Monday 19 September 2011

In amougst the clutter I found this

Hello!
 I was going through some files on my laptop and I found this poem, or the workings of. I wrote it a few months back, it was originally intended for a show that was going to take place in Edinburgh but never did. Instead it was scrapped. This piece was a found in amongst the rubbish stored on my laptop. Much like the messy room I mention, which, at the time of writing it'snt so bad...

PARANOIA'S PRIORITIES

Mechanically spun I'm dizzy.
She leads,
I follow.
Reading and re-reading every text and email I've ever received,
regarding her,
and me.
I sit drinking my tea trying not to think,
but it's futile.

Sat on my black leather chair,
by my bed,
laptop on my legs,
leaning forward so my back bends and eventually hurts,
phone in my left hand,
tea in my right.
The only thing missing is a desk,
and a bedroom,
that looks and feels like a bedroom,
rather than a storage space,
for cardboard boxes and crates,
stacked in corners,
and letters from the bank,
strewn across the floor with yesterdays clothes.
Still,
my trainers look nice,
box fresh Nikes,
parked by my bed like a porshe in the drive,
at a dive of a home.
I was always crap at getting my priorities right.

Temporary accommodation,
belonging to my parents,
sleeping in the room on the other side of the wall.
27 and I can't find the feet I'm supposed to stand on.
I'm sure my Dad is proud.
My Mum worries.
I worry.
I'm worried now,
though not for the fact,
that I lack employment, prospects and a pension,
it's because,
I'm stressing,
about her.
Priorities again.

I look at my mug and just about make out my face's reflection,
I wonder which face is starring at a mug.

I bring up an email.
Take a gulp of my tea.
Her few words on the screen ask more questions of me.
I'm busy right now talk next week”
Not even a question mark.
A statement.
I’m worried I've stepped in the ring with someone twice my weight and punching range.
Paranoia breeds every time she speaks.
I'm trying to second guess her tactics,
but she's like Jose Morinouio,
and I'm Tony Pulis,
route one is all I have,
she's capable of switching the way she plays at any given moment.
She can raise and lower my hopes,
with the tone of her voice,
or the lack of syntax in an email or a text message.

She mechanically control’s the mental mechanisms responsible for manufacturing paranoia,
as chemicals loose there balance inside my brain.

I can hear my Mum downstairs calling my name.
It's dinner time,
she shouts.
I'm not done re-reading my emails,
and texts.
Analysing them to death
Priorities again.

Sunday 11 September 2011

Boobs Work And Me

Back in August, I performed for a week alongside fellow Poets Gary From Leeds and Sean Mahoney, at the Hen and Chickens Theatre Islington, as the warm up acts for this touching and funny show by Richard Purnell called "Boobs Work And Me". It was a lot of fun, from the show to re3cording the promo video (see below) and we had some really good audiences. I even indirectly gaines my first review from Londonist.com http://londonist.com/2011/08/review-richard-purnell-and-friends-hen-and-chickens.php








Better Late Than Never

This is a blog I wrote for the super cool people at Poejazzi http://poejazzi.wordpress.com/. They put on very very good events and back in may I was lucky enough to perform at one of them....



Better Late Than Never

My Mum often reminds me that Buster Merryfield, who played Uncle Albert in Only Fools And Horses, didn’t become an actor until he was in his fifties (my Mum knows everything!) I recently turned 28. Though I don't consider myself old, I do think that I was a bit of a latecomer into Poetry and Spoken Word, compared too some of the ever increasing list of brilliant performers I've seen that are under the age of 20. I have vague recollections of covering the subject of poetry back when I was at school, though most of those were of reading Roald Dahl poems when I was very young. I remember my GCSE NEAB Anthology was covered in graffiti about football and insults towards people's Mums (not mine though yea!). Other than a picture of Shamus Heaney, that is about all I can recollect. No poems, just rubbish graffiti. It pretty much sums up my formal education.

I must have picked something up though, because I had a basic understanding of poems that used rhyming couplets and I was independently able to string some very simple pieces together the day that I decided I was going to have a go at writing poems, though I was no stranger to rhyming, at that stage I'd already spent a few years penning rap bars which certainly helped.

I came into Poetry fully aware that I knew next to nothing. Effectively uneducated, I'm quite sure this has reflected in my work. I remember one of the first poetry events I ever went to, Poetry Unplugged at the Poetry Cafe, watching a young guy step up to the microphone and explain in his pre-amble that he was highly influenced by Keats, receiving a few nods of approval amongst the many people sat in the crampt basement of the Poetry Cafe. Not only did I have no idea who Keats was, but I also had no idea, not for want of trying, what the poet was talking about when he read his piece. I certainly did not feel the bliss of ignorance at that moment, put simply, I felt stupid. If it wasn’t for hearing Nial O Sullivan speak and then perform, and thinking to myself that he was both a genius and a bit of a geezer, I probably never would have gone back.

The interesting thing about my complete lack of poetical knowledge when I started out, is that my parents are very well read (I told you, my Mum knows everything, and cooks a mean Sunday roast!) despite both coming from working class backgrounds they believe education holds the key to betterment and would often tell me this. Of course I probably rubbished this, like I had done with most things at School. Unsurprisingly I spent the next 10 years after leaving school at 16 in all manor of mundane low paid jobs, constantly battling to keep the creative part of my brain active.

When I first started going to Poetry nights, I quickly developed an enthusiasm for it. Knowing where my negative attitude had got me in the past, I was able to easily dismiss any pre-conceptions that I held and absorb as much as I possibly could without prejudice. I carried this attitude into a creative writing course I soon took up at Birckbeck College and then into theatre, when I got involved at BAC.

As embarrassing as it was, and still is, being that I've just exposed myself in this blog (as if you didn’t know!) it has been far outweighed by my enthusiasm, satisfaction and the enjoyment I've gained from the journey so far. I guess what I'm trying to say is, like the dearly departed Buster Merryfield ,and my Mum, who knows everything (except about the graffiti on my NEAB Anthology book), you're never too old to give poetry a go, or most things for that matter!

Don't be shy now....