Two performance experiences: one, at the Africa Centre to a tiny audience including my dad. The poem was new. I was totally intimidated by the presence of family plus Nigerian Nigerians who didn’t appreciate my textual intervention or the humour. In contrast at the ICA, the younger, predominantly British Nigerian crowd screamed with recognition. They weren’t laughing at her; they were laughing with her. The ultimate test would be to perform it to a younger Nigerian Nigerian crowd. In Nigeria.

But for the time being, we’re back on the London-Canterbury route. The recording you’re about to hear isn’t live from the Canterbury Festival; it’s live from my through-lounge. No introductions, no background coughs or guffaws. No applause. This is a rehearsal, the closest you’ll get to the voice in my head. If you listen closely, you might even hear the splashing of the Thames.

The Wife of Bafa comes from Nigeria, she speaks Nigerian English, she references Ibadon University and the exclusive Lagos district, Victoria Island; but the poem takes place in ‘This London’. As I lived in London for sixteen years it tends to feature regularly in my work. I didn’t have a particular London setting in mind (in contrast to Jean Binta Breeze’s dynamic The Wife of Bath speaks in Brixton Market).

London is the implied setting but in reality, the poem would be set wherever I got a gig! Alice Ebi Bafa has sold lace, linen and Dutch wax on several continents…

The poem was a long time coming. It was conceived in an A’level classroom in Colwyn Bay 28 years ago. I lived five minutes from the sea and firmly believe that winter walks along the prom, with waves crashing on the sea road, helped channel my teenage angst into gritty poetry. (I regularly brainstorm in the shower – water clearly inspires me). I first encountered Chaucer’s General Prologue and fell for his irony and the flamboyant, three-dimensional Wife of Bath. My English teacher set us homework to write a character sketch in the style of Chaucer. I got my only ‘A’ and subsequently wrote a General Prologue to the Colwyn Bay Tales. It’s a sequence of portraits of mods, rockers, New Romantics and scooter boys. So here’s one I prepared even earlier:

The Prologue whetted my appetite. I vowed that one day I’d do justice to the Wife of Bath’s character. I finally wrote the piece ten years ago, my first attempt at a dramatic monologue. A dramatic monologue is first-person poem that reveals the character’s own psychology and the dramatic situation. Once I decided to make her Nigerian, I let her character take over and paid little attention to the dramatic situation. I never set out to make her sell something to her audience. Yet there she was, stepping out of the page trying to sell cloth by line 6! It’s later been suggested I was inspired by the end of The Pardoner’s Tale when he tries to sell fake pardons to his fellow pilgrims. As this was another A’level text it must have influenced me subliminally. I’ve written an analysis of The Wife Of Bafa, but at the end of the day, readers and listeners will always find more meanings than I ever imagined…

Sey forth they tale, and tarie nat the tyme;
Lo Depeford! And it is half-wey pryme.
Lo Grenewych, ther many a shrewe is inne!
It were al tyme thy tale to bigynne.

Then, there’s the settings within the tales themselves e.g. The Miller’s Tale is set in Oxford, and the Reeve’s, a retaliation, is set just outside Cambridge. The BBC filmed six tales in six different locations on the London-Canterbury route. I’m all set to follow in their footsteps.

So how will location impact on my work? As a reader, I detest long descriptions of places. I claim to have read Hardy’s Return of the Native but in fact, skimmed the entire first chapter, the description of Egdon Heath. Sacrilege! Egdon Heath’s one of the main protagonists of the novel. The Victorians needed those descriptions in the absence of the BBC to do all the hard work for them.  But I’m a lazy, good-for-nothing poet who finds it difficult to make that imaginative leap from long physical description to visual image. One strong metaphor will do quite nicely, thank you. And that’s what I hope to achieve with my adaptations, a strong sense of place through one strong metaphor…

 

Between London and Canterbury, before the Thames becomes the North Sea, sits the literary capital of the universe: Gravesend. It’s where Pip, Herbert and Magwitch rowed in Great Expectations; where the ship was moored at the beginning of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; where the BBC filmed their adaptation of Chaucer’s Shipman’s Tale. This town’s gritty, not pretty. It’s where I live and, more importantly, where I write. It will be the setting for one of my own Canterbury tales.

But where will I create this masterpiece of intertextuality? Unlike famous novelists whose studies get photographed in the Guardian’s ‘Writers’ Rooms’, I don’t scrawl longhand in the converted loft space of my Victorian villa, sitting on a distressed brown leather chair that used to belong to Jean Paul Sartre; I write in my through-lounge that looks out onto our garden with its unpruned apple tree, trampoline and sandpit. Not the river view I originally envisaged but strangely inspiring and five minutes from the Thames. Today it’s snowing on damp ground so let’s rewind to three months ago when I took this photo. This is my place:

The brief was to perform poetry “When no-one is listening” and to also be inspired by Shunt’s unusual setting, history and other art installations.

