Well done to all who performed, really enjoyed the evening. My favourites of the night were Baz and James Hartnell. I thought all poets were on top form.

I think more people should have been in the audience.

Julian seemed surprised when I stopped after 2nd poem but I feel bad being on too long and some latecomers arrived anyway.

I liked Barry's poetic attack on Shakespeare too !

It was nice to make friends and talk to new faces

Roll on the next Tudor house (Nice pub - nice people)

I will send the photo's to WOL for Paul to upload.

Will we see people from further away turning up at Wigan events? After all i'm always seeing Bolton and Wigan people at the Manchester events but not as many the other way round. Sometimes it seems quite a few of the bigger names in Manchester dont travel to WOL gig's as often as they should?

Tudor house just needed more audience (the pub itself was vibrant though ! )

Any chance we can see the stripper they cancelled?

Sorry Peter
I'm gonna have to cancel the lapdancers next month too.
Sorry.
Baz

Well, you could have said something beforehand, Baz. Here's me been twisting myself inside-out practising my dance routine on my laptop ready for my big night. I've ricked my back and destroyed the return key. Am I still on for stripping? I've got the skip hired and enough industrial acid to take the laquer off about 38 wooden doors. Don't disappoint me.

Thanks to Peter for doing his Kentucky Chicken job which i requested. Truly a mint poem.

James

I'll do me best Moxy, but make sure you wear something low cut so I have somewhere to slip my tenner if the doors are great.
Baz

Low cut? I thought you said local so I'm wearing Wigan football club's mascot costume. I'm fetching my purse for the tenners.It's got a pattern of locusts on it. Honestly, Baz. Oh, and I've a cat with very short legs --a low cat -- for people who, if they were dog lovers would have a dachsund, only they like cats. That's accompanying me. I've trained it to pick out low-cal treats from an assortment of snacks.

too many one trick ponies!

As HMQE2 enquired, 'Have the horses (ie ponies in this instance) come to sing to us?'

Hmm, if "poets" are going to do the same thing constantly then why not just write a monologue?

If I'm sitting in the audience and somebody gets up and does exactly what I expect them too, after a while it becomes a little dull. It doesn't matter how fucking good the poem is or isn't, where is the variety?

As I'm writing I can see "Write Out Loud encouraging poetry performance"
To be honest if I want to watch repeats I'll turn on UKTV Gold.

Mix it up a bit, stretch yourselves, take a fucking risk.

I'm assuming thats possible? Hence the comment too many one trick ponies. People doing the same thing over and over cause they've found one voice and don't deviate from it.

That is not what poetry is but and this isn't just Write Out Loud too many poets are lazy and some of them are scared. Find a voice and stick with it cause it works.

'Monologue?'

Sorry, that should have read 'fibreglass car port.'

I'm still not sure what you mean Dam. Are you talking about the performance or the content or both? Without naming names give us a generic example of what is obviously getting on your tits and tell us why you find it so irritating. Is part of the irritation that audiences too want to play it safe and stick with what they know?

I see a lot of people trying to do new things - flying by the seat of their pants stuff - though maybe not as obvious as you might think i.e. using the constraints of the form to concentrate thinking but to produce something that can work on different levels e.g. the best nursery rhymes were written both as children's tales but also as satire and work convincingly in both.

So please expand upon your thoughts so we can clearly see what you are getting at.

Number of things to bear in mind, in performance:

Above all it's a negotiation, between

1.a audience expectations

b audience allowances

and

2.a the performer's ability to express

b performer's need to express.

Constantly shifting, from performance to performance, piece performed etc, even, at times, within a piece. Certainly within an 'evening'.

But swearing just puts people's backs up.

Daftie,

Still working this out, I think what I am getting at is poem structure, style, form and voice. There doesn’t seem to be enough variance

Without being specific I sometimes feel that people just fill up a page of A4 and then put the appropriate line breaks in there and depend on some internal rhyme to carry the poem. It shouldn’t work like that, in most cases there should be some kind of structure there and too often I’ve felt that there wasn’t.

Technically some of the poems at this gig were very, very poor. I recognise there is a difference between performance and written. I do feel though that there has to be as much effort put into both. It wasn’t just this gig I see it all over the place poems that are technically bad. Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean it wouldn’t work as a piece. Though if it doesn’t work technically of performed then what is it?

I also understand the ease behind throwing some words down on paper and saying it’s a finished work. It never works like that. I admit that I used to do this, bang one finished and now the next one. I now feel that they are rarely finished especially the performance pieces

Interested in flying by the seat of their pants stuff? I’ve seen a few people trying but not many can pull that off. I honestly didn’t see anything new at the tudor and that includes me.

Although what constraints are there in free verse? None that I can think of

Does this clarify?

Dam

PS Ricardo what do you mean by audience allowances? Unclear about that.

