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Poetry featured in two national newspapers this weekend. At the back of the Guardian's Guide there was an full page article on Scroobius Pip, a talented poet/MC doing very well at the moment, a man that has also impeccably followed the rule of "be good to people on the way up...". And the Times published an article about open mike poetry....with all references to poetry airbrushed out. About a month ago, freelance journalist Holly Grigg-Spall paid a visit to Poetry Unplugged a few times and interviewed me and many of the participants. Her main objective was to explore the confessional element of open mike poetry. A major portion of the article was from interviews from these sessions. However the Times printed this: http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_an...icle1592029.ecean article that completely airbrushes Poetry Unplugged and The Poetry Cafe from the picture. After reading it, I left a comment correcting the article that was later removed. Holly contacted me to point out that the first few paragraphs were not her work and to apologise for what was the work of the Times editorial staff. It seems that the staff intentionally removed references to poetry from the article in order to play up the confessional element of open mike. They also found it perfectly within their journalistic integrity to say that I was the host of an open mike at the Oh!Bar in Camden on Thursday nights, merging all the open mikes featured in the article into one convenient entity. Holly Grigg-Spall has been kind enough to send me the original version of the article which is printed below alongside the final edited article just to show how botched the final job was. Any previous or current participants of Poetry Unplugged can feel free to follow the link above and leave a comment below the article. | QUOTE ("holly") |
‘My most recent performance was after a grim winter’ Jo tells me, a 24 year old young woman in London, woolly hat and eyeliner, a little awestruck but composed, ‘The pieces were titled Good Grief. One was about a friend who died tragically at the end of last year, another about me breaking up with my ex and the third was about being sick with love.’ She works as a college library assistant, having moved from Nottingham to study English and Women’s Studies. Her friends persuaded her to perform the writing she had shared with them at spoken word open mics. At an open mic, each performer, or modest reader, is granted two of the rarest commodities in London, silence and someone who will listen, for around five minutes. And not just someone, often a whole room full of people hankering to hear. These events that started as contests of poetic skill or creative writing workshops are now attracting a curious crowd of confessors. We are sitting in the backroom of the Oh Bar in Camden. A small stage frames us, secreted behind red velvet curtains. The bar does Thai food, and a spoken word cabaret. Chairs are scraped around us in preparation for the show tonight. Mushrooming across the city are gatherings of people telling each other their lives and secrets.
The Poetry Café has an open mic in its basement Tuesday nights, with close to thirty performers signing up each time to open up to the fifty or more listeners packed into neat rows. The place has history, tales of a homeless man wandering in to blurt the contents of his war-spent life and a myth of the poet finding an agent, and a million pounds to sell his words. Niall O’Sullivan hosts the evening, and at 32 now makes a living out of his writing; performances, teaching workshops and two nights hosting at the café. The open mic has been going for ten years, and in the last three Niall has taken it from the beginnings when poets competed in ‘slams’ to the present community event. ‘If you have a problem, you can share it, even with a literary sugar coating, it’s a bit of the AA meeting philosophy, it takes some pressure off being human,’ explains frequent performer Guy J. Jackson. Broad shouldered and bearded, Woody Allen glasses, with a line in lumberjack shirts; he is a film maker by day, and by night, a teller of the bittersweet bedtime stories of his life.
People talk about their private lives in very public places. Sex and break ups are common ground, but stories of dallies with drugs, prostitutes, and internet dating, as well as confessions of hatred, love or carelessness can be heard. ‘If you read something deep and dark and heavy, people in the audience feel stronger for hearing someone else talk about it. It’s nice to not feel like such a freak, like you’re not the only one,’ Niall gives in explanation for what is becoming a popular pastime. The Poetry Cafe was the first place he performed, as it is for many. He had dropped out of a Fine Art degree and working as a gardener, wanted an outlet for his creativity. In tough times, he found he turned to writing over painting. A regular looking bloke, his easy going demeanour is welcoming. A crowd, from shy teenagers to unapologetic grandparents, sit patiently in school chairs, sharing and caring. If it were not for all the drinking and smoking, you would think they were enrolled in a 12-step-program. Kitty has her free buss pass, and lets everyone know, with great punch line glee, that her father was a church minister. She was conceived, she tells us, in a confessional.
