Hi there, all poets,

I would just like to talk for a quick sec or two about performing in London, a city where I am very fortunate to live right now. 

London provides a multitude of opportunities for reading and performing poetry, with plenty of open mic nights that allow anybody to go up on stage and have a go at reading and performing their own stuff. Barring work or rehearsals, I have been at this regularly and I've had a few adventures in doing so.

I discovered solo performing after a disastrous attempt to join a hospital radio in mid-2007. I was booted off after one session after the DJ thought I was bit too weird (ie talking to myself, hitting the wall in a meltdown and making inappropriate jokes to fellow staff). I had neglected to inform them at my interview I suffered from Asperger's Syndrome and that this kind of thing, though harmless, happens on occasion. I was told on the phone "Thank you very much for all your efforts..." before I hung up, ashamed. After twenty-five years without being fired from a job, this was the third such conversation I had had inside of a year.

Where to then, to express myself, to cut loose? I stumbled across an advert in Time Out for "A Spoonful of Poison", an open-mic night at the Rhythm Factory in Whitechapel, not far from Bow, where I live. The night was open to all aspiring musicians, comedians and poets to come in and do a turn: five minutes for comics or poets, ten minutes for musicians. I wrote up some material and went along to the Rhythm Factory.

The venue itself is actually quite famous, being a popular haunt of musician Pete Doherty, whose portrait adorns the wall of the bar near the front of the venue. After signing in, I was directed to the rear of the building. I arrived in a darkened room. To my left was an unused bar and a sound booth, where the compere sat during the acts with a timer and a bell to keep them on target. To my right was a casual spread of tables, chairs and couches surrounding the stage, which was just a flattened crate with a mic stand propped on top of it. Behind that was a black curtain and to the right of that was a DJ booth, with a sound engineer playing music as the audience and the acts trickled inside.

The compere Vis the Spoon, a wild-haired man in a white t-shirt took the stage and with a raucous Cockney accent roared into the microphone "Welcome one and all to a Spoonful of Poison!!!". The evening went this way, Spoon would introduce two acts (a musician then a spoken word), punctuated with 'intellectual breaks' to allow the audience to refill their drinks. When Spoon came to introduce me, he predictably made fun of my having a French first name, an English second name and being Scottish before allowing me on to read my stuff.

I have never really suffered from stage fright and had performed stand-up in Edinburgh some years previously, so I wasn't afraid of the audience. I went on and read my stuff as best I could then went off to polite applause. The audience were pretty solid in that at least gave you the privilege of being quiet and appearing to listen to you even if they weren't. My first gig in this respect was a success - I wasn't going to raise the roof on my first gig but so far, so good.

I'd not really written or performed my own poetry publicly before apart from in school although it was an ability with speaking and performing poetry by others that led me into Aberdeen amateur theatre and then thoughts of an acting career. A lot of my stuff at this stage depended on being melancholy, mourning unrequited love and longing for the past.  As a creative, autistic person I find getting employment in this town quite hard and, although I benefit from a lot of support both in London and from Aberdeen, I encounter fits of anger and depression at times.  The poetry was an excellent way to get this out of my system.

I quite enjoyed my first gig and returned to the Rhythm Factory regularly, writing up and learning by heart new material each time. By November I'd started adding costume and make-up to my performances. The best example came when I dressed up as the Joker, and performed my own material in an intense and disturbing style only half-inspired by Heath Ledger playing the part in "The Dark Knight" movie trailer and perfected through years of playing panto baddies on-stage in Aberdeen. This convinced Vis the Spoon to give me a featured spot, where I could do ten minutes of my own material as opposed to the usual five. I did the Joker act and had planned to do more, but the sudden death of Heath Ledger made it seem in bad taste.

I started performing in other venues across London like the Leather Exchange in London Bridge, the Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden and Cross Kings pub at Kings Cross. The most memorable evenings were on Sundays at a place called the Foundry in Old Street near Shoreditch, at a night called 'Wormworld". The Foundry has a terrible reputation among solo performers as being a very hard place to perform. The venue is a university bar and contains plenty of pictures and art installations. But what it also contains is a not-very-attentive audience, who talk through your act and quite often heckle you if they dislike you. In spite of these conditions, I have performed there many times and also died many times. 

There is an early scene in the movie "Dick Tracy"(1990) where gangster Big Boy Caprice (Al Pacino) executes underworld kingpin Lips Manlis by giving him a cement bath.  He is shoved in an open crate where a cement mixer pours concrete all over him as he begs and pleads for his life, Big Boy and his goons watching him. Well this is exactly what dying on-stage feels like.  You are rooted to the spot flailing helplessly while all around are looking down on you, some with pity and others with contempt.  I experienced this quite a few times at Foundry. 

When the good act went off-stage to a round of applause the compere would announce my name and I'd be hit with no applause but a dead wall of silence that was foreboding as I approached the stage. People heckling saying "We're falling asleep" and having the audacity to say "That is NOT poetry". I took it, for it's the kind of thing one has to learn to deal with. My first gig there, my mobile went off when I was performing and I had to tell my mother "Can't talk, mum, I'm performing". This completely threw me, and I forgot most of my material. On another gig, I'd cut the room in half performing to one side of the room who were paying attention and ignoring the other side who weren't. When the noise from the other side became too much, a man who was listening bounded on-stage, grabbed the mic and TOLD THE AUDIENCE TO SHUT UP FOR ME. I'd never seen anything like it before and, embarrassed, I thanked the man as he gave me the mic back. I performed in there when the venue was nearly empty. Of the three audience members I had, two of them kept talking very loudly. When my feeble attempts to keep them quiet failed, I stormed off the stage after two minutes.  I know that sounds unprofessional and it is, but it was all I felt I could do at the time.

I have had some good nights in there, though. Earlier this year I was in the pits of despair after losing yet another job. Pondering my fate in a Brick Lane cafe, I decided to either go home and sulk or go out and gig. Opting for the latter, I went to Foundry. The venue was playing host to a number of art installations that evening, and there were sculptures and wax candles scattered all over the room.  Even better, there were more people than usual in the venue and they had decided they were up for a laugh.  I grabbed the mike and then went right up close to the audience to do my material, getting really confident and in your face. When this happened, my misery of the real world vanished instantly. I talked of the horrors of the White Lady, bemoaned my lost and forever unrequited one true love and remembered my quiet friend from my schooldays all to great response. