Well I tell you what; I think I need to change my bulb or summat. I’m currently being beaten about the psyche by the pitiless bludgeon of insomnia. I haven’t had a decent night’s kip in ages and not a solitary wink for the last two nights.

Its not all bad news though as my present unglued state adds a fractious and surreal edge to the day and thusly can’t help but inform my writing.

I’ve just finished a rough draft of a poem inspired by my experiences chatting to the lovely people of St Paul’s and surrounds. It’s a brusque observation of the attitudes that welcome migrant workers and a gently sardonic dissection of the perceived icons that some people outside of the community feel are being lost to multiculturalism. My computer is currently playing host to a Rosemary’s baby style satanic gremlin hell bent on driving me up the freaking wall, but with a bit of luck I should be able to post an audio file of the job so far early next week.

I’ve always been fascinated by what motivates people to write poetry. Creative exploration? Political oppression? Catharsis? Neurosis? Ego? I have a friend who believes that nobody actually likes poetry. He reckons that the scores of people who write it just pretend to like it in an effort to feel validated thus deluding themselves into the idea that they’re not wasting their lives.

He’s wrong of course, when I say I love poetry, I mean it. Not all poetry obviously, that would be ridiculous and suggest I had the critical perception of a concussed chicken. Its probably down to the way poetry is taught in schools that such large swathes of the population believe it to be some uniform generic entity. The reality is that it’s as rich and diverse as any other creative medium.

If you enjoy Wagner’s Das Liebesverbot, but find The Black Out Crew’s – Stick a Donk on it makes you’re ears want to commit a seppuku style ritual suicide using a high powered hammer drill, you’d probably still refer to yourself as a music lover. The same subjectivity applies to poetry.

Anybody with an interest in it has their own idea of what poetry should be, and because I’m passionate about what I do I sometimes find these disparate attitudes frustrating. For example, I believe that the majority of people consider comic verse to be the simple trouser sucking cousin of real poetry. Certainly less valid than political verse that broaches social issues. This mind-set makes me madder than Mad Bob McShakeyfist.

Poetry with a social message can be brilliant. When well written by someone who’s had first hand experience of the topic their broaching it can be enlightening, powerful and moving.

Unfortunately, given the context of your average uk poetry audience I struggle to find the point to a lot of ideologically motivated verse and if I’m honest it often grates my nubbin.

I’m going to say this slowly with a surfeit unnecessary pauses so you can tell I’m being sincere, but I believe that, like, war, famine, sexism, racism and poverty are all like, really bad things m’kay.

Feel suitably patronised? Yep, me too.

I also believe that white middle class liberals stating this gullet punchingly obvious fact to other white middleclass liberals doesn’t change things one jot, even if it is delivered in accentual-syllabic verse.

You could argue that this type of work lets disenfranchised groups know that there are people beyond their social faction who care about their plight, but this would be working under the assumption that the disaffected people suffering these hardships are going to spend eight quid on a theatre ticket to watch someone in a hand knitted pashmina talk about their troubles in language that potentially alienates them.

I do concede that at its best it can validate our shared social conscience and gives us a feeling of unity in our beliefs that could perhaps motivate us to work collectively towards a positive common goal. At worst however it’s an opportunity for self indulgent egotists to advertise their pseudo benevolence whilst we the audience can feel self righteously smug that we agree that bad things are bad without actually having to do anything about them.

I personally don’t believe that projecting your political beliefs in rhyming couplets makes a poem unless it’s done in a beautiful, clever or innovative manner.

At least with comic verse, even at its most base, if it’s made you laugh it’s given you something you didn’t have before. It’s added to the joy of your existence. Done well it can do so much more. I believe an orator is far more likely to sway public opinion using humour rather than pious hectoring or bleating disquisition. Yet despite its obvious and immediate benefits it’s often derided by the pathologically earnest as a pointless and inferior form.

A poem doesn’t have to be sombre to be well crafted. Good comic verse takes a great deal of skill to construct. Stand up poets still use language within limited constraints of poetic process, but with the added pressure of busting the funnies as well.

I’ve heard people say, well if you want to be funny, why not be a comedian. The answer is simple, I love poetry, I love the creative manipulation of language, I love painting pictures with words. I also love making people laugh, is it really so heretical to occasionally combine these two passions?

Reading is for suckers, so this blog is all talk.

To Kill a Mockingbird (or two) from byron vincent on Vimeo.