Still don’t get why swearing gets peoples backs up, if its in context then I don’t see it as an issue and indeed take the Lenny Bruce line. If one is just saying it cause they think its clever then no absolutely right.
I recently did Chalet Love which had the line “its as fucking hot as fucking Majorca” deliberately echoing John Cooper Clarke, if that got peoples backs up then fuck ‘em

Ah, swearing. Ah, Lenny Bruce. Lenny Bruce swore to great effect: to reduce prurience, to stop certain words having the ability to harm specific sections of the community -- to prevent some words being used to hurt, denegrate, insult, attack, belittle, dehumanise -- to defuse those words, to neutralise them. 'Fuck' was said by Bruce because it meant having sex. He used it in context -- it was a word that was about normality, not dirty, not obscene, just part of life. George Carlin, too, with his famous 7 Words You Can't Say On Television -- all of them emenating from either bodily functions or body parts. The question asked by both Carlin and Bruce was why we have this hate relationship with our bodies, this violence against the physical. John Copper Clark in 'Chicken Town' uses it because it's a metrical device and also, in context, very funny. It's about anger there: frustration: being totally trapped. 'Fuck' is appropriate, powerfully so. The problem is when it's being used for none of the above and not actually making a point, when it's just thrown into a sentence as an adverb or adjective. Then it can seem aggressive -- just the opposite of Bruce and Carlin's usage. Watch Eddie Izzard for a great and gentle play on the word -- he manages to use it to mark a point of agreement with his audience. Bill Hicks was edgier with it -- but there it assumed a kind of righteous indignation, an inclusive one.

My, what an interesting thread.
I don't know exactly what you mean Dam, as to what is a technically good poem. I wouldn't know one if it hit me with a kipper and told me it was.
At the last gig the poem I wrote was inspected by a far more experienced poet, who taught me about syllables, so I rearranged it at great time expense so that every two lines were 11 and 12 syllables respectively. Hope you were impressed.
But I'm not sure jf the resulting poem was better than the original.
However I would be quite amenable to you pointing out (perceived) faults with my work. Please don't applaud politely or I could remain forever shit.
I can handle criticism.
Next week I intend to try something totally different.
If you have a view on it please let ME know rather than suggesting on the forum that SOME poems are technically inadequate.
If it's mine I need to know.
Cheers
Baz

At the risk of prolonging this discussion. The gig at the Tudor was nearly a month ago and you're still going on about it. If you analyse it any more. You're all in danger of disappearing up your own arse holes. Let's just see what next week brings hey

Actually, Gordon, the only creature who can do that is the sea cucumber. And, yes, it is in response to danger.

I agree Mr Zola. Or may I call you Gordon.

Baz, Gordon, I totally disagree. You're wimping out here. The matter is far from over. We need to discuss performance poetry fashion. What is appropriate, should the clothes match the poem's mood? Should clothes set the emotional tempo before one syllable is uttered? Downdressing, sharp dressing, syllabic count dressing -- perhaps you should wear items of clothing that match the syllabic count of your poem? Barefoot, or shod in what? Your metrical feet in metrical footwear Euro size 42.

Okay okay few comments

Baz,

I never applaud politely if I don't like something I just don't.
I don't expect people to applaud me if they don't like it but thats just me. Plus Julian makes a good point about encouraging new poets which not aplauding if they were shit would be a very bad thing (at first).

I'm not suggesting you are technically inadequate at all, not in the slightest!!!

I'm quite pleased the discussion has sparked something though rather than everyone just slapping each other on the back and saying well done.

I don't think this discussion is about the Tudor House gig anymore, its moved on from that.
I think its a general thing in poetry that has gone on at least as long as I have been performing and probably always will.

I saw some guy at the dead god poets on Wednesday night who used alleged poetry to slag off first Gordon Brown and then 'his mate' Michael Portillo.
It was nothing more than a rant with rhyming couplets, that pisses me off more than anything. Its a very simple way of getting a lot of people to listen to you without being labelled a crank.
I was even watching the guy before hand all he was doing before his spot was rehearsing, I don't think a single word the other poets performed went in to his thick head.

What was I supposed to do? Stand up and say "Look mate your poems are appalling, your rhythm is virtually non existent, subject matter highly biased and very debatable to begin with and by the way I don't like your tie"

This is what I mean when I say One trick ponies, if I see someone who uses that form and then does it again only with different poems then I just think lazy fucker.

I might actually be guilty of it myself sometimes, I'm getting rather paranoid now lol.
dam

Julian,I don’t mind if its edgy or not but what I do wanna see from performers is growth and an ability to do something different than they did the week before.

I’d really love to think that it is like you say “that exposure to a range of styles encourages experimentation with new ideas and forms” I hope that is happening. This is in essence what I want!Do you really think the confidence levels in Wigan haven’t been reached? Honestly? I hadn’t considered it like that at all. That’s a really good point, I think I sometimes expect that if people can get up there they can just do it easily. There were quite a few that seemed very confident though .

I think your idea for a theme is very positive, maybe set a task for the next night. Not so that its competitive but that it really pushes people. Maybe a few lines to work on or a theme.

Don’t get me wrong on this I really like the Tudor House, I think it’s a good venue, its far superior to the Citadel.

If I thought your compering was problematic I would tell you, really. It was fine and what you are trying to achieve does come across.

Is this clearer?

dam

PS I will definitely be at the next and will be trying out new ideas

Julian
Just re read your earlier message where you said 'the temptation (at the Tudor) is to entertain, rather than share your poetry'. Is that a bad thing. The nonsense I come out with is meant to entertain.
I was about to say 'nothing more'. But I'm not sure.