Reviews of the Ephemeral

Posts Tagged ‘Peter Hayhoe’

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Review: Sage & Time’s 2nd Birthday 18/07/12

In End of year round-up, Performance Poetry on February 21, 2013 at 9:00 am

- reviewed by James Webster, Dana Bubulj and Koel Mukherjee -

s&t2

The Birthday Boy, um, Girl, um, Evening.

Regular readers will know I’ve hardly been restrained in my love of Sage & Time. The brainchild of Anna Le and home of the Dirty Hands collective, it has been a welcome mainstay of my spoken word experience and that’s why it was so lovely to attend its 2nd birthday party back in July. The evening had an uplifting celebratory feel that was reinforced by the various poems from both the regular and newer performers and it was all totally lovely.

No party’s complete without an excellent host …

The evening was hosted by the confident and fiercely warm Kat Francois, who was always quick to quip and jest with the audience. She focused us into rapt silence before the performances, and provoked rapturous applause after them; you can really see how her experience as a stand-up comic has honed her crowd-handling skills. Francois kicked things off with a machine-gun rata-tat of words explaining why she performs. It was a storm of a poem, stressing the importance of poetry, claiming her place on the stage and asserting her ownership of words. And ‘I Love Being a Woman’ was amazing fun, full of sing-song joy, sensual language, silly orgasm noises, and a perceptive take on the give-and-take of relationships (though it was a bit odd that a poem with that title was all about her relationship with a man). Top stuff.

The party’s welcome guests – highlights of the Open Mic

  • Mark ‘Mr T’ Thompson, S&T regular, kicked off the open mic with a quick and powerful flash of a poem on Usain Bolt, before giving us an incredibly sweet take on his youthful gawkish self’s inability to dance.
  • Elaine O’Neil then showed off her way with words with ‘Light Rail’. I really enjoyed how she penciled in the potential of the places railways can take you to, and she took us on a witty and intelligent journey from hope to capitalism.
  • The Wizard of Skill gave his usual madcap performance, full of amusing repetition and imaginative phrasing. Though, some might say that the repetition and disparate references that characterise his offbeat style sacrifices structure and progression.
  • Jazz Man John’s ‘Advice to Young Poets’ was a short piece on classic poets that was nicely witty (if a bit off-kilter).
  • Anna Em’s ‘Chain Letter’ was impressively haunting, had some good natural and supernatural imagery and some killer lines like “he counts his lost days on a calendar of broken dreams”.
  • Errol McGlashen’s ‘One Drop’ (inspired by Stephen Lawrence) was full of powerful rhythm, ranging across civil rights history to a brutal depiction of Lawrence’s death. It was powerful and chilling (and occasionally very funny).
  • Jill Abram performed ‘I have Forgotten my Father’, an endearingly nostalgic piece that was full of touchingly tiny remembered details that captured the miracle-magic that parents can make for their children.
  • Achilles read ‘My Finger’, an amusing take on technology making fingers obsolete that elicited ripples of laughter from the audience.
  • Richard Watkins had some wonderfully tinkly sing-song language in his piece that was a celebration of the mineral world and send-up of the material world. The point was a bit hackneyed, but it worked.
  • Tim Wells gave two poems, the first a witty ‘love poem to anger’, while the second was dedicated to girls his daughter’s age who date hipsters with “tight trousers, a weak moustache and pox” and was super-bleak, but much fun.
  • Koel Mukherjee’s ‘Love Poem to the Universe’ was a stunning mix of pure beauty and ultimate whimsy. Having started performing at S&T only recently, she had clearly grown massively in confidence to reinforce her heady talent with words.
  • Edward Unique’s piece ‘The Rainforests’ came together really well, mixing images together into a cohesive whole he sometimes struggles to achieve with his plurality of ideas.

The guests of honour – Features

  • Anna Le performed two pieces herself, the first ‘What is it?’ was an evocative and endearing description of walking into an open mic for the first time and segueing on to sum up some of the lovely things about Sage & Time (“S&T loves the jokes, but doesn’t need the happy every after”). And her ‘All the While’ was especially heartfelt on the night, its verse reaching out to you, the cadences rising and dropping just as you think it’s going to peak.
  • Lettie McKie: Lettie’s first poem was a humorous take on getting groped on the tube, which hilariously summed up a familiar feeling, but didn’t seem to offer any new/interesting perspective. That said, her performance (complete with amped-up middle class voice) was top notch.
  • While her second was a poem of two halves, the first essentially a very well constructed list of minor annoyances and first world problems that combined to blow each other out of all proportion. While the over the top hatred of life was fun, it didn’t really speak to me and felt a bit trite. The second half, however, was a lovely, soft and tender piece on the joy of words, friends and people’s differences and segued charmingly into congratulations for Sage & Time’s 2nd Birthday.
  • Keith Jarrett is a charming performer. Coupling intense and lush poetry with a winning stage presence, he started with an awesome piece made entirely of references to the previous performer’s poems that was a lovely and inclusive way to start his set. He also performed a fun, lyrical and accessible poem that was great on how the young construct their sense of selves and sense of ‘cool’ and also turned into a surprisingly good sing-a-long. It was rich with nostalgia and warmth and it really invited the audience into his reminisces.
  • Amy Acre continued the trend of poems celebrating Sage & Time with an immensely fun rap to introduce herself to the stage. She followed up with ‘Run’, a poem apparently inspired by a woman she met travelling in Nepal. Now … I’m usually wary of this kind of introduction, as far too often it leads solely to a vacuous poem that either reduces the locations talked of to mere exoticism or exposes nothing but the poet’s own privilege. However, this piece was a beautifully simple and incredibly powerful poem on gender disparity and the dangers of tradition for tradition’s sake that actually acknowledged the speaker’s own privilege along the way. Gorgeous stuff.
  • James Webster performed “Flat-Pack Lover”, his contribution to the Penning Perfumes collection of poetry inspired by different scents. The imagery was a rich, sensual, slightly quirky jumble, describing a personified piece of furniture, a warm, inviting, pinewood-and-brass lover. This was followed by a lovely tribute rooted in the there-and-then – “The House of Sage and Time” imagined Sage & Time as a home, the walls made of words that you could spend a hundred years reading, the spice cupboard full of sage, and the doors only open to those with “words in their hearts and fire on their tongues” – an electrifying statement of welcome and intent for anybody who loves poetry.
  • Peter Hayhoe … how do I even describe the ridiculous genius of his poem? He performed a poem that was pretty much his entire life in poetry form (all the way up to that very moment) and it was spellbinding. It was filled with geeky nostalgia, teenage doubts and plenty of jokes; a disarmingly honest and adorable performance.
  • Maddy Carty finished the night off with an ice-cool set of songs that we both perceptive and entertaining; a real treat for the ears.

