After helping out at quite a few events covering a broad range of themes and poets, I didn’t think I’d find anything as exciting, vibrant and fresh on the poetry scene as performance poetry. Back in February I had the chance to catch the Bradford show.

My first exposure to performance poetry was when viewing the videos by Sky Arts especially the documentary from the tour’s first date at the Latitude Festival. However after watching the documentary and comparing it to my own experience of the show I realised there was something missing.

It was missing the energy and physical connection with the poet that is provided when you are watching the performance. The connection with the audience is a vital component of poetry but even more so with performance poetry. The connection allows the audience to feel the poetry as well as experience it. In order to appreciate performance poetry at its best, you need to see it performed first-hand.

Each show also gives a slot to a local performance poet. Joolz Denby’s more traditional reading of her poetry provided a good juxtaposition to the musicality of the rest of the performance.

The level of audience participation towards the end showed how well the performers connected with the audience. It felt like everyone had become part of the show when El Crisis brought us into participating in his mermaid song. It was great for us and for them.

The show at Bradford University’s Theatre in the Mill featured El Crisis, Jason Yarde, Joolz Denby, Kat Francois and OneNess.

The architecture of the building has been designed to represent the openness of the dealings of the Assembly to the public, to the people it serves. And the Welsh language is definitely alive – I hear it and see it all around me.

Through the glass wall in front of me I can see the Welsh National Opera House, another breathtaking piece of modern architecture, curved and slanted in layers of welsh slate and reflective iron plates. The front of the Opera House is engraved in enormous wording that catches your eye, and imagination, on your approach to Cardiff Bay – a brilliant example of the power of word art.

To my left is the beautiful bay, the sun rises over partly frozen, still water and light bounces off dustings of ice and snow on the promenade. Watching over this is the Pierhead, a Grade One listed late Victorian building, complete with clock tower and arched windows, once the centre of commerce in Cardiff Bay, now used as an exhibition, events and visitor centre.
“for the people of Wales; a space to express opinions and give voice to issues that matter to you as individuals, communities or organisations.”

My visit here today was to finalise our booking to perform in this amazing space, due to happen on 31 March 2011. The ethos of the Pierhead is compelling, I’m really excited at the prospect of taking part in such a wonderful piece of social heritage. I have to make sure that the local poet programmed is someone that can really speak to the people of Cardiff, to live up to the expectation of this rich location.

The Welsh Assembly is now flowing with regular waves of school trips and visitors, and staff are putting up the Christmas tree lights on an 18 foot tree.

In front of me the BBC are recording an interview of Jenny Randerson (Lib Dem Assembly Member for Cardiff) and Helen Mary Jones (Deputy Leader of Plaid Cymru). The Welsh Assembly passed a new law yesterday, making this the first day since England’s rule that Welsh is the official language of Wales. A big day for linguists, and for Wales. As you can imagine the former politician is celebrating this as a wonderful day, the latter that it’s good but the detail has not gone far enough.

For a few more minutes I decide to listen in, enjoy my bara brith and welsh cake, think on the power of language and watch patterns of sunlight on the bay. The film crew departs rapidly, the last of the crew, a very kindly BBC engineer gives me a mince pie… I’m full of cake but I can’t let it go to waste.

The Spoken Word All Stars, with special guest poet Peter Finch(!) will be appearing at the Pierhead on Thursday 31 March. Doors 5.30pm, performance 6pm. Tickets are free via guestlist, please RSVP.

So it had been around a month since the previous tour show, and there was fear of being rusty for the performance, so the plan was to arrive at the venue early and knuckle down to a good run through before the evening performance.

One component of the day to navigate was a Q&A / debate hosted by Punch Records, a development agency for performers and musicians, to which our guys had been invited to sit on the panel and answer questions through our partners Apples and Snakes. This turned out to be a fantastic little event, some great discussions came up about careers in performance poetry and performing arts, the art, if you like, of doing what you love and loving what you do. The general message was if you have the passion and the skill, given time and a good dose of hard graft, you will succeed in some form.

Punch Records run a series of these events, excellent value and also a great networking opportunity for those arts collaborators out there!

But returning to Murphy’s Law, everyone had managed, independently, to run late. Jason had cab trouble, the sort where they don’t turn up, which was delayed the two of us by so much I made preparations for the others to arrive first. As it happened, we were there first, as they were stuck in a taxi rank queue at Birmingham rail station.

Finally all were in and ready to go. Hold on. Our guest poet hadn’t arrived, you’d think with them being local, travel shouldn’t be such an issue. I ran out to call…and discover…that he was stuck, of all places, in London!