‘The first time I performed, a woman confessed to me that if she had heard my poem three years ago her daughter would not have been born.’ Jo’s stage name is Gypsy Girl and the poem is about love, as so many are, and a modern day confession of a desire for purity over prurience. She fell in love and decided she no longer wanted casual relationships. The woman had had her child with someone she did not love. Jo performs at Lazy Gramophone events, where spoken word is mixed with live music and DJs, and presented to an audience unversed in performance poetry. She practices alternative therapies such as reiki, and meditation with visualization, which focus on the benefit of affirmative thoughts. ‘If you send out positive thoughts you get positivity back,’ she explains. Her performances are an extension of her everyday attempts to ‘get on’ with life. The Good Grief pieces refer to the ‘grim winter’ in which her friend Leigh died from an accidental drug overdose. He was the first person close to her she had lost, and she felt terrible guilt and distress. Soon after she broke up with her boyfriend of two years with much heartache. And yet she remains philosophical. However darkly she reflects, the final lines are always optimistic, ‘I find it therapeutic to talk. I think speaking out at open mics should be encouraged.’
Talking to the writers, it is compassion and not narcissism that pushes them into the spotlight. As Naomi, a Poetry Café regular insisted, ‘I feel I have something valid to say, that should be shared. I would find keeping my poetry in a diary a bit like holding my breath.’ Her most personal poems are about the racism she has experienced, and her time spent in psychiatric hospitals. She was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder after she was found confused and barefoot near Buckingham Palace at 3am. ‘Sometimes I get episodes when I think I am the next Queen of England,’ Naomi explains, ‘I take prescription drugs for it, but there’s not a lot anyone can do.’ She finds reading her writings aloud cathartic. The open mic scene provides an outlet for connection and communication. Every day there is a different survey reporting on how people live, but we know nothing of the person we bump knees with on the train. The curiosity that leads listeners to an open mic is healthier than an addiction to soaps; in that what they learn of life is more uplifting than the anxiety-inducing mix of casual misery and shiny hair.
‘I came out five years ago to my very conservative, religious, Ugandan family.’ Musa tells me, matter-of-factly. Musa is a dashing and confident, 27 year old man. An Eton graduate, who works as an associate director for communications at the Institute for Philanthropy. Many nights Musa performs at spoken word open mics, reading a poem about being gay, and being human. ‘There’s not been a night that someone hasn’t cried,’ he says, adding quietly, ‘Mostly girls.’ ‘The spoken word scene has a lot of honesty. The people lay themselves bare, and that is respected,’ Musa explains. ‘I wanted to show the very real sacrifices it takes to be a gay man. I lived with the consequences.’ A position so daunting is made comforting at an open mic. There is a palpable humanity in the close quarters crowd.
The material of first timers is often raw and unedited, but a well crafted piece will reach more open ears. It is in itself an act of understanding. Donall is 51, with wild hair and an infectious laugh, working as a special needs teacher in Tottenham. He started performing to recover from severe paralysis that made talking painful and difficult. He reads a poem that recalls the death of his unborn child. ‘Early in my wife’s pregnancy, in the middle of the night, we lost the baby, it happened at home and there was blood everywhere. My wife said "Don't flush my baby away! I didn't know what to do so I buried the foetus beneath a rose bush in our local park. You just can't be prepared for something like that, holding something in your hand that you never thought you'd be holding. The poem was my solution to the impossible situation I was in. There had to be somewhere where I could lay down the pain. There are people out there grateful to have this grief articulated for them, for helping them to understand, or just be aware. It is healing for them and for me.’ The poem is beautifully lyrical, written in a blend of Irish and English. Many of the writers express the therapeutic nature of speaking aloud, of creating something good from the destructive. ‘What people get high on when they hear confessional poetry is that the writer is taking something that is difficult, and presenting it in a beautiful way,’ Niall tells me.
In the storytelling of Guy J. Jackson there is a core of kindness. He takes a sidelong look at the tragicomedy of existence. The tales are tender accounts of the accidents of human frailty. ‘For example, I got this pain-in-the-ass OCD where I check the door locks close to a hundred times before I leave my apartment, and it makes me late for everything, and it makes me think I’m a madman. So in my stories, I purge my failing a little and help myself be better, plus I might be helping someone else out there with OCD, who can say ‘Hahaha oh to be human, what a lark!’ His father died five years ago after a long period of illness. The experience is a kernel of feeling within many of his stories. A certain line, though recited on stage many times before, can sometimes make him cry. The performers at an open mic confess their humanity. They deal in the familiar, and find many wanting to hear honest accounts of how a person gets through the day. Sitting in another backroom of another bar, the gathering steals in, shuffling into the school seats, and hums with talk. Guy gets up on the little wooden stage to tell a story, as he sits back down to warm applause, he turns to me and says, ‘I’m just writing about what a big fat human I am. We’re all human together.’ |
And here's the hatchet job....
| QUOTE |
It is Jo’s turn to speak: so she stands and spills her guts before the hushed assembly. In emotional waves, the young woman unpeels her innermost traumas — a friend’s tragic death, the break-up of a relationship and being sick with intense feelings of love. But this isn’t group therapy. It’s a newly emerging form of entertainment: stand-up sharing.
