March 13th 06

March 13^th 06

Last night was the bridge poets gig at The Bridge. For those of you who don’t know, The Bridge poets group is a group which began over 5 years ago. Initially the poets attended a workshop with Jo Shapcott, and there was the notion that after this the poets involved would start off their own meetings for feedback on new work (as the initial Jo Shapcott workshops began with people being accepted only when they had sent work the result was a group of very competent poets, who could give each other feedback of a level that you wouldn’t usually be able to obtain in beginners poetry groups etc.) The meetings are once a month, and the people who turn up vary from month to month, due to the difficulties sometimes of being able to get poetry time on Saturday. I am guilty of sort of dipping in and out of the group, sometimes I might not go for six months, others I will go a few months in a row. I was unable to attend the last one due to being in London, and sometimes being anywhere at midday is really difficult, other times there will just seem to be far too many things to do that can only be done on Saturday when things are open and the car is available. They are doing maybe four readings a year, in which the line up of poets is always different due to the size of the group. I never offer to do these readings, but am happy to if asked, as I feel that maybe the opportunity should be given to people who make it to the group more often than me. My favourite thing about the group is the rule of silence, that when people are discussing a poem the writer of it is not permitted to speak whatsoever. I think this is a good way of just letting go, stopping your instinct of defense, and actually really learning something about your own work by allowing people to argue about what the poem is about amongst themselves. At the end of the discussion is when you can explain what you did want to do, and acknowledge the points made. It is often a matter of the individual, as always, that what some people don’t like or get others will, but there is always something to consider and take away to help you improve your poem in someway.

Among the readers last night were Bob Cooper, Ali May, Lisa Matthews and Sheree Mack, as well as myself. It was a rather small audience by previous attendance standards, but there were other events on, and also the snow and the metro not being on didn’t help. It’s funny how much harder it feels to read well with a small audience, that aspect of being scrutinized seems magnified by the fewer people there are. Also of course, there is that feeling of no response, in a small crowd there are no responses to hear, which makes being up there harder. The readers all read very well, with skilled work, and seemed very confident and at home. I was somewhat less so, I think part of that is that many of the poets felt among friends, have much better social skills than myself, and also get on rather well with the other poets. Don’t get me wrong, there are a few poets in Newcastle who I have felt to be supportive, who seem to make the effort and see me as an actual colleague (a real poet, it is hard to feel that way when there are so many brilliant poets.) But I am completely awful at social things, and make a point of always sitting by myself at events unless anyone asks me to join them or sits next to me, and as for the writing I never really know what the Newcastle poets actually think. It actually seemed I was getting a lot more encouragement, warmth and people liking my work before I was ever published, so I hope that it is a case of people making an effort to encourage new writers and not just thinking I am suddenly crap or arrogant and unreceptive of feedback. There are always going to be people who never comment your work, never seem to like it, never buy the book, and just don’t seem to like you or the stuff full-stop. I am still trying to figure out how poets maintain their confidence and keep going in the face of this, and I think the small amounts of feedback or support we are able to get is the answer. These little things become hugely important, and it may be a line of defending my own insecurities, but I think many poets may feel this way. After all, in a way it is a lonely occupation, seen by some as a hobby- which doesn’t help. Even those who succeed in having work published will be working away on a collection for a few years, that is an awful lot if silence, time to think, time to worry if the work justifies the self indulgence of the time spent. So we cling to minor small affirmations, no wonder.

