So, here comes  a first work in progress from the WBA set……  I sat in on lots of sessions where the youth team at WBA work with groups of children on football and ‘Respect’ campaigns. This was inspired by a little boy who was too young to join in the actual football practise part of the sessions, but just wanted to run around the pitch wearing the cagoul of the WBA trainer he obviously idolised:) He was so joyfull and felt transformed in the blue and white cagoul and just wouldn’t stop chattering about everyone and everything and was obsessed with everything WBA. So this is written in his overexcitable voice, as if he’s been mainlining Haribo for 24 hrs……

Armour of a Cagoul

I just got home from seeing ‘Bruno’ at the cinema….. (which features a cameo by Snoop Dog at the end, along with Bono/Sting/Elton John in the spoof music video’finale’… ) and then I turned on the tv to see news of 8 soldiers dying in 24 hrs in Afghanistan. Some contrast eh? For some reason it made me wonder why we haven’t heard any poetry from the frontline in recent years? At school we did the War poets like Wilfred Owen as my first introduction to poetry…. and now with 18 yr old lads being sent out without proper equipment it seems, for a war that many of us and probably they themselves don’t believe in and they’re watching their mates die. Pretty extreme, and how would any of us get to understand how to cope with the extreme feelings in such a situation? The ex Guantanamo Bay prisoners have talked of how in solitary confinement many of them had written poems, with no previous experience of it before – and how it’s a natural human response to an extreme environment.

I’m just watching the Michael Jackson Tribute show…. some stunning performances by the likes of Stevie Wonder and Jennifer Hudson, but I’m wondering how many of the other stars bragging of their ‘close’ friendship with him were actually physically there for him during the problems in recent years….. but anyway Maya Angelou had written beautifully and Queen Latifah read out her words. (Like Obama’s inauguration ceremony, Americans include living poets in big occasions more than we seem to in the UK – can we copy? Can the next PM invite Benjamin Zephaniah or Kate Fox to scribe some words for their big day?! )

Anyway, she spoke of how fans from places as far away as Birmingham Alabama and Birmingham England are united by this time – and here I am in the British Birmingham watching it all – so place has been referenced as something dissolved by a common interest.

Just got home from the ‘3way show’ at the Birmingham Rep with Yusra Warsama, Malika Booker and RT….. it was a ’script in hand performance’ of scenes from the show and it was brilliant:)

I was squished on the back row where there were 12 of us fleshpressed against each other on just 6 seat spaces – interesting ticket allocation and boiling hot with no air con and with sweat reminding you of hidden places on your body you’d forgotten about – it was still a great night. I had to leave before the question and answer session to pop into work, otherwise I’d have more behind the scenes stuff to report back. But if you hear of a showing of it near you, get there and put plenty of deoderant on – these summer shows in small spaces can make you melt.

No, it’s not a prediction that the only clean dry clothes left at the Big Chill will be some stripey pj’s for us all to wear…… But Geraldine’s post about how art that’s just plonked in the middle of anywhere public rather than an art gallery makes it more accessible and how brilliant Jay’s performance was in the yurt got me thinking. The blog post asked how does location affect poetry and how can you take poetry to the streets -it reminded me of a particular day.

How many times as a student did I put a coat over a pair of men’s striped pj’s (which I used to wear to chill out in, not sleep) and just shuffle off to the shops up the road in Camden without a thought? Less often now I’m allegedly a proper grown up. (Although I’m still waiting for the curly hair/long nails/36 c bra I expected would arrive with said adult status.) But on National Poetry Day in 2007 when I became B’ham Poet Laureate, a collective of poets and friends called ourselves ‘Poets in Pyjamas’ and we traipsed around B’ham City Centre for the day doing guerrilla style poetry on the streets, all wearing only our pj’s. Some of us even carried our teddys, the molten shame of it….. as I met so many people I know and as a 6 foot woman wearing red pyjamas it’s hard to be invisible….. but it was hilarious really!

For many who sleep commando a quick trip to Primark was obligatory for decency… and even our Young Laureate, the mightly Matt Windle – a 17yr old boxer joined in – although he looked cooler in tracksuit rather than pjs…..  the theme was ‘Dreams’ for Nat. Poetry Day by the way, in case you just thought it was a fetish of ours. Wearing something slightly odd gave us an excuse and a ‘way in’ to open an exchange with passers by who mostly stopped and listened and enjoyed some spontaneous words – especially once they realised we weren’t collecting money:) We egged each other on, and had a blast with many other poets joining in like a relay throughout the day and there were some memorable connections. Despite the fact that not one person knew it was national poetry day…. sad to say.

One of our shyest poets made a stunning impression on a couple of cute students with the biggest cleavages you’ve ever seen – and as they had very low cut tops on, the more they laughed at his hilarious words, the more he blushed with hidden pleasure:) One passer by recited a poem she’d written a year ago in prison when she’d finally got clean from a 20 yr heroin habit, she wrote beautifully. Matt the 17yr old was at one point surrounded by about 20 teenage girls spellbound by him outside the Bullring and they were yelling at everyone else passing by to stop and listen too….. he loved it as much as they loved his green contact lenses:)

Poetry really worked on the streets and people often asked if we’d got copies of our work they could keep – which only our organised  poet Maggie Doyle had thought to bring with her. Highly recommend it, but as I’m kinda shy, definitely safety in numbers and it works best when you’ve got a gang of fellow poets to boost your confidence to approach strangers while hugging a teddy bear in the middle of the daytime. Perhaps we’ll do it at the Big Chill as well as our proper performance – in which case I’d better pack pyjamas….. x

Been so many intriguing blogs on here this week, I could read and comment on them forever……. and all this festival talk has me excited for the Big Chill, and nervous too, and stockpiling wet wipes from the pound shop already:)

This week I did some days in Alrewas with a bunch of year 7s from a school in Cannock in a project called Words and Willows. At the risk of sounding like a sentimental marshmallow of a 6 foot woman, they were the loveliest bunch of twelve year olds you could wish for.

Like Sarah Butler, I was at Litup in Kendal and loved the opening talk by Helen from Artichoke, the woman behind the giant elephant that brought London to a far more joyful standstill than any tube strike has managed:) To add to Sarah’s great post about using huge public spaces for art and the creativity of putting poems in butcher’s shop windows or flying from planes etc.  Helen also spoke of sometimes being absolutely full of fear at the enormity of any project big or small. She referenced a gig for 35 people in a bishop’s kitchen as essentially the same as a 5 year project like the London elephant….and that often you will be terrified that you don’t know what you’re doing, or that something may not come off etc. and that’s ok, but you just have to carry on and front it out basically!

I think that’s so true for producers and directors, but also for us writers isn’t it? Sometimes you’ll say yes to an opportunity or try and talk yourself up for a project, then later on with a blank page and the deadline looming wonder if you’ve been smoking crack in order to have put yourself in certain situations that then terrify you:)

Jo Bell told me about a Sharon Olds Poem called First Sex …. and so I wrote my own one after one of our mentoring sessions. It contains a slightly explicit line, so don’t continue reading if you’re of a delicate disposition. Jo describes it as excruciatingly honest…. which it is:)

It sounds too self indulgent to claim ‘Writers block’…. but I know I should be typing some work here that is ‘work in progress’ and I can’t YET! I read the stuff by Emma on here and it was so beautifully written, and true that it made my pathetic efforts look even worse:(

Ever have those times where you just either can’t write anything at all, or when whatever you write is just trash and I’m not being perfectionist – just honest:) So what do you do to combat this?

So what a hectic week it’s been – you ever have one of those weeks where you blink and it’s saturday night and your week’s ‘to do’ list from Monday is still full up?!

Last weekend for the first time I worked with a director Rachel Mars in Manchester at Contact Theatre in Manchester. ( sublime venue with knitted grafitti ‘tags’ randomly tied to handrails etc., making your eyes scan every surface you wandered past in search of another to discover. Cute young guys who keep it running smoothly as well and couldn’t have been more helpful!)

It was for a Litup project that I’m doing, and it was nerve wracking and exciting at the same time to work with someone else on my words and how to perform them – whole new world! Rachel was great and has left me with a snowstorm of inspiration to sift through over coming weeks.