I wanted to write

A funny poem

About torture.

But laughter

Stuck

In my throat

Like splints

Under fingernails;

I opened my mouth

To let it out

But Torture

Water-boarded its flight,

And downed it

With simulated drowning.

Torture would not allow itself

To be trivialised by

Privileged Western woes,

To be bathetically compared

To ‘people talking on their phones

In the quiet zone’ or

‘Being forced to watch

The dancing worm of death

While Iplayer buffers’

Torture remained mute

In the face

Of my attempts at humour,

As silent as a secret cell

In a private prison

On the soil of a compliant,

Client state.

Even our universal suffering

The Dharma seeks to end

Seems trite when compared

To the horror

Of Barney the Dinosaur

And Sesame Street

Punch-fisting ear-drums

For hours on end

At volumes that blank out

The strobe-etched screams

‘Some are calling it

A cruel and unusual tool –

And many parents would agree!’

Death is funnier;

Grinning at its own punchline

That always has them

Rolling in the aisles.

Torture suggests continuance,

A condition that doesn’t end

Even when it has.

And yet, like any pain

And everything

It passes.

And often passes Justice

On the way

To settle its account,

If not the cost.

And though us bugs

Are often too close

To the rug to be

Delighted or amused

By its pattern,

Indifferent stars

Gaze fond light-years upon

Our planets revolutions

And laughter tinkles

In the twinkling of spheres.

Gigs

I didn’t have many gigs last month, too busy doing projects in schools and prisons hence lack of newsletter, but one thing I did do which I should’ve shouted about at the time was host a benefit for Moradokmai Youth Theatre from Thailand at Contact Theatre. Moradokmai are a wonderful company I met a few years ago at a theatre festival in Nepal, a living, breathing, self-sufficient community of young artists who live together, work together and do all their teaching and learning through theatre. Earlier this year they lost nearly everything they have in the floods that devastated the area of Thailand in which they live. If you’d like to know more about them and how to donate to the cause, please watch this short video:

Spirit of Moradokmai

Moradokmai are one of the companies involved in this year’s Contacting the World, Contacts flagship biennial international youth theatre project. If you’d like to donate to this amazing project as well, or just learn a bit more about it, please have a look at their donation site.

So, on to the future. Tomorrow I go to Munich for a mini-slam tour in and around that fine beery city. I’ll be playing Schrannen-Slam, Dachau on the 12th, ARGEKultur, Salzburg on the 13th, The Roxy, Ulm on the 14th, and Substanz and the Lyrik Kabinett in Munich on the 15th and 16th respectively.

Back home I’ll be at Bristol Poetry Festival’s show with Rob Gee and Chris Redmond at The Arnolfini on the 19th, and coming home to Manchester for two gigs at the end of the month – The brand new Bang Said The Gun! (Manchester) at The Old Nag’s Head on the 26th and a Poetry Marathon event in aid of Freedom From Torture on 2nd May at The International Anthony Burgess Centre.

All details, as usual, available on my gigs calendar.

Solo Shows

Everything We Need

Final preparations are being made before rehearsals start in June for my upcoming show, Everything We Need, at the Royal Exchange Studio, 28th – 30th June. The creative team are working hard on all aspects of design, and I’m making final tweaks to the script. Trailer and artwork soon come..

Anthropoetry

In other exciting news, I have had my next new show accepted on PBH’s Free Fringe at Edinburgh this year. The show is called Anthropoetry and will be at Fingers Piano Bar from the 4th to the 17th August. It’s a collection of new poems with music and sound design from my fellow Geddes Loom (and most other stuff) conspirator, Dan Steele. Not quite up online on the fringe or PBH site yet, but here’s the blurb:

How do we express our spleen? Whose business do we stick our noses into? When did we start wearing our hearts on our sleeves, and why are we up to our elbows in heels and bums?

BBC R4 Slam Champion Ben Mellor takes you on a stand-up poetry and music fuelled tour around the body, attempting to get the measure of modern life through anatomical analogy. With sounds, beats, beeps and whistles by Dan Steele.

yep, still trading off that Radio 4 thing…

Other Projects

Geddes Loom and Pen-ultimate both have new musical/theatrical projects in the pipeline, but they’re a little too embryonic to go into at any length, and this newsletter is long enough already. Rest assured, when they’re a bit more developed, you’ll know about them. They will be perineum-splittingly big.