Me and Phil Bambridge made a little advert for Apples and Snakes. Its about the potential psychological dangers of creative isolation.

Solitude from Phil Bambridge on Vimeo.

Gobbing distance from my flat in St Pauls, Bristol, there’s a huge billboard that reads “Bristol says no to knives”

It’s massive, and being a clinical simpleton I’ll believe anything written in a large enough typeface:
JIMMY HENDRICKS INVENTED THE UNICORN.
-
E.T. WAS PLAYED BY A TROUPE OF HIGHLY TRAINED CIRCUS OTTERS.

-

See?

Who ever erected it clearly has an unflinching belief in the power of advertising. For a while I wondered who exactly it was supposed to be targeting. Then last night I realised it was me.

David is an affable, diabetic Chihuahua who resides under an upturned copy of Andy Mcnab’s Bravo Two Zero at the bottom of my garden. I don’t charge him any rent, and in return he guards my collections of Teutonic sausage meats and soiled leotards. I consider us to be friends. We’re supportive of each other. When, for example, the isolation of living inside a hollowed out military tome becomes unbearable for him, I simply tickle him on his little stomach until his involuntary canine spasming scatters his desolate tears over my steadfast lap. He reciprocates by letting me use his trembling torso to massage and exfoliate my heavily callused perineum. It’s your run of the mill pervert / Chihuahua emotional symbiosis. We also share an appreciation for the dramatic dexterity of the actor Steven Segal.

I haven’t been slacking, honest. This is a rough cut of one of two short films I’m making for Apples and Snakes.

Even though it looks quite simple this took ages to set up and it was FREEZING! In the words of Elvis McGonagall “I’ve suffered for my poetry, now its your turn”

Alchemy in Nowhere Town

Well huzah poesy posse! I finally got my hands on a microphone. I can now tentatively present some works in progress for your critical examination, eeek! I’m not sure why I’ve chosen to post this piece first. It’s by far the longest and least comedic part of the set and therefore not exactly easy to digest. I thought I should start with something a little out of my comfort zone so that I could get maximum benefit from any feedback you’re kind enough to offer.

The poem is essentially a day in the life of a man who’s lost in the busyness of his business. He has no ownership or authority over his existence. His life is a nebulous splodge of barely repressed neurosis and self destructive diversion. The only structure being the imposed sequences of a meaningless job and the temporary escapism of toxic excess and mass entertainment. I wanted to explore the alienating cycle of work, TV, drink and drugs, and the belligerent trepidation of questioning the habits that form our lives.

It’s easy to succumb to the lifestyles that are dictated to us, most of us have at some point in our lives fallen into routines we begrudgingly accept, without ever stopping to analyze how we got there, or how we might escape.

Our lives can overtake us; we can drown in their commotion. It’s easy in this circumstance for our actions, thoughts and relationships to become perfunctory and homogenised, leaving us in a befuddled hinterland where all activities become emotionally indistinguishable from one another.

I’ve spent a fair chunk of time over the past few weeks stalking office workers and unethically eaves dropping on their conversations. Many people spoke about their lives as though they were somehow separated from them. Feelings of disaffection and purposelessness were common place.

The following is a snippet of conversation I overheard. A smartly dressed woman was discussing her existential crisis whilst sharing a cigarette with a suited man outside an office in St Pauls.

“I don’t even know what I do any more; I don’t even know what I actually do, it’s a shambles, everything’s a fucking shambles, and David Tennant isn’t Dr Who any more, and my flat mate drank all my shitting Baileys and I don’t even like moussaka”

Its confabulatory confessions such as this that inspired the poem, and I’m sure we can all relate, David Tennant was a great Dr Who.

For some reason this site won’t let me space the poem the way it is intended, so if you’d like a copy of the text, msg me and I’ll email you one. In the meantime TO LISTEN TO AN AUDIO FILE OF THIS POEM, CLICK THE TITLE LINK BELOW, THEN PRESS PLAY ON THE VIMEO PLAYER.

Boiling the frog

Yesterday I overheard a conversation between some nondescript accents in designer knitwear. They’d’ once inadvertently ventured into St Pauls and even though nothing bad had actually happened to them, were vociferously exploring their shared trauma. They were discussing how edgy and unfamiliar it felt to them. They used ebulliently embroidered language to paint a dark and alien landscape from which they were lucky to escape with their ipods or even there lives. From their tone it was difficult to tell which they valued the most.

