Comments on: No lolz please, we’re poets.

By: Spoz

Spoz — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 15:39:27 +0000

Ah yes … it’s all coming back to me now, like a Mung Bean Jalfrezi! I don’t think CAD was terribly HP with me, though she has spoken to me since.

By: Byron Vincent

Byron Vincent — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:38:26 +0000

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

By: Tony Walsh

Tony Walsh — Mon, 11 May 2009 22:11:22 +0000

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!

By: Lucy Lepchani

Lucy Lepchani — Mon, 11 May 2009 10:53:41 +0000

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.

By: john Berkavitch

john Berkavitch — Sat, 09 May 2009 09:30:47 +0000

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

By: Byron Vincent

Byron Vincent — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:11:02 +0000

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

By: Byron Vincent

Byron Vincent — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:02:45 +0000

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

By: Byron Vincent

Byron Vincent — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:01:15 +0000

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

By: Byron Vincent

Byron Vincent — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:50:37 +0000

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

By: Byron Vincent

Byron Vincent — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:30:42 +0000

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?