No lolz please, we’re poets.

Byron Vincent
Thursday, April 30th, 2009

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?

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Byron Vincent

  1. Jay Bernard
    April 30th, 2009

    Hm. Who says it’s heretical? Who, exactly, are you arguing with? Because the most popular / well-known poets *are* comic; Simon Armitage, Carol-Ann Duffy to an extent, Jackie Kay, Michael Rosen, Roald Dahl, Spike Milligan. There’s the dark humour in the lyrics of Dylan if you want to call him a poet. Andrew Motion occasionally. To use your own sentence:
    I personally don’t believe that making people laugh in rhyming couplets makes a poem unless it’s done in a beautiful, clever or innovative manner. I don’t think anyone objects to laughing, but surely the latter half of that sentence is the point: Does *anyone* like their poetry sans beauty, cleverness and innovation..? Whether it’s comic or serious isn’t the issue and I don’t know many people who’d argue otherwise. I suppose the problem is doggerel / silly stuff you get in cards / jokes etc. These are poems in the sense that they are divided in to lines, but anyone can see that they are *only* appeals to your base nature – there is little else to them.

    Anyway, I’d love to hear more about people who have said comic verse is bunk. Whether they meant poems that are funny are rubbish, or if they were using ‘comic verse’ to denote poetry that was *only* about being funny and therefore had scant literary merit. And if they were making the former point I have a tireless fist to shake at them.

    Reply


  2. John Berkavitch
    April 30th, 2009

    Ah yeah Jay Carol-Ann Duffy’s a barrel of laughs.

    Love Poetry, Hate Poets.

    Reply

    Byron Vincent Reply:
    May 8th, 2009 at 3:02 pm

    Sometimes it seems like you hate everyone Berko, have you ever thought of writing a poem about that ;-)

    Reply

    john Berkavitch Reply:
    May 9th, 2009 at 10:30 am

    I don’t really “write” anything fella. More a case of channeling it out of IdeaSpace and into the Physical realm.

    Hope yu good x

    Reply


  3. Mab Jones
    April 30th, 2009

    I am a comic poet, and a political poet, and I agree with what you say about making people laugh. In my experience it’s non-comic (”serious”) poets who look down on comic poetry. Life is short, people work hard, they like having a laugh. It’s the ego and pretentiousness of some (not all) poets and, especially, poet ORGANISERS (editors/publishers etc) that makes comic poetry, in their world, seem less important than serious poetry. You can say something about the world as well as make someone smile. That’s always my aim. And I think that Spike Milligan’s poems will last longer than most of the pieces I see winning competitions every week.
    Creativity comes from joy, and gives joy if it comes from joy, and putting labels on things is limiting (anti-joy). If we enjoy what we write/read, there won’t be any problem. Doggerel brings joy, to some! I prefer a bit o’ cleverness too, but that’s MY pretension. I just wish “serious” didn’t so often mean “turgid” (heavy-hearted), and “comic” didn’t so often turn out to be “nonsense” (light-hearted). My preference is for the middle way, a mix of both. But, that’s just me.
    Interesting blog, anyway!!! :)

    Reply

    Byron Vincent Reply:
    May 8th, 2009 at 3:01 pm

    Thanks for your comment Mab. I totally agree that in the fractious and frenetic tundra of modern life, the educing of laughter is more essential than ever.

    Cheers

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  4. neal zetter
    April 30th, 2009

    Some people who are sports minded play football, some are more skilled at badminton, some prefer jogging etc.

    Similarly I am good with words and it comes out as poetry – I can’t write novels, I wouldn’t make a good journalist and I’d be a naff playwright etc

    So I `poet’ because I CAN and that’s the way I express myself. It comes natural like the skills listed above to others.

    And as a full-time poet who runs workshops most days to teach people – no inspire people – to write poetry (the word teach implies there is a single way and there certainly isn’t!) I have oft quoted the kind of music analogy you mention above (thought using the Pistols and Bach).

    Interesting stuff.

    N x

    Reply

    Byron Vincent Reply:
    May 8th, 2009 at 2:50 pm

    Thanks for commenting Neal, Its a long time since I attended school, but it sounds like they way poetry is taught has come a long way since then.

    I truly wish I’d have had someone like yourself around to inspire a bit of poetic passion in me when I was a kid.