Overall this was a warm embrace of an event. An inclusive welcome for the new, a celebration for the regulars, and a damn good party for all involved. While there were some poets I enjoyed more than others, the joy of Sage & Time is how inclusive and supportive it is of everyone and that tells in the ever-improving and enjoyable poetry its regulars perform. And this was such a fun night I’m already excited about the 3rd birthday!

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Bang Said The Gun! 23/02/2012

In Performance Poetry on May 1, 2012 at 12:24 am

- reviewed by Koel Mukherjee -

@ The Roebuck

THE HYPE - It’s hard not to turn up to Bang Said The Gun! with a heaving sack full of expectations. A hugely popular night, run by a medley of awesome London poets, Bang! regularly garners glowing reviews and has been featured on Channel  4 and Sky. So what makes it so special? And did this Thursday’s edition live up to the hype?

THE REALITY - I turned up. It was loud, and packed. The room was filled with candled tables offset by wall-displays loudly spelling out BANG! in black and white letters, and making the venue feel like some sort of clandestine punk comedy club. Milk bottles apparently filled with chickpeas sat on the tables waiting for the audience to shake them, and I can confirm that doing so is an awesome and weirdly addictive alternative to clapping.

THE AWESOME - This is an event brimming with quirky features to keep you engaged. At the start, an audience member is randomly dubbed the Hatalyst (Catalyst in the Hat), charged with wearing a preposterously large top hat emblazoned BANG! and leading the audience response / milk-bottle-shaking. On this night we got James, single, occasionally employed and not aware of having any STDs. He accepted the hat with gusto. Other fun things: to kick off the second half, Rob the barman read out some delightfully silly bar and/or pub related jokes from an enormous book titled the Bang Bar Staff’s Big Book of Beautiful Banging Banter. Plus, the excitement of competition! This was the Raw Meat Stew – in which seven poets competed for the Golden Gun award and a slot in the following week’s line-up.

THE HOST – DAN COCKRILL - was a fun, charismatic host, projecting the raucous and irreverent spirit of Bang! and giving the performers a rousing welcome.

 Speaking of the performers, here are my highlights (and lowlights).

MARTIN GALTON engaged the audience’s attention by giving us a choice of two books he could read poetry from – a red book of love, or a black book of hate. We chose hate: musings on the dystopian failings of past and future policing, on the disturbing ubiquity of yoghurt in supermarkets, on personal flaws and insecurities – a nice blend of the personal, the political and the absurd, engagingly performed, made this a satisfying and enjoyable set.

NIA BARGE ~ POET-IN-RESIDENCE - This was Nia Beige’s final performance as Bang’s Poet-in-Residence.  What struck me most about her set was her wonderfully expressive delivery, which brought razor-sharp observations and reminiscences of love and living vibrantly to life. Her piece on discovering that a relationship is an affair was devastating and beautiful, with the phrase “if I knew my memories were borrowed from her happiness…” standing out for me in particular.

ROB AUTON’s surreal tribute to yellow was in keeping with the theme of his upcoming Edinburgh show, Yellow in Colour. This shambolic and odd piece charted the poet’s awakening to the wonder of the colour yellow, and conjured up whimsical vignettes involving… well, stuff related to yellow. The fact that my stomach hurt from laughing throughout this hilarious conceptual journey is testament to the fact that this really, really worked. While other poets went for their own brands of surreal humour and abstract weirdness, Rob Auton was the only one who actually made me broaden my ideas of what performance poetry can be, masterfully navigating the fine line between brilliantly absurd and pointlessly random – something which is particularly difficult to get right in performance.

CRAIG MILLER’s guitar-driven set was uninspiring, reaching a low point when he told the audience that, having been advised to write what he knows, he had written about being a stalker. Describing tiptoeing down someone’s hall, this song’s repeated refrain was “I’ve seen your face, I know your name”, and was as tedious, creepy and irritating to sit through as the concept was trite and unoriginal, written solely for the cheap laugh.

JESS GREEN ~ winner of the previous week’s Golden Gun award - was my favourite poet of the night. A contrast to the cheeky, offbeat tone of much of the night, this set was brimming with the kind of well-judged yet passionately conveyed sincerity that lights a fire in your bones and breaks your heart. The highlight was an angry, powerful poem that repeated “I’m tired of…”,  expressing the poet’s frustration with the double standards and restricting expectations young women face, as well as with sexism on the poetry slam circuit. There was an urgency in her delivery, words tumbling out as if it was impossible to keep them in, but controlled and flowing towards an achingly relatable climax.  This was beautifully written, mesmerisingly performed, soul-baring poetry that got right to the heart of the ridiculous endeavour that is being a person.