We would have to make do with four poets on the bill, there was substantial disappointment, amongst the complaints at no time to rehearse, but at least we had an extra weapon on this occasion. Ben Gwalchmai, a long standing Poet in the City volunteer who happens to also be a dab hand at theatre and direction, gave some great tips and encouragement to the guys. I have to thank him for this, and I was glad I had someone there I could really rely on, because unfortunately there were other, much more boring matters to attend to!

The MAC in Birmingham is a fantastic venue, in a gorgeous lake-side setting. It’s a complex of several performance spaces, a cinema, galleries and workshop spaces, with the ability to host a wide range of interesting happenings at a time. It appeared to be cherished by its visitors and is undoubtedly a jewel in Birmingham’s art scene. It is clearly signed by the entrance as being funded by both the Arts Council and the Lottery. This money is doing very well, and the community is benefiting from it.

However, for us this meant two problems, related to the preconceptions of a ‘poetry night’.

1) In the run up to the event, it became quite apparent that the expectations for bums on seats was very low, and three weeks before the show the venue had sold seven tickets. Seven. Now, if they had not been funded, if they needed to cover their cost for the show taking place, something tells me they may have been a little more concerned. This is my interpretation, bring to it what you will, but we had clearly been assumed as a loss making exercise from the start, and this concerns me. How can we raise the profile of poetry to a well produced and well recognised performance art, when those that stage it presume it is a second rate product?

2) Because we were regarded as a secondary, or even tertiary, element to that day’s programming at the MAC, our technical support was not well managed. By that I take nothing from the lovely, well meaning student who worked with us. She did all she could. But we ought to have been appointed a technician who had been properly trained, experienced and knowledgable because this is not your standard POETRY NIGHT. The Spoken Word All Stars show requires as much sound tech-ing as staging a live band, and it’s a set of many shifts between tempos, sounds, musical and vocal elements.

Now seven tickets was a shock. Seven. And here demonstrates the power of collaboration, internet marketing and using your contacts! Those three weeks brought on an intensive campaign through contacting local promoters and asking them to distribute an e-flyer, sending a discount offer to selected organisations, and working closely with Apples and Snakes, and Punch Records so that everyone going to the Tuned On session was encouraged to come to the evening show. Some people even thought the gap between shows was a two-hour interval! Not the case but if it meant they were there, all’s good.

So Murphy’s Law onto a law of positive karma – This may be a personal thing but it has gotten me through many a bad day – I’ve always liked to believe that a bad day will balance out with a great evening, that only so much bad can happen before some greater good comes out of it.

The show went down a storm, we ended up with a full house (the surprise on the venue staff’s faces at the queue for tickets was quite something) and the atmosphere was electric. Having four instead of five didn’t diminish the quality or the energy of the show and the guys worked in beautiful harmony. There were a few sound issues, refer to point 2), but I still feel that the response from the crowd, the engagement and the buzz were the best we’d had on the tour so far.

[cue anthem]
From being feared as a potential disaster, from a minefield of logistical set backs and a certain level of disregard, we had proven to be the hottest ticket that night at the MAC, and the night was hailed as one of the great challenges and successes of the tour.

Go us.

And … phew!

It’s becoming well known that people are watching the pennies at the moment, and holding off until the last minute before committing even small amounts of cash or time. The Spoken Word crowd, to add to uncertainties, is one of the most last minute in the country, but that doesn’t mean you can just sit still and hope for the best, right?

A couple of weeks before the London show we had sold a meagre 25 seats, out of a capacity of 300, out a joint PinC and A&S mailing list of almost 8,000. They just weren’t biting in the usual way. But we didn’t just want the converted, we were on a mission for new sets of ears, news minds to open to an underated (and to it’s detriment sometimes under presented) art form.

So if you know spoken word, where from? Was is a hap-hazard low key event, with a highly variable level of performance? Or was it someone inspiring, enthralling, that made you think, that tapped into something you always felt or that challenged your perceptions, that pulled at your heart strings or opened you belly to deep roaring laugh.

And if you don’t know it – how do you know what to expect? How can any of this be imagined from a two-sided coloured paper flyer that falls through the door, that’s looking at you from a coffee table?

Suddenly we had a lot of work to do, in all directions – through lucky connections we got some great PR on London Radio, the venue, being home of the Guardian newspaper, placed a listing in the Saturday press, and we rounded up a group of volunteers and supporters, new recruits and old faithfuls, to get out to their companies, gigs, clubs, schools, music industry contacts, the local hospital, to reach as many people as we could. Can you think of another poetry event that would go to the trouble? If you can I would like to know!