    Cheers

    Bx

    Reply


  5. Sophie
    April 30th, 2009

    Yes, absolutely agree.

    Comedy is always for some reason always sussed as being easy – yet some of the great comedy writers out there are the biggy Oxford and Cambridge students..it takes creativity and a sense of humour, yes but it also takes timing, wit, and mostly intelligence to fully achieve the lulz. Unless you are a viewer of the Mat Horne and James Cordon show of course, then all logic seeps out of the window.

    But most comedy is complex – the most effective of such, and generally exists as a catalyst to remove our states of mind from tragedy. Most comedy circulates around sadness and gloom anyway to an extent. Not in a Bernard Manning way of course – he’s just tragic, but in a Bill Hicks way..or to a lesser extent a Mr Bean way(?) even so.

    But for some reason tragedy will always excel and be percieved as being challenging – which is why Joy Division and Radiohead are the UK’s top bands and…Haircut 100 and…Slade(??) are not.

    At the Bolton Poetry Slam 09 the other week, there was much annoyance that ‘the funny ones were nabbing all the points’ – in some way degrading the comic poets for taking the easy way out. But then again – Bolton is also the homing ground of the ‘Put a donk on it’ tune – so maybe we’re just destined to fulfil this kind of gratuitous twattery indefinitely.

    :) x

    Reply

    Byron Vincent Reply:
    May 8th, 2009 at 3:11 pm

    Slams are usually dominated by comic poets. Personally it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable when brilliant poetry is usurped by cheep gag-smiths at competitions. I’ve won a few my self that i didn’t really feel I deserved to. Slams have always seemed to me to be more about entertainment than poetry, my personal preference is a balance of both. I don’t think the two things are mutually exclusive, but it does seem tricky to achieve.

    Thanks for reading x

    Reply


  6. Pete
    May 1st, 2009

    Poetry..comedy…
    yes.. it’s amazing when the two are
    combined and when there is honesty and passion underlying in the humor..it is not so grand to just copy lollipop sticks, or 80’s standup routines into a montage of rhyming couplets and call it poetically clever.

    2 minutes as devils advocate Byron:

    “At worst Comedic Poetry is an opportunity for self indulgent egotists to advertise their bar room gags whilst we the audience can feel self righteously smug that we all agree that the same things are funny without ever actually having to work out if they actually are.”

    prebooked..Canned laughter…verbal cabaret..A Circus..

    “I personally don’t believe that projecting your grasp of humor in rhyming couplets or staggered verse makes a poem
    or even comedy. 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.(real honest to jesus joy) 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 for

    Yet most poems that have held time in history and had a profound impression on people had little at all to do with humor..though charile chaplin’s later peoms were very moving.

    It’s amazing the polarity/Similarities of these two aspects of the same thing hu.

    I cant join in with this Dissing of the more serious and political poet Mr Vincent, though I take your point.

    One issue is that through the demand publically for more comedic poetry events and shows, the forum created by the more seriously toned and often issue based poet is being bumrushed by the comics. This makes me want to go all harry hammer hands on something to Byron.

    There is of course a stand up comedy circuit to…
    created by funny people for other funny people.
    where funny people sit and laugh at everything you say

    (incendentaly thankyou Hip Hop for housing some of our younger and less funny poets in times of isolation)

    This split in appreciation may have always exsisted but it exsists as much today as ever before.I dont know it probably ties into much bigger themes universally or soemthing or other, it might all end up being about love and hate again.

    What i wouldnt want to see personally is the audience for non comedic poetry in the live format to disapear completely..Or be split so far from the other that it was only manageable by running seperate events..
    maybe we are already there?..I hope not, It’s much better when were all under one roof.

    I love a little misery in my verse, am excited by the exsistnace of pride and pain in other peoples work, can identify and communicate with a poet and theyre work in this way.A little Regret or Guilt. some loss and a smattering of unfrequented Love.

    ..But I love to laugh to and I agree when all of the above are harnessed and driven through a poem by passionate wit with Keen, personal and accute humor..that can often be the best of all. there are very few that manage this well in my accumulation of memories. Mr Vincent, However, You most certainly one of them.

    The matter is Poetry and as ever I get lost trying to explain myself.

    It may travel in a dozen different veichles to get to my heart, does it matter what it turns up in?
    As long as it comes.