PETER HAYHOE’s exploration of the self-doubt and uncertainty a new relationship can bring, symbolised by a disappointing hole in a Pizza Express pizza, was insightful and funny, and peppered with a characteristic self-deprecating geekiness that I’ve warmed to every time I’ve seen him perform.

FEATURED POETS

Comedian JULIAN DANIEL combined a straight, deadpan delivery with wry wordplay to create fun, quirky little pieces – a slice of ham, sandwiched by bread, wishing it was jam , or a parody of Kipling’s “If” (the original “then you’ll be a man my son”), that married the expected inspirational platitudes to gems like “If you can wear an ill-fitting thong…”. Occasionally I felt the humour got a bit lazy, such as the climax of a love poem ending with the obvious “…now will you sleep with me?”, or his introduction to a love poem for an ex who called him insensitive, in which he relied on banal sexist stereotype for a predictable punchline,  “…it was probably that time of the month!” Overall though, this was a fun antidote for anyone who has ever sat through godawful, overwrought love poetry.

LIZ BENTLEY - Accompanied by jaunty ukulele, her poetry was replete with eccentric black humour, steeped in the mundanities and struggles of everyday life in London, as well as in difficult personal issues such as the end of a long-term relationship. Maintaining an irreverent tone throughout, this was a highly enjoyable set that combined humour and depth to compelling effect.

RAW MEAT STEW ~ judged by Nia Barge

The performers in the Raw Meat Stew covered an interesting range of subjects – love, Star Wars, abstract personal reflections – but varied in quality and performance skills.  Cecilia Knapp’s piece on young and stupid forays into love was moving and evocative, while Chris McCormick, the eventual winner, had an engaging conversational style and some amusing things to say about Wookies.

CONCLUSION

So, how did my first Bang! (hurr) live up to reputation?  With its exciting catchphrases, “mud-wrestling with words”, “poetry for people who don’t like poetry” – and quirky features – the Golden Gun award, the Hatalyst, the milk bottles – the one thing Bang Said the Gun! promises is respite from mediocrity and pretension. While there were a few poets who failed to avoid one or both of those things, there was more than enough skill, humour, passion and sheer unadulterated awesome from the rest to make up for it. In short: I had fun, and so will you.

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Sage and Time @ The Charterhouse Bar 22/02/12

In Performance Poetry on March 19, 2012 at 6:00 pm

- Reviewed by Dana Bubulj -

Perhaps it was the weather that kept this night to an intimate gig of fewer people than usual, which is a shame, as it was another event of the fantastic standard that we are used to with Sage and Time.

Hosts

The hosts opened each half with their own poems, setting the tone of the evening with effusive introductions to both the open mic poets and the excellent features.

  • Richard Marsh’s take on the bizarre love between two people at the gym, each embodying each other’s ideals was a nice opening to an evening whose theme seemed love-bent. It’s a shame he forgot sections, but with asides like “basically, it turns out she likes him too” to continue the narrative, he acquitted himself admirably.
  • Anna Le‘s All The While was a tender take on love whilst the world continues. She acknowledges politics and injustice (“teachers not renumerated”) and in doing so, the declaration becomes more powerful for not being rose-tinted. There’s a beautiful calm, amidst the “commotion” of the world, where the poet is “inescapably falling in love with you”.

Features

  • Dean Atta has a great stage presence, performing his confessional poetry with confidence. His sensual first poem was about Grindr in Italy, where “new technology found intimacy…in an ancient city”. His second, My Love, (5th Draft),was a delicate portrayal of feelings not ready to be pinned down. As a “manifesto of love”, I Don’t Want To Write You Poems, also sought to define feelings with a lovely mix of ephemeral messages left on mirror steam and physical demonstrations.
  • Mother Tongue is an interesting one about not sharing his mother’s first language (Greek), leaving him an outsider when “forgetting to translate”. I loved the line: “our mother has swallowed her tongue”.
  • This is not supposed to be Therapy was a great take on the expectations placed upon us by both society and ourselves. Congenially taking us through familiar doubt (“I am a leader… right?”), Atta turns away from what we’re “supposed to do” as a way to define the self, vowing instead to do so individually by “any app necessary”.
  • He finished with the poem that brought him most into the public eye via Youtube (& now iTunes), “I am nobody’s nigger”: a commentary on language (“don’t tell me it’s a reclaimed word”) in relation to racially incited violence (“that’s one of the last words Steven Lawrence heard”). It’s performed passionately, with stirring references to ancestry and the slave trade, finishing elegantly: “call me nigger cause you’re scared of what brother means”.
  • Deanna Rodger was an exuberant performer whose work is very rooted in her past.  My favourite begins: “I always get asked, where’re you from?”. It’s a great take on the frustration of growing up in London, steeped in British culture while also (and more visually apparent) “a product of miscegenation”.
  • Her main focus is her youth, mostly in its innocence. In her 22 Now and 22 to 19, she we see her hanging out after school, mooching with friends on routemaster buses like “fresh princesses” with a breathlessly sincere nostalgia that that certainly took a few of the audience back. Young love doesn’t escape her canny gaze: from the plausibly confused 1432, complete with premature declarations “slipping out as easily as he slipped in” to the obsessive Love Ambitions (I liked wanting to be their student ID  “so you need me to get into the library”, and that she peppered her delivery with interjections like “I feel like a stalker!”)
  • Turning to the present were two poems: If Chloe Can and Nowadays. The former, about a young girl’s shattered self esteem, was earnest and hopeful. Nowadays tackled contemporary apathy in a heartfelt plea for people to once more pay attention to the world around them (“who cares about voting nowadays?”) While not new in content, it was passionately performed and a great close to her set.
  • Peter Hayhoe and Sarah Redington performed Dalston, a poem accompanied by music. Descending into Someone Like You worked, but could have been more effective in a smaller dose for those inured to Adele. I enjoyed most the poem’s performative aspect: its emphasis on the act of story-telling (“I say, ‘your coffee is getting cold’”), complete with distinctions between on truth and might-have-beens: “Pause. This is not a true story…The real story involves…”

