The missionary position

Marcus Moore and Sara-Jane Arbury are the king and queen of poetry slams, bringing a funny hat, a sparkly dress and quality control to any occasion. On Thursday they were at Cheltenham Science Festival and so was I, to take part in their eighth Slam the Atom! event.

It was a dream line-up, unless of course you were hoping to win. Here was smily Spoz, former Birmingham laureate and scatologist supreme – veteran slammers Brenda Read-Brown and Peter Wyton – Steve Rooney, comic genius from the East Midlands – Robin Cairns, ditto from Glasgow (see www.robincairns.com) – and plenty of other great voices, some of them new to me. It came down to a head-to-head between Steve Rooney and Brenda Read-Brown, and Brenda carried off the crown. I was knocked into a cocked hat by Steve Rooney and deserved to be – I cried with laughter as he performed a stonking set.

One of the contenders had said to me earlier, ‘The problem is, it’s harder to win now’, adding with a nostalgic sigh, ‘There aren’t so many idiots about as there used to be.’ It’s true – the standard of poetry reading, performing, and telling is so much better than it was even five years ago. God knows I hope my own has improved in that time. It used to be that a good slam was great, and a bad slam was bloody embarrassing. Now the good performance poets are numerous enough that a slam should always be lively, funny, thought-provoking and a good night out. This is what we need, if we want get bigger and more mainstream audiences.

And do we want bigger, more mainstream audiences? I do – it’s my mission on earth – not for me (though that would be nice) but for any live poetry event. Much as we love that feeling of speaking up in a small room of good friends, fellow poets, pissheads and publicans, I want poetry to reach out to those people who don’t identify themselves as poetry fans. Ian McMillan does this brilliantly, filling large venues with his shows. His secret is to disguise good poetry as something else – as music, as comedy, as a cartoon show or a community event – but always to present people with poetry in a format they can enjoy.

It’s a lesson that could be learned by some of our established poets: most of them are very competent readers of their own work but you can still go and see a Great Name and find that s/he doesn’t look up from the page all night. Ladies and gentlemen, step out from behind your lecterns and show us your words are worth learning by heart.