, we shipped into the horshoe, and had a great night, very sedate Monday, quiet and perfect poetry, as we are sitting in the back outside in a beautifully authentic smoker bit, totally sheltered form the rain that was a feature of my time there, and you know whatr it's like, both the real thing dwead pleased to have met, Poetry itself the agent of bonding, and a local fella, early twenties came out and we went quiet and the local did and it all felt a bit, yer know -- anyway, we get chatting and as soon as he finbds out we are poets, pulls out some a4 and i take over, just letting him read, a very nervous, working class fella, who the less kind would have laughed at, as he was all predictable rhyme and confessional, basically a lad who hadn't had much of a start in life, who wrote prettuy obvious, woe is me, but genuine, not like a middle class expert letting the vatic characvter chavs come and pay her mortgage; buit the real thing, someone the poshers would write of, speak through, but not have in their house or mix with socially type of thing.
Anyway, i then set myself up the excercise of showing this fella where he could mnove the sounds about and get away from that thing all young poets fall for through inexperience, i went and said cat and you said mat and that and splat..etc
And roland, we've just met, and i could see what he was thinking, he couldn't beleive it, coz by the end, the dynamic of the three of us, i felt good coz i helped the fella, and could see he thought i was the dogs bollix, treating him in a way many poets i have met would just make him feel shit about himself, for being so crap, when really he was just starting out and being socially disadvantaged, not on the VIP list at covent garden's electric nights.
Roland was amazerd and all in all a great time, doing good.
The next night it was Homend poets, where Elizabeth Browning was born, Homend, the pulse of ledbury, the horse shoe is at the top end of it, and opposite Ice Bytes cafe, and very reasonable 2.50 half an hour internet, and a crowd of retired teachers, but the early retirement types, busy still and simple stuff but honest and the next night was ther big one,
the final open mic at the prince of wales pub, right opposite where Jackie Kay was in as the official star, and up a path, a windy cobbled street very narrow leading to a church, that starts at the market building, the one on stilts from a few hundred yrs back, right where i bumped into astley and bent his ear and his mates, whose ear i bent in dublin only a month before when he launched his dvd book, and by the time i realised i had been one way telling him of the Amergin poem, him sort of saying goodbye and then walking off in the direction i had been,. to the church, and it getting a bit, yer know./..see yer, ok, me feeling he might be thinking i was stalking him, but it was all just pure poetry, and then him and his pal stopping to chat to someone iup the lane and me, just moving off, saying goodbye but not, that way of leaving it where it's like, you never really left, just wandered out the scene, natural, the forces conspiring, the moments, perfectly combined amnd fate delivering the sign, all is right...
yeah the big night, and by this time me, i was on the official camp ground at the rugby club, only me and roland there, with a troop opf camper vans of seniors on a rally, geoff the local steward from derbt, four quid a night, two quid a shower, perfect as it halved the time walking intio town. i was fonna take me cycle from dublin, but the day i left was monsoon conditions.
so, roland and me go down to the Ledbury lyricists and angela is there with the fella whose running it, the p[ubs packed, i've got my mps, and this was a proper night, none of this six minutes wait yr turn, buy all the chap books just to see the look on their faces, but a proper hippy night out, the outsiders, the artists are here Todd, like being in the kings head in galway on a warm summer night, kevin higgins and paulk casey begging me to stop boring them with tales of the myth and to shut up, yeah just like a proper do..
and the pub was packed, and wheras i read a live poem off the page at buzzzers, here it was straight ou the dome, high energy
the day begins at dawn
just before the rush of pure
cut chit chit chatting
gets surround sound boiling into life
arh, written after hearing amiri B doing Dope and a guaranteed work all comers goan blow you way caper, and knowing i've doen a good do, Trigger out of only fools and horses squeezing past just at the end, roland handing me another westie, my seat still there and a mass of bodies, Chloe the MD controller who i had noticed about the town, with the cools of Leds, the local artist high enders who weren't camping, eyes bright and shining, nealry standing in my lap, and then, more, roland really coming to life, a very sure voice to watch for the future, and who Paula Mehan's fella Thoe Dorgan, last yr, saif *it's pouring out of him* tghe poetry, the real flame, angela told me this, and then about midnight, everyone had been up a few times, we were the undisputed owners of the Prince of Wales that night todd, and then back to the fella who ran the night, lugging his amp to the next cobbled street, in a house bogger than the one jackie kay got to star in; and as we were leaving, not knowing it was her, engaging some scottish woman, or trying to, in conversation, but i sense, she feels it's not her mob, all that fame wieghting on her, and as we left, the real sense of we aint banning conkers at school...
and then, gone, all gone, and i had a great time, and all the suits who breeze in and out, yeah, yer can't beat locals of Ledbury in the shoe, and we hate them flipping Worcester lot. ledbury mate, that's us at our festival, not Ashberry, where was he swift hey, tell me that, hey, where was gaz, hey mister gedes, he wasn't there gary knows, he knows todd
gra agus siochain
forcing the Ledbury amnd
Rodney Wood