Open Mic

  • Richard Purnell spoke of the N word in rap music as a white fan, addressing its contribution to the vilification of black people in society. He could have been more fluid and the beginning section (“what rhymes with…”) was horrifically awkward.
  • Lettie McKie performed three sonnets of which the third, about her elderly neighbours, was the most powerful, starting from a lovely first line “before the hospital, he always slept beside her”.
  • Edward Unique‘s Valentine’s Day poem, in the interests of balance, had a clearly defined three part structure, but alas lines like “she said I’m too nice for her” and “[it was left for] the nice guy to sweep up your stupidity”, left a bitter taste.
  • Joshua Seigal‘s AA Milne-esque Kid’s Poem about bullying was appropriately simplistic with a comic twist. His adult poems displayed an extensive vocabulary, with fast paced patter strewn with literary terminology. Camden Town was my favourite, conjuring peacefully stoned hipsters with “hours to shoot from the sky like ducks”. He is up in Edinburgh this year with We all love Llamas!.
  • Ben Newberry’s character pieces were nice enough: my favourite was “Royal Oak” a nod to the old guard of traditional pubs, less transient than their surroundings.
  • Sophie Cameron‘s modern fairytale of a Prince and his poor yet “ridiculously attractive” squeeze certainly uses some visceral imagery. Juxtaposing love that “transcends all bounds” with raucous sexuality (“and by swooned I mean he wanked his dick off”) Her second poem, “I am a posh cunt” set up a familiar straw man who likes oysters “because they’re expensive rather than their taste”.
  • Jethro performed three sombre poems, only one of which was his own. His delivery suited  Tennyson better than  Keats, but was best for his own, Time Passes, a lament for his lost brother who feels “just a moment ago”.
  • James Webster performed two poems: Fate (a little spoilt by phone scrolling), about unexpectedly meeting and bonding with someone not seen in years, (“not inevitability but an extra glass of wine”). The second was nicely done, filled with entreaties to “listen” to poetry “beneath the skin”, in its beats of “iambs and trochees”.
  • Keith Jarrett, finished the evening with two poems: an uplifting old favourite that with, fluid plays on words, takes on political slogans, making them his own for people who “believe in change but [are] still short changed”. The main argument of I do not believe in casual sex was that there’s “no such thing” because “casual suggests ease”. Its playful conclusion, “however…I do believe in a damn good time…”, lightened what could have been interpreted as overt moralising.

To conclude: Fantastic night. More soon, please.

There will indeed be more, coming up soon on the 28th of March! – Ed

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Word Wrestling Federation Presents: Page Match 2

In Performance Poetry on March 2, 2012 at 2:00 am

@ The Camden Roundhouse, 25/02/201

- reviewed by James Webster -

The Concept: An odd mix? 

Performance poetry and professional wrestling seems like an odd mix. On the one hand there’s the machismo, violence and soap-opera of pro wrestling and on the other the more reflective, cerebral and verbal poetry.

But in organising this event Dan Cockrill drew on the similarities between the two: larger than life personalities, crafting narratives, the showmanship and performance, audience interaction, and the competition of both poetry slams and wrestling matches. Thus the pomp and aggression of wrestling is introduced to the wit and meaning of poetry: culminating in Page Match 2 (a nice pun on the pro wrestling ‘cage match’) a verbal battle royalé between seven of London’s top poetry collectives.

The Match-Ups:

Round 1: Apples and Snakes vs. Word of Mouth

Winner: Apples and Snakes

Round 2: Roundhouse vs. Rubix

Winner: Rubix

Round 3: Bang! Said the Gun vs. Chill Pill vs. Dirty Hands

Winner: Chill Pill

Round 4: Rubix vs. Chill Pill vs. Apples and Snakes

Winner: Tie between Chill Pill and Apples and Snakes

Round 5: Poets Against Page Match vs. Apples and Snakes vs. Chill Pill

Winner: Apples and Snakes

It certainly built up a lot of hype.

  • The build-up and promotion was excellent. A series of verbal battles and trash-talking on facebook drummed up tension, while a series of amusing youtube videos by the collective PAP (Poets Against Page Match) created a villainous cabal of poets set on ruining the event. This created a classic wrestling narrative, that of the ‘heel’ (short for boot-heel), the bad guys that the audience and other poets can unite against.
  • This clearly worked: it was sold out. The audience packed into the Roundhouse in Camden (an appropriate cross between an underground bomb shelter and a gladiatorial ring) waiting for Page Match 2 to begin, to see if the hype would pay off.