So I’ve been wearing a wireless head-mic and approaching customers in the bar, asking them, “Do you want a line?” and then offering up some of the following:

Skinny lines:

“We’ve had some baggage handed in at the cloakroom. Has anyone lost their inhibitions?”

“Can I have your attention please? Mine’s run out.”

“When no-one is listening, you and I can still stop. And look.”

“If I could talk to the animals…I’d have a boyfriend right now.”

“Ladies! Remember! You’re only ever 3ft away from a rat!”

“George Orwell’s clothes had an ‘antique patina of filth’. Bit like yourself.”

“My stars said: They’d sent down one of their own. And here you are. To twinkle at me close up.”

Big fatties:

“One of us in this room is a murderer.

Actually, that’s not strictly true, whilst sounding dramatic. Some of us in this room have been murdered.

A Blitz bomber vapourised the prior people here.

You can see them too…if you drink enough beer.”

(to the rhythm of She Sells Sea-Shells)

Shunt shows underground art, to be sure

By how long underground does it stay for?

When the mass understands what it’s for,

Shall-we-need underground art any more?

“We’re gonna party like it’s 1899.

Eons-old arts of rhetoric and rhyme are stirring in this crypt.

But don’t be afraid down here. Out of darkness comes light.

From the past, a presence.

And if just one of you tomb-ravers leaves tonight with a new synapse in place,

Then we subterranean show-folk, we lyrical lab technicians, will have done our work.”

“Lines written at the last minute lend an urgency to my language tonight. Like soufflés pulled too quick from cooking, the sentences collapse into tastelessness.”

 “Lines from the art column in last night’s Evening Standard: fucking chair, fucking debris, fucking rectangle, fucking artist, fucking unbelievable.”

(copyright Brian Sewell 2009)

“Throwaway lines litter the floor of this bar, having drifted like pigeon fluff from puff-chests.

Chat chucked aside. Disposable dialogue that makes a compost of conversation and feeds future shoots, so that tendrils of talking will once again curl up these walls and click to the brickwork.”

Count your Blessings or Viral Well-Wishing: The Pull-Ups. To be spread amongst punters, generously.

1. May your lips twitch twice-daily with merriment and may good humour slow-dance with you.
2. May your twinkle toes be never pinched in Primark plimsoles, but be paraded in Faberge flip-flops along life’s promenade.
3. Lose not your cool in an argument, but may you recall all those funny put-downs you were going to say but usually don’t remember at the time.
4. In life’s gaudy theme park, may you travel serenely through a tunnel of eternal love.
5. May you feast on infinite Hob-nobs from the bottomless biscuit tin of universal consciousness.

Nose-bleeders:

Lines not to say on meeting someone for the first time, number 92: “I don’t think paedophilia’s as bad as it’s painted, do you?” 

Laughter lines:

“What cheese can you use to hide a horse? Mascarpone”

(given by Nancy)

Dong!

“Being here is like being in Parliament.

There’s ‘Order, order’ all the time.

You need photo ID to get in.

And if you look up there, there’s Mr Speaker.”

“Apparently this is a Big Art Week in London. So have you got a Big ‘Eart?”

******

I may have a future in writing Christmas Cracker jokes. Or I may not even have that.

Crackered

Have added to poetry wraps with a few lines culled from tonight’s Evening Standard art column. Brian Sewell saying ‘fucking’ a lot. Priceless.

Plus someone’s given me a gag. And I even wrote a bit myself too (watch out for that future posting). Blimey.

 Shunt is busier and I’m getting familiar with my piece, although I haven’t worked out what to say when someone says “No” to my request “Do you want a line?”.

In all instances so far, I have forced it on them (I think the term is ‘enabling’) and said: “You’re gonna get one anyway, love”. But this makes me feel like a right pusher (maybe I’m a pen-pusher!). Am definitely getting into this role.

I start to relax and have fun with this (not forgetting my direction instructions from Hannah) and it all flows much better. Punters are more up for my approaches now that there’s more of them, plus I feel I’ve got a bit more to say. My purse is so full of wraps that I’m finding it hard to close it.

The Poetry Shot Bar is doing brisk business. One of the punters there loved hearing sensual words whilsts downing her slammer. She said: “The double effect is amazing!”

Poetry Shots Bar

Drinks all round…

So this is the try-out in front of the Shunt-punters. Proof-of-concept night.

Technically speaking, I should elaborate. I’m wearing a wireless head-mic, allowing me to lean at the bar and ask customers intimately whether they’d like a line. Intimately voiced, but amplified through the club’s speakers. Then I unfurl a little white paper wrap and read a line to them. Geddit? 