I don’t really mean to mock them; I understand that they only spoke of the differences because familiarity is less conspicuous, less remarkable. I just found it funny how if the societal consensus is to be fearful of a thing, our behaviour around it can be bit daft.

This afternoon I was passing the primary school in St Pauls. It was play time and the sun had cast an enriching incandescent gold over the playground. I remembered the conversation I’d heard yesterday and it struck me that the sun shines just as brightly here as it does over Bristol’s more affluent enclaves. Laughter was forcing cold breath into fractals here, just as it does in the private schoolyards of Clifton. The chill stripped trees are just as naked and skeletal here as elsewhere. Birds still sing. Hearts still beat. People still love and worry and shit and dream, just as they do everywhere else.

And as I was pondering this, I suddenly became aware that I’m thirty three year old man, alone, quixotically staring at a playground full of kids.

I got out of there sharpish.

It’s funny how if the societal consensus is to be fearful of a thing, our behaviour around it can be bit daft.

St Pauls Cabot Circus residency.

I’ve decided to do my residency in two adjacent but culturally disparate areas of Bristol. St Pauls (where I live) is a much maligned district. There always seems to be a negative connotation underlying any reference to the place. Sensationalist hyperbole about drugs, gun crime, riots and muggings is, in my mind, as dangerous to the community as the (often exaggerated) problems it alludes to.

“Do you know about the Dead Sea?” was her opening gambit. She was tiny and had an unusual French sounding accent. Gregarious strangers befuddle me, so her deadpan confidence put me ill at ease.

I assumed she was about to tell me how her life had been recently turned around by the power of Jesus Christ so I rallied a curt “yes” and tried not to make eye contact.

“Have you got a minute” she demanded, positioning herself between me and freedom.

“Not really” I fibbed

Unperturbed she led me to a table and told me to take my gloves off. My pulse quickened with anxiety, yet for some reason I clumsily obeyed, tangling my fingers in a woollen prison as she stood there silently basking in my awkwardness.

She then explained that salt from the Dead Sea had curative properties and listed a series of disfiguring skin complaints before asking if I suffered from any of them.

“I don’t think so” I whimpered, “This is just how I look”

She turned my palms up into begging position and slopped some abrasive gunk onto them. I just stood there staring at her, arms outstretched, like a lobotomised Oliver Twist. The substance looked and smelled like old urinal cakes mashed up with cod liver oil.

She ordered me to massage it into my hands and continued into a dizzying, machine gun like sales pitch. Occasionally I chipped in with questions regarding the validity of her claims and enquiries as to who had carried out all this salt based research. These interruptions visibly irritated her, upsetting her flow and forcing her to tersely repeat herself. When my skin was suitably coated, she asked me how my hands felt.

“Oily” I replied

“That’s a great answer” she spat through a clenched smile. She positioned my hands over a pristine white ceramic bowl and sprayed them with liquid from what looked like an old Cillit Bang bottle.

“Did you wash your hands before leaving the house today?” She proffered like it was a perfectly normal question to ask someone you’d only met two minutes ago.

Back off you slop flogging quack, first you tell me I look like I’ve got impetigo, now you’re casting aspersions about my personal hygiene. I compounded my vitriol into a docile “Yes”.

Her eyes gestured towards the bowl before raising back up to confront me accusingly. I glanced down to see the bottom of the bowl was covered in droplets of murky liquid shame.

“Dead Sea salt cleans UNDER the skin, UNDER the skin”

She enthused as if she were auditioning for a part in my next nightmare.

At this point she must have sensed she was beginning to freak me out, so decided to change tack. She gently dabbed my hands dry and started to tenderly massage moisturizer into them, then came the good cop routine. “I like your hair, and that’s a cool jacket, I stopped you because you’re very well groomed”

There was an uncomfortable silence as my brain struggled for a suitable reply, I couldn’t find one so blurted

“My girlfriend says I look like a tramp”. Cue another awkward silence.

“£39.99” She sighed resignedly.

As I put my gloves back on, she gave me a look which suggested that I’d been wasting her time. I felt guilty, I’m not sure why.

I wandered around for a few hours with oleaginous slime festering between the webs of my fingers and the inside of my gloves. If see her again and she stops me in the street, I only hope it’s because her life has been recently turned around by the power of Jesus Christ, or Meher Baba, or Satan.