Sunday 27 October 2013

Words on Tap - The Chemic, Leeds (25.10.2013)

"A Canadian spoken word specialist, a Derbyshire 
Poet Laureate and an eccentric musical wordsmith
walk into a bar .."






I've been writing poetry for a long time, longer than I've been playing music, and I buy a lot of poetry too, my latest purchase being 'It comes with a bit of song' by David Grubb.  So when I started my open mic travels a few years back, attendance at spoken word nights was a must.  Unfortunately, the first events I tried were snobbish and clique affairs where outsiders, particularly outsiders who were doing something different, were not made very welcome.

I attended several events at that time and found many poets were strangely unfriendly and disinterested, almost sniffy with each other, and I couldn't get my head round what that was about.  Aren't poets the last people on earth you would expect to be snobbish and elitist?  Possibly not.

The last straw was an experience at a slam event where the competition was all sown up and the majority of attendees were left feeling deflated about themselves and their own ability as poets.  Those experiences put me off live poetry and I recoiled back to enjoying reading, rather than listening to, poetry and poets.  I concluded that whilst most music nights were open and welcoming affairs, poetry nights were the opposite, deeply cynical of everything that didn't fit within a particular way of doing things.


That was until I started to discover nights like Beatification in Manchester, The Shipping Forecast in Sheffield and Words on Tap in Leeds.  These nights were genuinely open to new ideas and also mixing things up a little, throwing in some experimental music as well as testing the boundaries of poetry itself through invited guests and open mic slots.

So I was delighted to be asked by Matthew Hedley Stoppard (pictured) to do a guest appearance at Words on Tap at The Chemic in Leeds recently, alongside the wonderful poets Jeff Cottril and Helen Mort (see picture below).  

I kicked off the night with a combination of improvised electronics and beat poetry, and ended with a gypsy tinged piece on guitar called The Vague Plague, which is an abstract narrative about life in a Northern Town.  It all went very well and I was even given a bottle of the specially created 'Odd Ale' for my efforts - inspired by my song 'I Was Odd'. 

I was followed by Canadian writer Jeff Cottrill, who performed a tongue firmly in cheek piece called 'How to win a slam poetry event' - which pretty much confirmed everything I loathe about those nights.  Jeff also did a very clever piece - a review of his own review, which collapsed in on itself in all sorts of interesting ways.

After the break, a line-up of high quality open-mic(ers) returned with too many great performances to list them all, but here's a few.  Steve Nash told the tale of a carnivorous pet rabbit that ate his Mum and Dad - well Halloween is nearly upon us.  Becky Cherriman read poems about Morley and working mills, here's an extract from In Bloom:


Daisy HIll before bungalows and new builds
a time of timed hides and working mills
when the snap of rhubarb resonated in rusted iron drums.  

I could almost hear the rhubarb snapping when she uttered those words.  And Jimmy Andrex combined ukulele and poetry to good effect with a piece called Hearth, also winning a bottle of MHS homebrew in the process.

Helen Mort followed the open mic performers with some excellent poems from her new book Division Street, named after a street in Sheffield and containing poems about the miners strike, conflicts and personal relationships.  Helen's poetry is very real and down to earth, and helped bring a superb evening to a superb finish.

This kind of night does so much to rescue poetry from the pomp and elitism that is apparent at other events I have had the misfortune to attend.  The academic world does not own poetry, the specialists in poetry do not own poetry, the published poets do not own poetry, the publishing industry does not own poetry, the literary agents do not own poetry, the poet laureates do not own poetry.  Poetry is not owned by anyone, it is owned by everyone.

Martin Christie (October 2013)

Every picture tells a story

Here's the picture that Matthew took of myself and the headliners Helen Mort and Jeff Cottril.  Jeff is kneeling down to stroke Helen Mort's whippet but the whippet is not in the picture.  I put my hand awkwardly on Jeff's shoulder as if we were the best of mates because I didn't know where else to put it.  Jeff, being a true gent, didn't take exception to this and later on we exchanged Chapbooks.  Helen Mort looks great and I look a little odd - hence the name of the beer ... and the song.






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