    Peace

    Pete Hogg

    Wandering Word

    I put on the odd poerty event and find it a harder and harder task to program uncomedic poets into an evening I wish to be succesful.
    It Irks me..But there seems to be a

    Reply


  7. Jay Bernard
    May 1st, 2009

    re: ha, not exactly a barrel of laughs, but there’s humour there. Honest! How can anyone read The World’s Wife without laughing??

    Reply


  8. Niall O'Sullivan
    May 2nd, 2009

    I had to walk out of a magazine launch this week after someone did their Tsunami poem. While the poem was about the suffering of people halfway across the world, suffering most of us couldn’t even imagine, the poem seemed to revel in the imagery just as much as it tried to seem sympathetic. There was something about the poem that just seemed so proud of itself.

    I cant stand that kind of “political” or “conscious” poetry, well written or not. I would much rather listen to some well written light verse or comic verse than earnest verse that seems to treat the big problems of the world as a prop in the real purpose of showing the poet to be a right on, self appointed moral guardian.

    Like many others above me on this page, I gravitate towards poets and poetry that can mix the dark and existential with moments of humour. Isn’t it the case that works of art such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ( both the book and the film) work so well because of the blend of horror, madness and comedy? Don’t they also work well because the political points that are made are often allegorical or implicit rather than rammed down our throats with a big pointy finger?

    Ultimately, I’ve seen a lot more comic pieces work as poems in their own right than ham-fisted political manifestos. Maybe it’s because comic poems have a necessary creative freedom brought about by the state of irreverence that comedy must always occupy, hence why tub-thumping 80’s politi-comedians just aren’t funny any more.

    As you say Byron, it all comes down to the quality of language, and the poet’s own love of their craft. Maybe if the Tsunami poet was that bit better as a writer, I might’ve become hypnotised by the language and not noticed the attention seeking mechanisms of the poem itself.

    Reply

    Byron Vincent Reply:
    May 5th, 2009 at 4:30 pm

    I’ve heard Tsunami poems that have made me feel a bit uneasy too. Maybe we’re just too jaded and cynical Niall. Maybe it is just people wanting to express feelings of compassion for those who are suffering. I just can’t help but think that when it comes to supporting the victims of tragedy, the time and effort it takes to write a poem could be more effectively spent. Having said that, I smell panic in the air, if you fancy working on a a pre-emptive swine flu themed collection together I reckon we’d make a proper mint before it all blows over, yeah?

    Reply


  9. Byron vincent
    May 2nd, 2009

    Pete and Jay. soz, I’ll get reply to everyone else ASAP.

    Firstly, my apologies that at I can’t reply to your messages individually, I’d love too but the computer gods hate me. I must have been a virus in a previous life.

    First of all I’d like to say that I’m in no way disregarding ‘serious’ poetry, all of my favourite poets (Hughes, Ginsberg, Plath) have subtle comic elements to their work but they’re hardly chuckle factories.

    Neither am I saying that all comic poetry is great, comedy itself is entirely subjective. It has one main purpose, to make us laugh, if it doesn’t achieve that goal or have other engaging elements then it can be excruciating.

    I’m simply saying that not all comic poetry is with without literary merit, and that making people laugh in and of its self is a positive thing. I only ever refer to myself as a poet as means of short hand communication; it seems to me to be quite an abstract term with connotations beyond my comprehension. Some of the stuff I write has little or no literary merit, its written simply to entertain. As a spoken word performer, from a non academic background who often presents to audiences who have no previous interest in poetry, I often use comedy as a tool to warm listeners up before I attempt something more densely written and lyrical. I can see how the more poetry savvy audience members would see this as a waste of their time, especially if they’ve paid money specifically expecting poetry. But they are a privileged minority, and although I’d like them to enjoy my work, engaging them is not at the top of my to do list.

    The type of political poetry I was referring to was of a very particular ilk, the type that literally *preaches* to the converted. The type that is just oration for self indulgent purposes. If it’s more than this, if it has poignancy or wit or beautiful lyricism then brilliant, I’ll be the first to applaud it.

    Pete:

    1) Of course there are egos amongst comic poets, pretty much every stand up poet I know is motivated by a self obsessed cocktail of ego and neurosis, myself included. As you’re well aware, I can go from obnoxious preening to wretched self loathing in the time it takes you to brew up. I don’t have a problem with ego driven performers as long as they’re good, lets face it we both know enough of them. However, we’ve also seen performers who are motivated by ego, yet mask this under a veil of faux social compassion, its this hypocrisy I find distasteful.