It did fulfil the hype! (mostly)

  • As both a pro wrestling and a poetry fan I was impressed with how the pageantry of wrestling was mixed with the wit and verbal wizardry of poetry. Hosted by Dan Cockrill‘s Rhyme Stone Cowboy persona, he introduced each collective to entrances complete with lighting effects and music, some really impressive trash talking, some great costumes, and lots of vibrant characters.
  • The best entrances: Dirty Hands, made their entrance in demurely hipster-ish glasses to Christina Aguilera’s ‘Dirty’, Word of Mouth were all street with masks and hoodies, Apples and Snakes used confetti and party poppers, and Bang! Said the Gun’s Rob Auton entered to White Stripes’ ‘Little Room’ wearing a giant robot costume.
  • I was wowed by the battle between Apples and Snakes and Word of Mouth with their imaginative insults and ‘street vs. classics’ theme. Especially Angry Sam/The Dalston Destroyer’s piece with poetical put-downs and clever, and had powerful points on the best poetry coming from the ‘street’.And Poet Curious’s smooth rhyme and slick, plentiful art analogies that created a classical-art-street-chic vibe.
  • Dan Simpson/The Dandelion’s response to the ‘uncultured swine’ was clever and creative in his trash-talk and consummately performed, but it lacked the focus and convincing arguments of Word of Mouth. But he did still win.
  • Other highlights were Roundhouse member Jessica Green’s firebrand, entertaining performance on societal pressure on women who choose to enjoy ‘cider, spliffs and casual sex’ rather than having kids. Brave, bold and powerful.
  • And ‘Notorious’ Mr Gee (of Chill Pill): his poems on body image, hoodies, and a battle-style poem written for the event were funny, poignant and relevant and they propelled him like a one-man rocket into the final.

But some aspects of the night had room for improvement …

  • First off: the round pairings. Roughly organised by theme, with classic vs. street, old vs. new and then the themes kind of petered out, making the third round feel a bit redundant.
  • Rubix vs. Roundhouse was a poorly planned round; their poetry styles were painfully similar (Rubix are former Roundhouse poets themselves), and as there were four members of each collective each doing a long poem it felt like it went on forever
  • And throughout both collectives I had the same problems with many performers: their poems, while in places strong (especially Jackomo Rook’s piece on his father and Talia Randal’s ‘Chicken Bones’ on London and her family history) they often lacked focus, switched randomly between themes and almost all went on too long.
  • I was slightly disappointed by the usually excellent Dirty Hands and Bang! Said the Gun collectives. Bang’s Rob Auton/The Ultimate Worrier was funny, but he relied on one pseudo-pun and had no deeper meaning; while he’s good enough to rely solely on his delivery, he’s far better when he brings some substance.
  • While Katie Bonna and Amy Acre of the Hands’ interlinked poem was immaculately performed, and was full of lovely character and moving imagery, but their linking themes diverged more and more as the poems went on.
  • The gatecrash appearance from Poets Against Page Match/PAP, while amusing and appropriate to the wrestling theme, went on far too long and wasn’t clear enough to the audience members who hadn’t seen their youtube videos.
  • Their appearance in the final Belt vs Masks match was anticlimactic as when they were unmasked to reveal Peter Hayhoe (of Bang! Said the Gun and Dirty Hands) and Paul Cree (of Rubix) absolutely nothing was made of it.

And some aspects just didn’t work for me.

Such as the scoring. Scores were assigned by the judges anonymously, which missed a huge opportunity getting the audience involved booing or cheering the judges’ decisions (a staple of both wrestling and poetry slams).

And the lack of clarity as to how rounds were scored, coupled with the scorer admitting they might be making mistakes, meant the overall results seemed less than 100% (which comments from judge Charlie Dark ‘The Invader’ would seem to support).

Martin Galton disappointed with a poem about how the world is so depressing you should ‘blow your brains out’. I found this refrain more offensive than amusing, as I don’t think suicide’s all that funny (admittedly sections of the audience disagreed).

Rachel Pantechnicon is a veteran on the performance scene who’s quick with a pun and a joke, but I just feel they could do more with their act than elaborate puns. Dan Simpson, to my mind, carried the Apples and Snakes team to victory.

And Justice Lyric (of Rubix) had some great phrasing, but the premises of her two poems (one using poetic terms as innuendo and the other using dubstep/dancing as innuendo) made some effective wordplay seem trite and, with the ‘I’d go gay for poetry’ theme of her first piece, insipid.

A strong, fun night, with some flaws.

It was an entertaining evening, the success of the premise definitely overcoming the format and some performers’ shortfalls. The most entertaining were performers like Word of Mouth, ‘Notorious’ Mr Gee and Dan Simpson all wrote poems especially for the event that mixed trash-talk with affecting poetry. They, coupled with the superb showmanship of a wrestling event, made Page Match 2 stand out. Just not as much as it could have.

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Bang Said the Gun @ The Roebuck 03/11/11

In Performance Poetry, Uncategorized on November 21, 2011 at 10:59 pm

-Reviewed by James Webster-

I had pretty high expectations for Bang Said the Gun. I’d heard nothing but good about the event and the Bang team had only just won the ‘Page Match’ championship belt and I’m happy to say it exceeded even my high expectations.

What’s so special about it?

  • Well, as host Dan Cockrill says: it’s poetry for people who don’t like poetry, an event with a focus on entertainment and a raucous party atmosphere. The audience are provided with plastic milk bottles filled with chickpeas that you rattle to show your appreciation (or just rattle in time with the music before the show starts).
  • They make it look special too; their anarchic black and white branding up all over the place on posters, signs, table cloths, and projected onto the stage in a really entertaining animated video. They also provide everyone with a glowstick, a lovely gesture making the night feel half poetry/half rave.
  • Another interesting feature is the Cata-list: the audience member who’s given the duty of starting all cheering and applause. They list their name and responsibilities and record them for the audience on the projector screen. On the night we had:
  •  Name: Bree
  • Responsibilities: A few
  • Relationship: Kind of
  • Kids: No
  • Job: No
  • Summary: NO RESPONSIBILITIES AT ALL.