King’s Place is wonderful, I know I’ve said this before but it’s a great new venue/concert hall/office/restaurant/gallery/cafe. I’m proud to have worked with them and true to form, the technicians and stage managers were on top form. The artists were a little nervous, as is natural, but they needn’t have been. Chris Redmond had joined us again since Latitude, and the combo of him with OneNess, Kat, Kate Tempest, Crisis and Jason was superb.

Kate Tempest is a brilliant performer. She has a habit of stealing the show a little however, partly because she is spectacular to see and hear, but also because she can run away with time, get completely absorbed in her monologues and endless energy until she finds the end. But everyone struck a chord with the audience, which through all our combined efforts hit the 200 mark! An excellent turn out in the end if I may say so.

Chris introduced a genius and hilarious new piece about the need to slow down, and it was a delight to see his Flaccid Jazz duet with Jason again. I don’t get tired of hearing the poetry in this show, each time there’s something new, depending on the vibe, a new or an edited line here and there, a different inflection in tone making the difference of a big laugh from the audience, a small chuckle or an acknowledging hmmm.

All in all, this show was a corker, we got the new audiences, we got the converted, and we got the glowing responses that assured me we’re on the right song sheet, keep singing!

Ticket sales were worryingly low, Poet in the City puts on monthly shows at Kings Place and this had to be one of the lowest advance sales in our history there.

The benefit of having a regular venue though, especially such a high profile one with links to the media world, meant that we could exploit a few tricks the average poetry night planner wouldn’t get their hands on. Deliberate PR, one of the top PR companies in the UK, owed the venue a bit of work, so here was a challenge for them – get Spoken Word into the media!

It was a sterling effort, and right at the last minute we had two requests – one poet for an interview on LBC London Talk Radio, and two required for a BBC London Radio slot at 9.30am, both on a Saturday! Then the challenge was get the poets… the trouble with being a self-employed spoken word artist is the number of commitments, and how to balance them. You would surely think if a radio interview comes through you’d drop everything to do it – but sometimes life isn’t that simple…

OneNess was in another part of the country running a workshop, and did a sneaky duck-out to be intereviewed over the phone by LBC. Listening from the peugeot it was an interesting interview, it jumped suddenly from the host being on the subject of student tuition fees, right into “and we have a poet on the line, tell me, what do you write about?” He didn’t really seem to be particularly well briefed, his questions were nebulous, some searching for a political activist, and I could hear this threw OneNess a bit at first, thinking ‘what the hell do I say?’ but she pulled through and did a nice little promo for spoken word. We got a good plug for the show at the end.

BBC London however, that required two poets, plus the CEO of Poet in the City Graham, in the studio. This went completely down to the wire, as almost everyone was no where near London – Kate was in Paris, Chris was in Bristol, and OneNess and Kat were also out of reach. El Crisis managed to save the day by involving a poet friend of his, Josephine aka Realitie. He also proved that he can be on time when he needs to be, and the interview was brilliant.

There was a great discussion on Spoken Word, on how it connects to contemporary life, on how young people can find connection to it, and when asked if it was a response to the popularity of rap, Crisis opened a few eyes by pointing out that ‘Spoken Word is the Godfather of Rap’ – how rap and hip-hop had grown out of the Spoken Word scene of 70′s America.

The interview finale was a performance from both of the poets, and JoAnne Good finished by saying:
“Sometimes we come in to work and it’s like the wardrobe in Narnia, we don’t know who’s going to appear through the door that day, and I have to say that this is one of the best moments I’ve had working on this. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck listening to you, I had no idea this kind of thing existed, that performance was amazing. Thank you so much”

Well Jo, the hairs stood up on my neck too, and it was one of the best moments of the tour so far….

We arrived in Manchester the day before our show at Contact, El Crisis, Kat Francois, OneNess and Kate all hooked up with the spoken word youth group Young Identity for a two hour workshop on the main stage. The kids were fantastic, and it’s great to see Contact providing this platform for them to grow as performers, and enjoy spoken word. Every one was an individual and was showing truth to their own styles and ideas. We love this.

We met some real characters at the venue as well, people working there, or just hanging out, a lot of young people getting into poetry. A good dolup of banter was easily found, and very much enjoyed, especially with one charismatic teacher, who really knew how to make the guys laugh. One thing these guys were not short of was confidence!

In the evening there was live music in the bar, and true to form Jason knew the band. Lovely soulful little group, including a blisteringly good beat boxer, beautiful vocals and great guitar. An original and unusul combo but it works. (The name escapes me but I’ll go find the cd and bring the name back for you After a bit of mingling I grabbed a cd from them, and Jason and I wizzed off back to join the others at an Indian restaurant on Liverpool Road (highly recommended).