However, Geddes Loom will be playing a special one-off set at The Royal Exchange’s Special FX on June 15th at 6pm. Come down, it’s FREE!

Sofia and Johnson Kalu are Manchester residents in danger of being
deported to countries where they are at risk of persecution. Please sign
this petition (below) to allow them to stay in their adopted Manchester
community.

Petition to Rt. Hon Theresa May Secretary of State for the Home Office to allow Sofia & Johnson Kalu to remain in the UK.

Sofia Kalu (Home Office Ref: K1254708) arrived in the UK on the 13th of November 2006 having fled Zimbabwe, after her home was burnt to the ground and her husband beaten and murdered by ZANU-PF members because he was an active MDC member. Sofia knew it was no longer safe for her to stay in Zimbabwe and she could not return to her country of birth South Africa as she had been warned that there were ZANU-PF supporters who would kill her or the authorities may just return her to Zimbabwe.

Sofia’s church in Zimbabwe made arrangements for her to go to Britain where a church was to provide her with shelter and work. Later, once in the country, Sofia’s claimed asylum but was refused on the grounds that the Home Office did not believe she would be at risk as an MDC supporter in South Africa or that she would be forced to go back to Zimbabwe by the authorities. Sofia fears either could happen and there is now a very real risk of persecution if she is returned.

Sofia has recently married Johson Kalu (same Home office ref: K1254708) a Nigerian asylum seeker who is also facing a risk of persecution if he is sent back to Nigeria. They have built a new life in Manchester as husband and wife and both are active in the Manchester community. At present, Sofia’s claim has been refused and is at the end of the line.

Zimbabwe is a ‘Failed State’ and Nigeria a ‘Failing state’ (32% decrease in living/human rights conditions in 3 years) according to Fund for Peace a leading authority on economic and human rights conditions in all countries around the world. Both countries lacking the capacity to establish and maintain political institutions secure their population from violent conflict, from the state and from agents of the state, control their territories and meet the basic needs of their population.

We the undersigned, call upon the Home Secretary to grant Sofia & Johnson permission to stay in the UK on Humanitarian grounds so that they can remain with their Manchester Community; where they have established a ‘private life’ as set out in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Phrased & Confused

This weekend I and my fellow Geddes Loom band mates, Léonie Higgins and Dan Steele, will be performing a new music and spoken word commission at Summer Sundae Weekender in Leicester, brought to you by the lovely people at Phrased & Confused. The piece is themed on protest, and we’ve tried to imagine what Poetry and Music would protest about if they were characters, with what I hope are quite amusing results. I’ll also be performing in a Gil Scott Heron tribute slot and Geddes Loom will be performing a set of our other material on the Rising Stage on the Sunday. If you’re not around in Leicester we’ll be performing the protest piece at Interrogate Festival in Dartington on 23rd Sept, and at Contact, Manchester on 23rd Nov.

A Game Of Consequence

Over the last couple of months I’ve been busy working with Contact’s Young Actor’s Company on A Game of Consequence – a new piece of street theatre for Xtrax’s Platform 4 outdoor arts festival in Manchester’s Picadilly Gardens on 20th & 21st. The show is inspired by an old fashioned medicine show with a modern twist, and is directed by Cheryl Martin (with me assisting).

Everything We Need

My brand new solo show, which was previously going under the working title ‘Climate Myths’, has now found a better name, and will be opening at the Royal Exchange Studio, Manchester next Spring, followed by a short tour. Dates tba. The show is a series of inter-linked monologues, each inspired by a myth that relates to our understanding of climate change and other ecological crises. But it’s more fun than it sounds, and that this provisional promo image makes it look! The show has so far been developed at Dartington Arts, with a short R&D period completed in May. It’s being directed by Cheryl Martin and live music is performed by Léonie and Dan.

Shambala

I’ll also be performing a solo set and a set with Geddes Loom in the brilliant Wandering Word tent at Shambala Festival on the 26th & 27th August. This is one of the best small festivals I’ve ever been to, can’t wait for this one.

September

Got a couple of gigs coming up in September too, one at The Core, @ Corby Cube on the 3rd as part of an event called Lyric Lounge, also featuring Jean Binta Breeze and Joel Stickley. And I’m going to be on the Manchester team at the Bristol Poetry Festival Slam at The Arnolfini on the 17th.

More exciting things coming up in October and onwards, but I might get round to shouting about in September…

Anyway, failing so early on kind of takes the pressure away, much like turning thirty and realising all the things you told yourself you were going to do before you hit that age aren’t going to happen. Or they still might, you just won’t have put an arbitrary time limit on achieving them. Anyway, point is, as I said on the Pen-ultimate site today (which also had a big gap in it yesterday), my reasons for taking up the challenge were to encourage a regular ‘fast and loose’ writing regime, not add another self-flagellation stick to my arsenal if I miss a day, which may well happen again considering the month I have ahead of me.

So, today’s, or rather yesterday’s poem, is one I started in a workshop I delivered recently for the Heritage Lottery Fund. The exercise, taken from fellow Pen-ultimate member Frisko (I think he adapted from someone else) is to to use the phrases ‘I was…’, ‘I am…’, ‘I will…’, ‘I can…’ at the beginning of each line of four four-line stanzas, and fill in the blanks. As the workshop was on heritage I tried to make it vaguely about that but I only got as far as ‘I will…’. As you can see, once you’ve filled in each line you can take out some of the line beginnings like I have to make it less repetitive. It’s interesting to try your own workshop exercises I’ve realised, I don’t particularly like this one actually! I think it leads to an overly affirmative voice of self realisation which can ring a bit hollow (if you’re a cynical so and so like me) and the structure of the exercise doesn’t allow for any turning point at the end. But I suppose you can always break the rules. But for now, this is the unfinished version. Will try and post today’s unfinished effort tomorrow, with tomorrow’s. Or something.

I was born from the chalk under green Chiltern hills,
Formed from the tip of the Pennine tail,
Then forged in the smoke of dark northern mills,
Brought forth from the borders of lands where words fail.

Only dimly aware of my family tree’s branches,
A stranger unknown to my ancestor’s shores.
I am sectioned into generational tranches,
Shut off from the roots of my blood by Death’s doors.

I will sounds into matter with mind-powered hands,
Trace my connections in looping black threads.
I will alter my accent when convention demands,
Sign my name on the land my experience treads.

Just about slipping this one in before the day’s out because I need to have posted something on the first of this month, as I’ll be attempting to throw up something vaguely poetic every day for the whole of April. This is part of NaPoWriMo, an initiative which has so far attracted around 170 websites to publicly commit to posting a new poem every day for thirty days. It’s a bit of a daunting task, especially considering everything else I have going on this month, but I’m hoping the threat of a daily deadline will be a healthy thing that will push me to write what needs writing. Also I’m doing a stint on Something Every Day for a week in June so I figure this will be good training.

My first post is a bit of a cheat as I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, but still it’s not been seen or heard by anyone but the editors of Inc zine who are publishing some of my work this month. I’ve submitted a few short poems, plus they asked me to write something in response to an illustration (below) by Barnie Page who will also feature in the zine. I had two attempts at this as I didn’t like the first one I wrote, but in the spirit of ‘resisting the urge not to leave traces’ I’m including them both and letting you be the judge.

The Girl In The Picture
or
Blue Period – Version 1

Oh, hey!
I didn’t know you’d be here…
How are you?
No, it’s ok, I could’ve rung you too.
Thanks! No, my sister lent me the shirt,
She’s so retro!
The glasses? They’re well old,
Just don’t wear em much anymore,
They’re everywhere now,
Bit old hat.
Mocking the afflicted too,
If you think about it
I mean, what next, right?
Ironic slings?
Post-modern crutches?
Ha…!
Sooo, who are you here with?
Oh.
No, we’ve not met.
She looks…
Really cool.
Yeah I’ll come over in a bit
And say hi.
Bye.

The Girl In The Picture
or
Blue Period – Version 2

She doesn’t know Picasso
But this is her blue period;
A Miles Davis kind of blue,
A cool and sassy
Savvy affectation of experience;

A blue that seeks to find a reason
For her teenage indigo moods
Beyond some vague
Middle class malaise
Inherited from her parents.

Aeons away from needing
Real glasses, she dons
Ironic slings,
Post-modern crutches
As if to say ‘I’m cool,

But I don’t take myself
Too seriously, OK?’
Assembles her look
From a collage of
Past decades’ fashions

Redolent of an age
Uncertain of itself;
Sheltering in anachronistic
Combinations of styles
From more confident times.

But behind those lensless frames,
Outwardly stating carefree chic,
Two blue plaintive eyes
Bespeak a growing realisation
Of what is
And hope for something better.