Another catchphrase is ‘poetry without the ponce’, which is a cool maxim, making poetry accessible and unpretentious.

The Raw Meat Stew is an intriguing feature; their slam/open mic, judged by one randomly selected audience member. The winner then gets a 10 minute slot at the next event, which is an excellent way to encourage and unearth new poetic talent (the only catch is that it seems the funniest/most entertaining poet usually wins, but then that fits their mission statement).

Hosts

Hosting duties were split down the middle between Bang! founder Dan Cockrill and the newest member of the Bang! team Peter Hayhoe (a regular from Sage and Time and The Tea Box).

  • Dan’s a winning host, getting the audience all riled up; he’s got a real talent for getting the most out of an audience. He ably explains what Bang!’s all about and helps the show hit the ground running.
  • Peter Hayhoe is just lovely. He’s very engaging and his first poem about a Sainsbury’s Self-Checkout machine is very funny and gets you to feel sorry for the machine.
  • His other poem was pure smut that he could only read at Bang Said the Gun! On the new Countdown girl and how he wants to ‘Clity-fuck’ her. It was ridiculous, filthy and so much fun.

The rest of the Bang! team.

  • Martin Galton gave us a mixture of puerile entertainment, amusing hate (from his black book) and touching love (from his red book).
  • From a sweet poem on his son’s hands warming his bald head, to an amusing poem all the people he considers “Rude Bastards”, the only downside for me was a poem on how tiring it is to be middle class and I was never sure if I was listening to razor sharp satire or reinforcement of class stereotypes.
  • Rob Auton starts every gig in a big booming voice with the line: “Ladies and Gentlemen … these are the names that we give to the toilets.”
  • He’s the platonic ideal of Bang!’s style of ‘stand-up poetry’: great banter, stage presence and always funny. Lines like “There’ll be a theme tonight, which is that I will be the one saying the things” and poems playing off “my room” and “maroon” sounding similar, or on naming his son “dad”, are well executed and funny, but might not scratch the itch for those of us who look to poetry for depth.
  • Of course he’s also capable of surprising beauty like his piece on David Attenborough and wanting to live a life worthy of his voiceover.
  • Emma Jones won me over with ‘Shoreditch House’, a glitteringly witty caricature of meeting the private sector pretentious “twaterrati”. A hilarious take on modern-yuppyism.
  • And her ‘Yorkshire Schoolgirls on Night Out’ was a terrifically performed character piece that meanders from amusing to transcendent encounters in this delicious slice of northern teen-hood

The Raw Meat Stew

  • Kieren King. ‘Metal’er than Thou’ was on being judged for not looking metal enough, by metalheads knowing nothing about the music. The substance over style message is basic, but well expressed and delivered.
  • Edward Unique I’ve seen ‘To My Darling IPod’ before and Edward’s delivery’s improved, but he sorely needs a redraft to better distill the humour.
  • Dave Viney ‘Prambush’ was an amusing poetic anecdote on being the only couple at a bbq ‘yet to conceive’. The line: ‘can I carve not barren jut babyless into a string of sausages’ stuck with me.
  • Benny Jo Zahl‘s ‘Something’s Missing’ had a nice way with words that enlivened the ordinariness of a character who’d never had an imaginary friend.
  • Monkey Poet. His acrostic on politicians that spelled out “fucking wankers” was well put together, felt very natural and his energised delivery and anti-establishment feel won over the crowd.
  • Rod Iame on his inner drag queen Baby Love who he never quite has the confidence to release was equally emotive, fun and adorable. Could’ve done without the singing though.
  • Lettie McKey does a good job of sexualising chefs through their food. But I found said sexualisation a little weird and think suggesting all women want to be spoiled by a chef and that they “love choccie more than men” is sadly stereotypical.

Winner: Monkey Poet.

The Feature

  • Jem Rolls (a Brit over fromCanada) started with a nice philosophical number that encapsulated his view of the divine into his interaction with the audience. As he put it: “industrial strength sycophancy, but it’s not every day you’re deified is it?”
  • ‘The New English History Syllabus’ was biting satire, English view of history summed up as “we won, we won … ‘cos we’re the best and Johnny Foreigner was rubbish!”
  • ‘’e ain’t called Porky no more’ was a found poem and breathless snapshot, bouncing around the scene ofLondon.
  • The next ‘A Bit Shattered’ was a poem entirely made out of rhyming couplets of spoonerisms. It’s a really entertaining way to tell a story of a drunken night out and incredibly skilled wordplay.
  • His last ‘The Day Died Very Old’ on British tourism/“spectator queuing”. He details days spent ticking off lists of “must-do’s”, while outside is “life, teaming and local” that the tourists never get to see. Some wonderful phraseology, and a performance where the frustration dripped off him, made this an enthralling poem from an impressive performer.

Conclusion: Superbly entertaining poetry on almost all fronts, and only occasionally at the expense of depth. A fantastic raucous party of a poetry night.

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Poetry Jam @ The Tea Box 13/05/11

In Performance Poetry on June 1, 2011 at 11:06 pm

-Reviewed by James Webster and Dana Bubulj-

The Night

The Tea Box is a charming, genteel and tea-filled place during the day, but at night it dons a mask and cape and transforms into a vibrant local arts venue. With tea.

Last month I commented that while a great night, the Jam@TheBox lacked polish, not so this time. Polish was plentiful; the event gleamed so much you could see my face in it.

