If one’s RP and one knows it clap one’s hands.

Listening to the poets performing their work on a site dedicated to concepts of place, I’m struck by the fine accents on display as well as by the fine words, the different poetic voices in both senses of the word.  For example, there’s Byron and Emma’s accents which are separated only by a county line and a million miles. Then Charlie and Rukus pumping such different beats from the same heart of England. Poets in Resonance, indeed!

 At one time that wouldn’t have happened, of course.  Access to the airwaves was the sole preserve of people with cut glass accents, not broken glass accents like from my place. (Or yours?) Everyone at the BBC sounded like Brian Sewell and even the “lower orders” were portrayed by upper class actors, as lampooned here by Harry Enfield’s Mr Cholmondley-Warner.

In this country, of course, accents are irretrievably inter-woven with concepts of class with, in reality, dozens of gradations rather than the simple lower, middle, upper class system portrayed by these familiar faces.

Thinking about it though, concepts of class and inter-class cultural embarrassment form a huge part of UK TV comedy folklore – Keeping Up Appearances, Reggie Perrin, Rising Damp, Monty Python, Pete n Dud, Alan Bennett, The Office, Royle Family, and innumerable sketches all spring to mind.  From America, of course, The Beverly Hillbillies is built on that entire premise. Much so-called reality tv thrives on lighting those social touch-papers then inviting us to stand back and watch – Wife Swap being a case in point, and whatever the latest one is called – “How Clean Is Your Big Brother”, is it?

Whilst the very word “prejudice” in itself means to pre-judge, research alleges that  we all carry a mental pecking order of qualities which we subconsciously ascribe to a speaker based on their accent – qualities like trustworthiness, attractiveness and intelligence. Plus, of course, the converse which pins different judgements around levels of street-cred, toughness, criminality, lower intelligence or worse to those of us who speak with an industrial or rural accent. 

Sometimes comedians find humour in subverting those prejudices, as in this Monty Python sketch where the Tyke-toned dad is a luvvie playwright and his be-suited and well-spoken son is a coal miner.

But it’s much more common for advertisers and film-makers to use accents as subliminal short-hand for what they want us to think of a character, or as a short-cut to how they want us to feel about a product – homely, urban, classy, whatever.

So I find it interesting that – in the Heineken advert that I started this blog series with – the advertisers gave William Wordsworth a posh/RP/southern accent when, of course, he was from Cumbria with an accent to match.  An accent which, presumably, he was proud to retain despite accusations of being “unintelligible” at Cambridge and which is intrinsic to his work – some of his rhymes like water/matter and note/naught only work with a reet northern accent. But a quick internet search finds loads of audio and video clips of people like Jeremy Irons (a caste of thousands?) intoning Wordsworth in posher-than-thou tones and Ye Frightfully Serious Poetry Voice.  Leeds-born poet Tony Harrison rages about this sort of thing in his poem Them and Uz.

Now either, as is likely, the advertisers didn’t know of Our Willie’s dulcet tones, or they chose to gloss over the issue and not cause the accent to jar with the viewers preconceptions, prejudices in fact, thereby detracting momentarily from the message that their fizz-watter is the answer to all your problems.

Similarly, I was in London recently and spotted Wordsworth’s poem “Upon Westminster Bridge” as part of the Poems on the Underground series.  Here it is on’t'internet again read by another posh bloke.  But isn’t there a layer of meaning lost from the poem when it isn’t read by an out-of towner?

So, accents and speaking voices – some questions please.  I’d be grateful for your thoughts on:

What other poets of yore are known to have had strong accents?

Can you post some audio or video links to current/recent poets whose speaking voice or accent you consider to be intrinsic to their work? 

Whose dulcet tones do you admire and would wish for yourself?

How do you feel about your own speaking voice and accent?  Does it influence your work?  Have you written some pieces for a specific accent?  Have you heard someone else reading your work aloud and how did you feel about that?

‘Ow d’ yer feel abaht it when t’writers or th’editors feel t’need to trah ‘n gerraccents across on t’page wi’ strange fookin’ spellin’s?

Are you proud of your accent or wish that you could change it?  Are you conscious of it when reading out-of-town or at the widely different gigs that poets find ourselves at?  Does the saloon voice work in the salon?  And voice versa?

Is an accent a boon , a curse or an irrelevance in the world of spoken word? And is your answer the same for circles more concerned with the printed word?

Say what?

I’ll leave you with Linton Kwesi Johnson reading “If I Was A Tap Natch Poet” on American TV.  (Genius moment at 3.12-ish.)

But why have I seldom seen LKJ on UK television?

Why is it so hard to make a living, even as a “Tap Natch” poet?

And who decides what a word’s worth?

Innit.

Before my gig at the Soho Theatre on June 24th I worked with director Thierry Lawson at the Albany in London. Now. My ’style’, which is another way of saying ‘comfort zone’, is to stand in front of the microphone and read from the page. I haven’t learned one of my own poems since 2005. When I first started out I believed I had to write something new for every gig and learn it by heart. Needless to say I was a disaster – disorganised, under-rehearsed and lacking confidence – because I did not (and still do not) understand how to achieve things PRIOR to the night before they’re due. So I turned up and read my poems one after the other in front of Thierry who shook his head and proceeded to show me how I might make my reading more engaging. He was careful to point out that if I depended on the page then I couldn’t fill the space with my body and would have to do it using my voice. So I read things loudly, in monotone, to get used to spitting words as far across the room as possible; wandered around sighing to get used to making noises freer than the ones I make with words; I pretended to be submerged in a tank; I stood and read on a chair; jumped down… And whilst none of the physical exercises were transferable to the Soho Theatre, two things happened.