Welcome to the fast-growing world of spoken-word open mikes. The events, held in clubs and the back rooms of pubs in major British cities, began as contests of poetic skill or creative writing. But they have developed a far deeper dimension because they offer two of the rarest commodities in busy young city-dwellers’ lives: silence and people who will listen for five minutes. Often there’s a whole room-full hankering to hear these modern-day confessors.
Jo Tedds and I are sitting in the back room of the Oh! Bar in Camden, North London. A small red-curtained stage frames us. Chairs are scraped around in readiness for the weekly Thursday evening show. Jo works as a college library assistant, not usually an occupation known for public outbusts. But, like many young people, she had written down her private griefs and traumas. When she shared them with her friends, they persuaded her to expose them to a wider audience. “My most recent performance was after a grim winter,” says the 24-year-old, who performs under the nom de stand-up: Gipsy Girl. “The pieces were titled Good Grief.”
The pieces cover her friend Leigh’s death from an accidental overdose. He was the first person she had lost who was close to her, and she felt terrible guilt and distress. Soon after, she broke up with her boyfriend of two years. Yet she remains philosophical and her final performance lines are always optimistic.
“I find it therapeutic to talk. I think speaking out at open mikes should be encouraged,” says Jo. She performs at other London events, where spoken word is mixed with live music and DJs.
Up to 30 fellow performers sign up each Thursday at the Oh! Bar and share their inner secrets with 50 or more listeners sitting packed in neat rows. The seem sympathetic to the performer. If it weren’t for all the drinking and smoking, you might think they were in a 12-step-programme. Niall O’Sullivan hosts the evening, which he developed over the past three years. O’Sullivan, 32, also teaches writing workshops and is a regular-looking guy with an easy demeanour.
“What people get high on when they hear confessional poetry is that the writer is taking something difficult and presenting it in a beautiful way,” he says. “If you read out something deep and dark, people in the audience feel stronger for hearing someone else talk about it. It’s nice to not feel like such a freak, like you’re not the only one,” he says.
Guy J Jackson, a frequent performer who is a broad-shouldered, bearded man in Woody Allen glasses, agrees: “If you have a problem, you can share it. Even with a literary sugar-coat-ing, it has a bit of the AA-meeting philosophy.” Jackson is a film-maker by day, and nocturnal teller of his bittersweet life story. Many of the performers’ accounts are themselves the stuff of arthouse film plots: sex and breakups are common ground, but there are also tales about drugs, prostitutes and internet dating, confessions of hatred, love or carelessness.
Jackson hopes by telling his story he can help others. “I got this pain-in-the-ass obsessive-com-pulsive disorder where I check the door locks close to a hundred times before I leave my apartment. It makes me late for everything, and it makes me think I’m a madman. In my stories I purge my failing a little and help myself be better, plus I might be helping someone else out there with OCD.” His father died five years ago after a long illness. The experience is a kernel of many of his stories. Jackson gets up on the little wooden stage to tell a story; and, as he sits back down to warm applause, he turns to me and says: “I’m just writing about what a big fat human I am. We’re all human together.”
Shared humanity isn’t only the stuff of bittersweet humour, though. Racism and time spent in psychiatric hospitals are at the heart of Naomi’s most personal poems.
“I feel I have something valid that should be shared. I would find keeping my poetry in a diary a bit like holding my breath.” she says. Naomi was found to have bipolar disorder after she was discovered wandering confused and barefoot near Buckingham Palace at 3am. “Sometimes I get episodes when I think I am the next queen of England,” Naomi explains. “I take prescription drugs for it, but there’s not a lot anyone can do.” She finds reading her story aloud cathartic.
Every day there is a different survey reporting on how people live, but we know nothing of the person we bump knees with on the train. The curiosity that leads listeners to an open mike is surely healthier than our addiction to soaps. It’s a curiosity that can take you to some dark places. Donall has wild hair and an infectious laugh. He works as a special-needs teacher in Tottenham, North London, and started performing to recover from severe facial paralysis after an accident that made talking painful and difficult. He reads a poem about the death of his unborn child.
“Early in my wife’s pregnancy we lost the baby, it happened at home and there was blood everywhere. My wife said, ‘Don’t flush my baby away!’ I didn’t know what to do, so I buried the foetus beneath a rose bush in our local park. You just can’t be prepared for something like that,” he says. Of his poem he says: “It was my solution. There had to be somewhere where I could lay down the pain. There are people out there grateful to have this grief articulated for them, for helping them to understand, or just be aware. It is healing for them and for me.” |
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Poetry Unplugged Airbrushed From Times Article
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