The Bridge readings are a very positive thing because of they can provide the opportunity to make new work public, and I think that helps the writer to see how people feel about them, hear them out loud. Another thing I was struck by was that it felt like a real poetry gig. Now this term sounds worrying I know; how many poetry events are not real somehow? The term isn’t right I realise, but what I mean I think is that there seems to be two types of poetry events. One is usually held at nights which include music, or comedy and very confident performers, and the temptation with these gigs is always to try and include more funny poems, or poems that lend themselves to be performed more than read, as the audience aren’t a poetry audience as such, but may contain people who are experiencing live poetry for the first time. The other is a reading in which the audience is made up of poets, and people who are into poetry, and the pressure to perform poems is taken away, as it feels more about the words. Both types of event have their merits, one being the introduction of poetry to a wider and perhaps younger audience, and other in being a space for poets to try out new work, and for words to be heard purely on their merit, and not the strength or popularity of the performer. The world would be wrong in poetry if both types of events didn’t exist. Poetry would die out without ways of introducing it to non poets, and certain types of poems and poets would never be heard at readings if these pure poetry events didn’t happen. I was very aware of this being the first pure/real poetry reading I’ve done in a while, and was relieved to not have to select poems that may get a reaction from an audience, or appeal to audiences of a certain age, and was nervous at how these real poets would feel about the work. At the same time, there were poems I would have liked to read but felt I couldn’t because of the language used or the subject matter that I was worried proper poets would disapprove of! As usual I have a problem with fitting in, not being a proper poet enough to fit in with the proper poetry gigs, and not being funny or a good enough performer to go down well at the performancey gigs!

The theme last night was winter, though I didn’t know about this, but did make an effort to read some poems about snow. Another thing I didn’t know about the event was that the poems had to be new. This is a tricky category, since Sex with Elvis came out only the back end of last year the poems aren’t exactly old (I only read one poem from it anyway, Pornographic Snow People, because it seemed apt.) Also, the poems in Hardcore were only finished in December- but I was very aware that people may think those poems aren’t new, since they are in the unusual position of having been published so near completion (I am certain that some of the new poems people read are actually no newer than this, and yet I still felt worried that these poems would be seen as old work.) So what is it that makes a poem a new poem? Is it how long ago it was written, or its relation to the public? Can poems that may be years old can be classed as new poems if they have never been published or been read many times? Are poems that weren’t written too long ago automatically old poems if they have been out and about a little? I don’t know the answer to this, I wonder if anyone does, so I just had to hope people weren’t seeing me as cheating somehow. Fortunately, a friend of mine had planned to attend (who in the end couldn’t make it with the snow) who was interested in the new poems I have been writing, so I had planned to include four of these for her. Now these are poems I am certain are brand new since I only wrote them last month, and it was nice to have the chance to read them. In terms of how I read, I’d say not very well. I was definitely Angela rather than Angel, and with the proper poets there, no poetry allies there, and a small audience I wasn’t able to find the reading zone. I just had to keep going, a plain straight read, that was pretty intonation and personality free. Someone came up after to tell me they liked the new poems, and ask which actress the poems were based on, which really pleased me and made me feel happy about the poems, which you just couldn’t tell if anyone was enjoying while I was reading them. And another person came up and said they liked the set and wanted to buy Sex with Elvis and Hardcore. Both people are poets, and people I don’t know to talk to whatsoever, so it was nice to hear they liked my stuff- like I said small things.

All the readers at The Bridge were very accomplished poets and very relaxed on stage, but the highlight of the evening for me was seeing Ali May read (partly because I haven’t seen him read in such a long time.) It is always a real thrill to be in the presence of Ali’s poems and very effortless and natural style, which really makes an audience at ease.) For those of you who haven’t seen Ali, he is like a modern Zen poet- his pared down poems are glimpses of everyday life, and extraordinary in their ability of capturing a great deal beyond their words. The brevity of the poems means that he is able to read about twenty poems in set a set, with no explanations in between, and no intonation or emphasis in his voice, yet he is like a runaway train on stage. The poems keep the audience captive, and in an odd way so does the lack of performance to him ( I must speak to him one day and ask if he ever had to practice to obtain his non performance performance style, but I’m sure he’d say it is as natural to him as the poems.)

My favourite poem of the evening was Lisa Matthews’ The Waltham Zippy’s, which took a very everyday and seemingly light hearted subject matter (of zippy from rainbow in a shop window) and managed to infuse it with sadness and longing, which was so unexpected it was breathtaking.