On performance day we had the true luxury of rehearsing in the main theatre all day, a fully kitted out stage, rigged lighting, good sound desk and a dedicated team of passionate individuals running the whole operation. You can see why Baba Israel is proud of the place, and we have to thank him and the team for their super hospitality.

Rehearsals were relentless - danger, perfectionists at work! But it really paid off on the night, the intro was totally re-worked, and this was by far the slickest performance yet. The ambience on stage, with proper lighting, even smoke machines, gave the stage the aura of a rock concert – maybe a bit much for an audience of 80 but if you’re going to do something, you might as well make it a good’un! 

Young Identity, and their select group Inna Voice, joined us on stage as guests, contributing some inventive theatrical spoken word, a blend between being a short play and a performance poem, and to great effect.

After the show we enjoyed a couple of drinks with Baba and the guys. Most of the poets had skipped a proper dinner through shere dedication to the show, so it was a late night falafel joint that rounded off the night!

I hadn’t been to Manchester before this gig, I’d been told by a relative that Manchester was ‘just traffic’. The little red peugeot I’m sure would agree, there’s a lot of traffic, it’s a very busy city, but what really made this visit great was the Contact and people we met, who prove there is a lot more to Manchester than just traffic; the place exudes confidence and a uniquely gritty yet creative culture. You just have to get involved!

With Jason’s small knowledge of the roads, and my in-built sat-nav (as in, the biological sort, we do things old school!) we wound our way through a wet one-way system, dodging queues, and after three attempts found the turning to get as close to the venue as possible.

The guys would need to refresh, rehearse and re-jig material for this show to work. I was pretty nervous.

First of all, Kate Tempest was joining us for the first time in the tour. We’d worked with her before so didn’t doubt her abilities one bit, to be fair if anyone were to find a way of slotting in at the last second, with scant rehearsal time, and pull it off spectacularly, it would be Kate! But as the responsible person for the success of the tour, I was still nervous.

Secondly, our guest performer Emma McGordon would need a little time to get up to speed with when to come on, how to work with the music, etc. I’d realised by now that Jason would doubtlessly be going in for the improv sax for her accompanied piece. Minimal preparation, but still a beautiful piece. This is why we call him the king!

Jack, the stage manager, programmer, all-cool liver lad helped us unpack Jason’s kit – two saxophones, and two elephant weight suitcases packed full with the mixing desk, laptop, drums, some clothes for the stay and an array of percussion utensils including a banana rattle, and a squeaky rubber shark…

At the stage we were the last in, save a couple of wandering volunteers, and the others had begun debating, with a slight degree of panic, the intricacies of staging, running-order, and so on.

With as much in place as possible, but still without a full run-through, we escaped to the green room to let the audience take their seats, and the poets mumbled their lines to themselves for the last few minutes. OneNess our host was on lemsip with a sore throat, and now everyone was on edge. The call came – all I could do was retreat to the first row and hope for the best.

Jason started the music, and played his cue bongo drum beats… and drummed again… and a little louder… and quieter for a bit… and louder for a bit (where are they?) and a few more hard taps and they were on! It was a shakey start, and became clear we’d need to address that, but once they got going, when the real pieces came to the stage, boy they were good. A few minor hick-ups here and there but covered well.

OneNess held her gorgeous voice to the end, Kat was expressive and emotive, El Crisis was mesmerising and out of nowhere started a hilarious play-off between him and Jason on sax (something that’s been kept for the later shows), and Kate definately pulled it off!

Emma McGordon was a delight to watch and hear with inventive and beautiful poetry, delivered sincerely and emotively. I would highly recommend her to anyone, and I thank her for her patience in our preparations on the night!

The Bluecoat is a beautiful building, with some seriously funky art going on inside, I wish I could’ve spent some more time just looking around; perhaps I’ll be back. It was quite an intimate gig. The auditorium was lovely but not large, and the audience was big enough for me to be content, but I definately want more for our future shows. But a good start, we managed to strike a chord with our audience, and received nearly all top marks on the feedback forms (the all important feedback forms).

The day was finished with packing the peugeot back up, depositing at the hotel and then a long-awaited and delicious Bella Pasta, and inevitable post-gig analysis round the table – what we needed to work on, what happened past, what’s needed future.

Relieved, and exhausted, nearly everyone was in bed by midnight, not very rock and roll. Jason and Crisis made the best effort and managed to stay out until 3am with some local friends.