    2) I’M NOT DISSING ‘SERIOUS’POETRY! How could you even entertain the idea that I would. I’m simply saying that trite political compositions are of no more value than trite comedic compositions, yet are often deemed to be of more value by some audiences as they superficially cite a worthy topic. My personal opinion is that laughter is of more value than a surface nod to a political ideology, but my experience is that I’m in a minority in thinking so.

    3) I don’t want to see poetry gigs usurped by comic poets any more than you do. I just want to see good poetry, appreciated equally, in all its forms.

    4) I too am bang up for little bleakness in my verse:

    Black was the without eye
    Black was the within tongue
    Black was the heart
    Black the liver, black the lungs
    Unable to suck in light
    Black the blood in its loud tunnel
    Black the bowels packed in furnace
    Black too the muscles
    Black the nerves, black the brain
    With its tombed visions
    Black also the soul with its huge stammer
    Of the cry that, swelling, could not
    Pronounce its sun.

    Hell yeah!

    Lets heatedly discus this further over a sweet sherry soon.

    Love bruv x

    Jay:

    Thanks for you’re comment; it definitely challenged me to think deeper about my cantankerous ranting.

    “Who says it’s heretical?”

    Its an opinion that’s been expressed to me both directly and indirectly on more than one occasion. I totally agree that making people laugh in rhyming couplets doesn’t necessarily make for good poetry, but at least it’s achieving something of value.

    A poet once approached me after a gig. I’d done a twenty minute set. The first half was predominantly comedy; the second half was an introspective examination of the effects of growing up on an impoverished sink estate. The poet said:

    “ The first half was funny, but it just made me laugh, I was wondering when the substance was going to come, I’m so glad you changed the tone towards the end, powerful stuff ”

    He was being complimentary I guess, but he obviously placed more value on the tugging of his heartstrings than tickling of his funny bone. Later conversations revealed that he believed the confessional pieces to be more laboriously crafted than the comedy. Which isn’t true, they’re different but equally cerebral and labor intensive skills. I’ve consistently found that many people give greater intellectual kudos to poetry designed to garner an emotional response other than laughter to poetry that is.

    I should probably give an insight as to why I’m so intolerably whiny about this. I’m dyslexic; I didn’t really attend school in any consistent manner. Poetry was far removed from the lexicon of my social experience. When I left school age fifteen I wasn’t far from illiterate. The following Hegley poem was one of the first poems I read and enjoyed.

    My doggie don’t wear glasses

    My doggie don’t wear glasses,
    So they’re lying when they say
    A dog looks like its owner
    Aren’t they

    All puns aside, would you consider this to be doggerel? I genuinely don’t know if it is or not but it made me laugh and thanks this and poems like it I now have shelves lined with collections by the likes of Donne, Elliot, Sexton etc. It was a gateway to what I perceived to be an alien and austere place. I genuinely believe that without discovering this kind of work I would have never gotten in to poetry, and in my case the consequences of that would have almost definitely meant a long prison term or worse.

    So if Hegely’s doggie is doggerel, I say the world needs more doggerel.

    Anyway, thanks Jay. Next time someone suggests that good poetry can’t be funny, I’ll give you a shout and we can do tag team shaky fists in their general direction (or scribble a couple of strongly worded Haiku)

    :-)

    Reply


  10. Jay Bernard
    May 3rd, 2009

    Interesting that you say that poem was a gateway to the harder stuff. I wonder how many people would say Sexton, Eliot and Donne were gateways to Hegley. There’s an implicit understanding here that the works of Eliot are of a higher order than the poem you cited. This usually turns in to a purely objective/subjective debate and I will avoid that by saying this: Hegley’s poem borders on doggerel because there is nothing to it except the last line, which by virtue of being truncated is amusing. The observation isn’t exactly genius either. Anyone can see that – indeed that’s part of its charm. I think the problem arises when you get in to arguments about it being ‘better’ or ‘worse’. The man who appreciated your serious stuff likes serious stuff. The ones who no doubt love your comic stuff love comic stuff. There’s nothing we can do about this, so I’ll have to disagree with you about trite laughter being more valuable than trite politics. First, because it’s an argument that falls in to the same subjective trap, and second because, if we remain in that subjective trap, it could be as easily argued that trite political poetry that lets someone know about a serious issue, is actually more valuable than tickling the old funny bone.