This works well in crowded spots, but Shunt isn’t busy tonight and I feel I’m projecting desperation as I approach people who feel like they’re backing away from me before I’ve even got my gear out. Ah, the dealer’s lot…

Also, I got so excited about making up little ‘raps’ that I nearly forgot to write anything good in them.

 I started off with my thoughts on opening gambits you might hear or attempt in a club – in particular, the ones you should avoid, such as:

 “I don’t think paedophilia’s as bad as it’s painted, do you?” (haven’t had the guts to repeat that one out loud yet).

 Or mock-announcements like:

 “Can I have your attention please? Mine’s run out.”

 Also

 “We’ve had some baggage handed in at the cloakroom. Has anyone lost their inhibitions?”

 I try out other, longer, more ‘poetical’ ones and they seem to work OK too, but it feels like  hard going. But I think we Shunt Poets all feel like that. And that’s the point, isn’t it?

 (for more Lines, look out for a future blog post)

Throughout tonight’s show, I am feeling huge commonalities about racking out cheap little lines, the effects of which fade after a few minutes. Also I’m speaking a lot faster than I should be. About not very much.

Director Hannah Ringham reminds me to slow down and speak clearly. Her direction this week has been helpful, supportive and clear to all of us, spotting strengths and elaborating on them, whilst knowing which creative sidings to avoid.

PS: I felt deliciously naughty travelling through London after with a purseful of paper wraps, mind.

I’m at Hull Station and the magnet kicks into life and the train to Doncaster is late, which means I miss my connection. Eventually, after waiting around for an hour, I get the London train.

I’m sat next to a little old lady with a beard comparable to my own. She’s approximately 158 years old. We get chatting and our conversation covers everything from the career of Ken Dodd, what makes a good nun, the merits of getting drunk on red wine vs. the merits of gettting drunk on white wine and weather conditions in Uganda. By the end of the journey I feel like we’ve bonded, so I feel an obligation to carry her luggage onto the tube and wave her off. She gives me a pack of biscuits as a token of her appreciation.

After a sweaty jaunt across London I manage to reach Shunt Vault. Amazingly I’m only five minutes late. I meet Byron, Joshua, Helen and Molly and we go for our first discussion/workshop. The Shunt Vault is a unique place. I like the way you can hear the drips of water and the muffled screams floating across from the London Dungeon, but unfortunately these noises cause the chaos-magnet to malfunction and we are set upon by hundreds of flies.

The Shunt experience can be a little jolting to people who aren’t used to it, but the whole process is supposed to be about getting spoken word performers out of their comfort zone. On the first night of performance the chaos-magnet picks up on the other performers nerves and misgivings, so I suggest de-camping to the nearest pub so we can have a chat, and if necessary get blind drunk. I’ve performed at the Shunt before as part of the Incubate process, so I do my best to put the others at ease.

We’re a funny bunch, us spoken word lot. And when you remove the confines and boundaries of the traditonal set, the flapping begins. I try to calm everyone down a bit; it is after all, just an experiment, and if all goes tits up… so what? We’ve tried something new…

As it goes, we all have a laugh with it. My biggest fear for spoken word and performance poetry is that it will become too stale and formulaic, and processes like this, while not always successful, at least try something new with the format. I feel the need to push the boundaries of my performances, both in content and location, whenever I can.  Personally, I like standing on a platform fifteen-foot above a bar shouting abuse thinly disguised as a poem at a bunch of unsuspecting punters. Makes the chaos-magnet go into a frenzy.

I also got see the amazing Oopise Mamushka sting quartet and TdC.

And by far the best thing about these residencies is that you start off with collaborators and leave with friends. And not even the chaos-magnet can disrupt that…

I’ve left this (happily) bland room a couple of times, but not much. I’m enjoying the thrill of being up close to London but not connecting with it.

I know I’m a real writer because I’ve done little writing, choosing to avoid the work I’ve got to do. I’ve Googled dining spots, I’ve checked emails, Facebooked and remotely worked. Spotify’s provided the daytime entertainment. Whilst at night I visited Bistrotheque to watch my Tuk Tuk Cabaret pals the Ladies of Pleasure take part in a show dedicated to new work, called Under Construction, which was outstanding.

I ain’t done much poetry. Lucky really, because not much is required. We’ve got a couple of minutes to fill, which sounds like a breeze.

Our work is to be aired in the windless tunnels of Shunt this week, in an experiment to fuse clubbing and poetry.

So my addled mind went straight for the drugs. I’m in good literary company: Lord Byron, Will Self, William Burroughs, Hunter S Thompson.

So I will be following my nose later on today, when I endeavour to make up a whole deal of poetry wraps – enough for a few lines each – and travel cross-town to deliver them to Mrs Big: Hannah Ringham.

If I don’t get there this afternoon, it’s because I’ve been busted.