The Host

And the clearest reason I can see for this month’s smooth, polished, professional Jam was Anna Le’s superb hosting. Previously seen at Sage and Time, her hosting was (as always) slick and affable, quick to joke and quicker to banter with her audience, who were all too happy to engage with her warm and open hosting.

Oh, and her poetry:

  • Her 1st, ‘Case of Sera Sera’, dedicated to a friend Sarah, was powerful and filled with a knowing love for its inspiration that was beautiful, hurt, but finally in control of her stormy past. Anna’s delivery gets more focused as it progresses, reflecting the sentiment that ‘you can steer destiny.’
  • Her 2nd called ‘The Crown Forsaking Me’ deftly mixed her own feelings for her hair with a running newscast providing some political commentary. While she did forget the words, she did so quite endearingly.
  • ‘Vowel-Play’ and its sweet wordplay makes me happy. Dedicated and read to an audience volunteer. ‘I can’t help thinking of the last vowel in the alphabet’ she tells us; managing to say the words without having to use them.

The Open Mic

  • Elizabeth Darcy Jones (whose book ‘Distinguished Leaves: Poetry for Tea-Lovers’ is out in September) is perfect for this venue, like a person steeped in The Tea Box itself. Her poems are full of both life and tea, and in one case, bottoms. Her adorable poem ‘Beloved Bottom’ left us ‘bum-founded’ and sparked an ongoing discussion of bottoms throughout the evening.
  • Donall Dempsey, was full of charm, his poems are funny, smart and sometimes sadly beautiful. My favourite was ‘Homepage’ a precisely brilliant and bleak poem. The poem ‘If Mice were the Size of Kangaroos’, written with a class of children, was whimsically amusing (‘Just take the cheese, please!’).
  • Julie Mullen sexes up vegetables (which I believe is illegal inTexas). It’s certainly not my cup of tea, but I can’t fault her delivery, which makes the best of her poetry’s charms. But her ‘She said, she said’ melded two voices into one sensual whole rather effectively. Interestingly, a copy of her collection ‘Erotic Poetry for Vegans and Vegetarians’ rode on the campaign bus with David Cameron during the last general election.
  • James Webster the whiplash poet for the evening went from a bemused poem about the Royal Wedding’s coverage to the harrowing ‘Pain Poem’, which had the audience rapt. His flowing and passionate delivery spoke of the desperate search for pain both on the streets of London and at the edge of a razor.
  • Sh’mya’s ‘Hong Kong in a Jazz Breeze’ was a superb breathless and nostalgic look back at his time in Hong Kong. The language was lush and intense with a chaotic and increasingly frantic delivery. Though it had a slight ring of ‘what I did on my gap year’, it was frenetically entertaining.
  • Peter Hayhoe, a previous feature at Sage and Time, was described by Anna as a ‘poetic surgeon, he grabs your funnybone and plucks your heartstrings’. His poem/short story ‘100 Ways to Die’ asked if media fear-mongering and the advent of social media devalue human experience (‘humans have sex drives, not hard drives!’). His ‘Broken on the Pillar’ was harsh and violent, but beautiful. And his poem on Sainsbury’s check-out machines not approving of his hair, poetry and mum made you feel sorry for the machines’ lonely, thankless existence.
  • Janice Winddle A nice mixture of poems, from her own naughty youth, and the failure of words and their traitorous tendency to mean different things being overcome by touch, to a poem on the past of the Rome washing over her. Evocative and eloquent.
  • Amy Acre promised us she wouldn’t fuck with our heads (as she has a wont to do). Instead she touched us (not literally) with her ‘Erasing the Dictionary’, where she symbolises rewriting her own romantic past and outlook with going through the OED with a marker pen. In the end she proposes to ‘just lie back on the blank pages’, completing her longing for a relationship not defined by, well, definitions.
  • Kevin Reinhart had a shy indie-charm. His poems had magic, musical references and shyness and got more confident as he went on. His characters carry ‘shyness like a sick-note’.
  • The Brothers Grimm His ‘This Boy’ on a boxer (probably Mohammed Ali) ‘misconceived in the mighty melting pot of the mono-culture’ made his words into punches. The room craned their necks towards ‘Ganz Vorbei’ (Quite Finished) a quiet and forlorn poem, and ‘Art for Fuck’s Sake’ had the balls to begin ‘All black people look the same to me’ and then leaving a slightly too-long pause before ‘All white people look the same to me’ building up into a rousing poem on the unifying power and importance of art.
  • Anna Mae’s first two poems, about pro-anexoria and obesity seemed to convey the same message: look at the starving people in the third world and stop being so self-obsessed. It was well expressed, but a little preachy. She contrasted this with the lure of a past lover through the metaphor of a directionless bus route: suitably meandering while maintaining its poignancy.
  • Donald a moving poem on the 7/7 bombing, a clash natural and architectural beauty with a city’s industrial past, and a superbly sweet poem to a lost cat. But he didn’t seem to offer any new perspectives.
  • Anna Matiu‘s performance perfectly matched the tone of her poems. Her ‘Moving Experience’ sounded unsure of its own place, all intricate and pretty questioning. And ‘To Insomnia’ mixed its thoughts and phrases all up in a tired run to the sad and tired beauty of daylight.
  • Andrew Flower ‘Conversations with a Friend’ was nicely questioning, tongue slightly kissing cheek. ‘Fate not Heard’ did what many are afraid to do, and used hyperbole seriously, questioned the point of life without passion.