    Reply


  11. Annamaria
    May 4th, 2009

    dear all
    try reading benjamins zephania’s poem”I’m in love with a hedgehog” or charles causleys “Timothy Winters” “or..”I real cool”to a bunch of teenage boys who hate writing…, or one of Rukus’s poems, then watch their pens slowly move across the pages and hear them beat box their poems…depends where you take your poems..how sick am i of hearing about who’s more middle class..or who’s more working class than who…read your poems to who ever will listen, and take them to places that wouldn;t get the chance to hear them then you’ll cover all bases..how lucky we are that anyone wants to hear us, and give them the respect for doing it.
    annamaria

    Reply

    Byron Vincent Reply:
    May 5th, 2009 at 3:56 pm

    You’re absolutely right Annamaria, it was flippant and unhelpful to use the phrase middleclass liberal. Despite my upbringing, these days I fall firmly into that category myself. I should also make it clear that sadly I am (hypocritically) guilty of at times espousing political polemic to audiences I know are likely to agree with me. This makes me feel more and more conflicted, on the one hand I feel passionate about something, but on the other hand what is the point of expressing it if I know that most people in the room already agree with me, and those that don’t aren’t going to have their minds changed by a poem? It’s an issue that has messed with my head ever since I started doing this. I certainly feel that the further removed I become from my former life, the less legitimacy I feel I have when talking about it.

    I shouldn’t have spoken about things in terms of class, when what I really meant was privilege. If privileged people want to help less privileged people, I don’t think that poetry is the most pro active way of doing do so, and like with Niall’s experience with the Tsunami poem can sometimes come off as capitalising on peoples suffering. On the other hand if someone has written an inspiring piece that that can be delivered to a large audience, thus motivating them to affect positive change in a way that perhaps wouldn’t have come about otherwise, then that can only be a good thing. Also, if a poem is good and performed charismatically the personal circumstance of its author becomes far less apparent to me, as I’m swept up in the brilliance of its craft.

    Ultimately, you’ve hit the nail on the head, people should just deliver their poems to anyone that will listen, and be grateful to anyone who does.

    Cheers

    Bx

    Reply


  12. Lucy Lepchani
    May 11th, 2009

    I love hearing political poetry (well, a great deal of it) whether funny or not. Living in a nation where the widest possible expanse of political ideoligies, issues and possibilities are homogonised into pernicious conservatism and increasing fascism; political poets, or those non-political poets who share life issues, landscapes, still-lifes or abstracts with us, breathe meaning into life.
    I sometimes work with children, and adults whose poetry is not usually( but sometimes ) something that would get heard in the places you or I might get heard, but I leave those classes feeling both privileged and humbled to have been present throughout a process that to connected people with their own creative power and potential. I also enjoy the role reversed, when someone creates that opportunity for me.
    Whether I listen to your poems or those of other poets who are/aren’t funny, and political or not, and whose work I also love; there’s the same appreciation of the poet’s creative process, not just of the finished product, going on. This is life-affirming. Conscious of it or not, I belives is what happens to audiences. Philospher Raoul Vaneigem writes about this in his book ‘The revolution of everyday life’ :
    “Thus poetry is also radical theory completely embodied in action; the mortar binding tactics and everyday strategy; the high point of the great gamble of everyday life.”
    As long as people are creating and sharing art and have opportunities to experience the art of others, life will be worth living.
    All poetry is political. Love poetry, love poets.

    Reply


  13. Tony Walsh
    May 11th, 2009

    You’re right Byron. Successful comedic poetry is rarely as easy as it looks and is therefore under-respected. There was a charity world record attempt in Manchester a few months ago, 100+ poets (or performers doing poetry) in one night.”How Many Poets Does It Take To Change A Lightbulb” in aid of Teenage Cancer Trust. A nice sum was raised and a good time was had by all, I’m not dissing it, but as a student of the game it was interesting to see the very wide range of scores on the old laff-o-meter. There were the non-comedic poets who had a stab. The stand-ups – including some big local/national names – who either did pure stand up or had a go with a poem. Then the more established comedic poets. There were hits and misses from all of those groups but it was very interesting to watch – with clearly a number of performers left to reflect on how hard it is to do well.