Tomorrow we’d be back on the road to Manchester; I’d be sad to leave Liverpool, it’s architecture is eclectic, breath-taking and some of it, filled with ideological conflict – these beautiful grand buildings that you know were funded by a slave economy left me in a place of contemplation, at odds between admiration and remorse. I wanted more time to dwell on this. And the whole central area of the city is dotted with delightful pieces of public art; sculptures around corners where you don’t expect them; I will be back in my own time to unravel more of the intricacies of this inspiring city and its history.

Thanks Merseyside!

28th September 2010

And is it alright for me to admit, yes, that Friday was exhausting! From driving up via a cheeky pick and load-up at our London venue in Kings Cross (still feel lucky I got away with that) to helping Sky Arts with their interviews, to carting equipment across the arena on some dubious wheelbarrows with Jason and the amazing PinC volunteers.

But despite all the running around, and the poetry tent sound desk (no sound check, no way of hearing from the desk what it sounded like out front!), the show went down fantastically, and the tent filled and overspilled despite competition from a lady named Florence.

Backstage everyone was on it, the stage manager putting this world into action, the angels in the cabin answering all your random questions with a smile, John with the dubious wheelbarrows in a far-flung cabin to be found in the township of cabins north-by-northeast of Comedy.

By Saturday and Sunday I had the joy of losing myself to the festival, safe in the accomplishment of a show that really happened, and really worked! And I can’t finish without a thank you to the poets, to Jason, and to the indispensible troop of Poet in the City volunteers, who always do a super job helping at our events.

And one of my fondest festival moments – an illegal dip in the lake with fellow PinC recruit Isobel. I know I know, I squealed a bit at first, slime underfoot is not great, but the undeniable hippie-ish sense of natural liberation was well worth it, and yes, the water was good, but that wasn’t me endorsing it ok?

…we were promptly evacuated…

and suspected the boat-driver man was continuing to cross our boarding point/changing area for some time more than was necessary, if you catch my drift.

Latitude Landscape at Dusk

Hollographic swimmers gain special dispensation

Ivie out.

Is it just me though, or are festivals really weird? Virtually overnight a medium-sized town springs up in dome fields somewhere, complete with thoroughfares and intersections, tent suburbs, public amphitheatres and market places, like some strange outward-bound experiment in town-planning. In some ways its less like a town, I suppose, than like a massive pre-modern encampment, a medieval army on the march perhaps, winding and folding its way across and into the landscape.

Whatever it is, a festival certainly focuses your attention on some of the basic functions of human beings as social animals. Mainly it suggests that eating and drinking are constants, resulting in vast quantities of piss and excrement. Sometimes the porta-loos, with their large tanks of blue chemicals, appear to be visiting an eco-disaster on the countryside. Where exactly do they take all this crap-filled liquid? The festival is certainly a liminal space where normal life can be left behind for a while and the most important decision of the day becomes a matter of which stage to visit and whether to have a hamburger or a chicken fajita. The rich food and body odours add to the sense of freedom, of the festival as a space for licensed revelry.

The music at Latitude left me slightly underwhelmed, but that may just be because it is not from my era. What I was really impressed by was the word-culture on offer. It was like Glastonbury meets the Hay Festival, with loads of people choosing to spend all or most of their day experiencing poetry, literature, opera or comedy. This seems like something exciting and new to me, a really great space for the internet generation to discover new forms of expression, new performers and new inspiration. For me, of course, everything was centred on the poetry tent, where the Spoken Word All Stars appeared on Friday night.

In fact – all weekend – poet after poet in this space gave performances that were – by turns – smart, funny, streetwise, moving and thought-provoking. One got the impression of a torrent of words, perhaps the human animal’s most extraordinary by-product. If it was a poster it could be represented just like the Poet in the City logo above, a city built out of words.

Jason is one of the UK’s most admired musicians, with a string of credits to his name. A few days ago he was playing with Sibongile Khumalo in South Africa, amidst all the feverish excitement of the World Cup. This autumn he is going to be playing a doble bill concert at the 606 Club in London with his trio (Wah!) and his duo (My Duo).

In the original show in 2009 Jason did have much time to work with the artists and concentrated on improvisation and on providing complementary sound effects for the verse being performed.  This he did brilliantly, giving last year’s show an edgy and spontaneous feel, all of its own.

‘This is quite a different show,’ he says, ‘much more track and song-based, a real combination of music and spoken word. People who have me playing in Jazz shows may be surprised by this material. There is a lot of variety in the music we are using – my job is to allow for this but also to make the show into a whole thing, musically. I have used lots of different things to create a palate of sounds. What’s nice about working with the All Stars is that everyone is confident in other peoples’ abilities. The material is excellent, all we need to do now is to perform it live. I’m still not quite sure how it will all fit together on the night,’ he says, ‘but for each of the artists I have given them everything that I can from my sonic arsensal!’