The Feature

Keith Jarrett was a great focal point to the night. So much so that he will soon be receiving an article here all of his own. To summarise, his poetry was flowing, intelligent, reflective, political and affecting. It was poetry of homes, of belief, of life. Joyous.

This month the Tea Box had a great deal of wonderful poetry, was well run and showed that you can squeeze a lot of poets into one night and still bring the awesome all night long.

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Sage and Time 23/03/11 (The Charterhouse Bar)

In Performance Poetry on March 29, 2011 at 11:12 pm

-Reviewed by James Webster-

The Night
Sage and Time is quickly becoming my favourite poetry event in London. Run every fourth Wednesday of the month at the Charterhouse bar in the Barbican, it’s organised by the incomparable Anna LeDoesPoetry and features some truly accomplished poets. The format is fun and not too heavy, mixing the open mic slots in with the featured poets punctuated each of the three halves, which, while mathematically dodgy, gives a very laid back and enjoyable atmosphere. The atmosphere is truly lovely, the featured performers seem so happy to be there and provide much encouragement for the open mic’ers. You get the impression that most of the poets know each other and after attending only two of the events I’ve started to feel like I’m getting to know them too, and they are a welcoming bunch, making Sage and Time a really nurturing environment for aspiring poets.

The Hosts
• Host duties were split this month between Anna LeDoesPoetry and Will Stopha and they struck a neat balance, Will’s warmth and occasionally bumbling charm, and Anna’s poise, humour and wit, both were quick with a joke and even quicker with words of encouragement for their poets.
• Anna LeDoesPoetry’s poem ‘My Poetic Blend’, in the form of a recipe for her own brand of verse, teemed with lush language, its tone exotic, sultry and comforting. Her performance was a joy, all teasing and inviting at the same time, occasionally sizzling with energy. Together the two hosts set the tone for a hugely enjoyable evening.

The Open Mic
Open Mic’s are often hit and miss, but my experience of Sage and Time has been an overwhelming majority of hits. The quality of poetry is almost universally high and a huge variety of styles, subjects and forms are welcomed.
My highlights:
• Elizabeth Darcy Jones (the nation’s unofficial ‘Tea Poet’) and Lisa Handy were the highlight for me with a poetic exchange, starting with Lisa’s ‘Verbal Assault is Still a Form of Assault’, we then had Elizabeth’s response and Lisa’s response to said response. It was a dynamic dialogue between the two poets, Lisa’s raw and visceral language was fired out like a rattling machinegun. It gives you a sense of a natural disaster of an insult, the language fills you up and makes your skin itch at the sound of insults that we didn’t receive. It’s abuse dissected around verbal gymnastics and it’s fantastic and near-frightening.
• Elizabeth’s response blended well, referencing Lisa’s verbal violence, but mixing it into her warm and malty poem. It was a loving and caring offering, full of respect and empathy for Lisa’s work. It shared its co-feeling with the audience, as if we all were sharing our feelings over a cup of lyrical tea.
• Lisa’s poem closed the dialogue, again the words tumbled out, but this time they built on each other and on Elizabeth’s, reinforcing the respect and continuing creativity of the two of them. As Anna put it, being inspired by another poet is the ‘highest accolade’ and these two piled the accolades on each other.
• ‘Angry’ Sam Berkson was another highlight; his poems of urban sprawl blend streams of colloquialisms with a simple elegance. His poems push your perceptions of both places and people, doing what all truly excellent poetry should do: make you see the world in a different light. Plus he rhymed ‘metropolis’ with ‘oesophagus’, what’s not to like? Plus he’s one of the charming people who run Hammer and Tongue in Camden and Hackney.
• The Wizard of Skill was a strange, but enjoyable addition, his ‘freaky delivery’, as Will put it, was well received by most, though I found it a little smug and disengaging. It was funny, with confident delivery and a little social commentary, but was mostly a fluff piece.
• Mark ‘Mr T’ Thompson sums up one of the things that makes performance poetry great for me: political engagement. His inversion of Martin Niemöller’s “First They Came” was a statement of political intent, a powerful call to arms for the Saturday 26th demo in London. ‘When they came for the students, I stood up because I had an education/ When they came for those with disabilities, I stoop up because I could.” His other poems were equally strong and socially engaged, dealing with youth culture from different perspectives. He doesn’t pass judgment, but he does make you think.
• EP or Ed Parshotam was the last highlight I’ll mention, his improvised rap referenced most of the other poets in the room and summed up a truly inclusive and entertaining evening. He and Elizabeth Darcy Jones can both be seen at The Tea Box on the 8th of April by the way.

The Features
Amy Acre and Peter Hayhoe were our fabulous features this month.
• Peter Hayhoe mixes comedy and substance in his poetry in a way to be envied. He’s not content to just make people laugh, he crafts geekery and amusing imagery with a message. Sometimes the message is just ‘don’t spend what little money you have left eating a steak on your own’, in other poems it’s the dangers of over-thinking your relationship, where his pace and overlapping rhyme gave a sense of being bogged down in itself that really brought the point home.
• Amy Acre is such fun. She makes graceful, powerful performance seem effortless. Her poems mostly stuck to her musings on relationships, but those musings still had a range, going from slick double entendre that still manages to be sweet (and how apparently you should never trust a man with perfect teeth) to a sensual awakening of feelings for a waitress in a café (with a shot taken at Katy Perry that made me very happy). But the set piece of her set was a sexual fairytale set to a backing track from The Chemical Brothers. It was funny, rude, sweet and well phrased, a kind of BDSM love story. The backing track gave it an extra dimension, setting a dark rhythmical tone and adding a nice sense of urgency.

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