    As any comedian will tell you, writing comedy is a craft, nailing its delivery is a skill and overcoming variables like “vibe on the night” is a mystery inside an enigma inside a lottery. If the poet manages to get clever rhymes, cutting edge satire or great insight in there as well, even all three, then fair play to ‘em. And it’s hard work, cruel sometimes. Lines and delivery to polish, maybe wounds to be licked after each performance.

    Meanwhile, in terms of the culture clash between “serious” and “comedic” poetry, the best example of this I ever saw was this:

    Glastonbury Festival, June 2005 and I’ve blagged my way onto the Poetry and Words line-up. It’s Sunday afternoon and an excellent, mud-spattered poetry slam is drawing to a high energy close. Andy Craven-Griffiths will win, Polarbear has earlier had me in tears and Dreadlockalien is co-compering with Brum chum, Spoz – both fine Birmingham Poet Laureates-to-be. The place is heaving and so are some of the punters – it’s been a long weekend! A naked man in his fifties, completely off his cake and accompanied by a video cameraman, has recently slithered in on his belly and danced snake-like around the tent with only the reds of his eyes and some of his teeth not covered in the heady cocktail of mud and cow crap which is now baking off in the sunshine. It was like the director’s cut of They Came From Uranus (12A). What with him and the guy we saw yesterday, dead from Ketamine – Just Say No, kids!

    Kak-athon pics at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4619449.stm

    The slam ends and the next special guest is one Carol Ann Duffy – for it is she! Spoz is on stage, manfully covering the awkward slot as the slam audience shuffles back off to Scuzville-Upon-Fire, pausing only to be unwell in the Healing Fields, as another big crowd arrives for CAD. A markedly different clientelle for the most part. Cleaner, mainly! Lots of people whom Central Casting would put forward as teachers, with a rakish sticker or two as their sole concession to the festival spirit, some failed applicants for Pimp My Cagoule.

    Apart, that is, from three young women who take their place at the front of the stage, barefoot all over – apart from their individual body paint jobs as a tiger, zebra and, er, ocelot. Later Carol Ann will ask them to stand and take a bow. They do. We clap. One of many glorious moments for the “Only At Glastonbury” files. (What is it with Glasto and nudity?)

    Backstage, and Glasto’s Poetry and Words founder, the redoubtable Pat West (RIP) is mingling with the star guest. I’m introduced, I touch the hem of her waterproof garments and get the prized job of Carol Ann Duffy’s Chair Roadie. I am entrusted with placing her chair on stage before the assembled throng whilst exposing only the minimum of builder’s bum cleavage – mine, not Spoz’s. Or Carol Ann’s. I complete my mission as Spoz goes into his final number, reading it, as is his wont, from the text sellotaped into his Girls’ Own Annual 1973. Carol Ann now stands at the Stage Flap, getting in the zone. A touching study of the poet alone with her muse. And her chair roadie.

    Spoz gives it his big finish. A sensitive ode to the delights of festival toilets, to saving up a long weekend’s worth of cider and Mung Bean Jalfrezi and then the fevered drive to a desperate offloading in (on?) a Little Chef on the way home. OK, maybe it’s a bit crude of subject matter – but there’s nothing crude about its crafting. It’s clever. It’s funny. They laugh, they clap, they cheer. And They Know That She Walks Amongst Us.

    “It’s time, it’s time!” goes the excited rustle of cagoules.

    Spoz reaches a shuddering climax and segues straight through, pro that he is, to introducing Carol Ann in a slam stylee. Something to the effect of “Laydeez and Gentlemen, thankyouverymuch, thankyouverymuch, keep it going, keep it going, and give a huge Glastonbury welcome to the one, the only Miss. Carol. Ann. Duffeeeeeee!”

    The universe stands still. Steam rises from the Somerset mud. A Great Crusted Bongwarbler falls from its perch.

    Glasto ticket? £150. Horse tranquilizers? £20 a gram. Mung Bean Jalfrezi? £4.99. Carol Ann’s face? Priceless!

    Reply

    Byron Vincent Reply:
    May 17th, 2009 at 8:38 pm

    Cheers for sharing Tony, I’m all lolzed out now. Very much looking forward to your guest blog, when is it due?

    Also, are you doing Wychwood this year? I feel a poorly coordinated silent disco skankathon coming on.

    Good luck in Brighton tomorrow bud.

    Seesoon x

    Reply

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