Diary blog – and only three days late (Soz like)

Sunday, May 17th, 2009

I don’t tend to do many open mics these days, which is a shame because on the whole they give me cozy brain. Like most performance poets I started out testing my wares at open mic nights so I find attending them a bit like taking a herbal bath in an old pair of slippers whilst eating comfort food off the bellies of sleeping kittens. They just feel safe. Everyone knows that the newbie (and in my case oldie) performers might be a bit nervous, so audiences are usually friendly, sympathetic and attentive.

Open mike nights are a truly egalitarian form of entertainment; literally anyone can have a bash at flaunting their talents. I’ve been treated to an abundance of truly memorable performances at them over the years. Such as the six foot plus pianist who sang with deadpan earnestness in falsetto about being neither a mermaid nor merman but a merperson, or the twinset and pearls clad octogenarian who did an epic poem about the pleasures of eating a semen seasoned sarnie. Just the other night in Sheffield I heard a poem that broached the topic of homophobia in Ireland with the line “now he’s not here, because he’s queer” AWSOME!

I loves open mics I do, so I’ve been very much looking forward to road testing poems from this project at two of my favorites.

The first was Blue Peter Badge Winners Get in Free at the Yorkshire house Lancaster last Friday. Its run buy lovable, leftfield troubadour Kriss Foster http://www.myspace.com/krissfoster, and droll “straight outta Cleavelys” wordsmith James Knight http://www.myspace.com/animalwrites . James did an outstanding job of comparing a lively and diverse night.  It kicked off with half an hour of stuff from the floor (including my effort), then moved on to the booked acts which were a well chosen mixed bag including a comedian,  a poet and bunch of musicians. It was a raucous crowd but Mr Knight’s insightful comedic observations and brash lyricism kept things ticking over nicely.

Another reason I had for being there was that the booked poet was my better half (in every sense) Sally Jenkinson http://www.writeoutloud.net/poets/sallyjenkinson. I know I’m biased, but she absolutely stormed it, reducing a boisterous and bibulous music crowd to pin drop silence. Some rat arsed young scallywag at the front was loudly heckling at the beginning of her set, but by the halfway point he was transfixed and spent the rest of the evening apologizing and saying how he thought it was “proper amazing”. Another double cool thing that happened was that my new favorite band The Lovely Eggs turned up to watch her set. If you haven’t given them a listen yet you should definitely check them out at http://www.myspace.com/thelovelyeggs . Have you ever heard a digital accordion is one of my favorite tracks of the last year.

As if that wasn’t enough nepotistic poesy action, tomorrow  I’m doing more trial runs  at Acoustic Night, Halo, Gloucesester Rd. Its Brizol’s longest running and best established open mic.  Again, I’ll be dropping some MPoY stuff, but another reason I have for popping in is that one of my all time spoken word favorites Tim Clare http://www.myspace.com/timclarepoet is going to be rocking the spot . For those of you that aren’t aware of Tim’s work, he’s one of those sickeningly erudite polymaths that seem to be able to turn their hand to just about anything. He’s a poet, musician, novelist, comedian and a must see if you spot him in your festival program this summer. He’s currently touring open mic nights all over the world as part of his research for an upcoming show. Read his highly entertaining blog about it at http://timclare.blogspot.com/ .

So wish me luck. I’ll let you know how it all went next week. Also, if you haven’t already, check out Tony Walsh’s Carol Ann Duffy anecdote in the comments section of my No Lolz Please Blog, there’s lolz aplenty.

Have a lovely week x

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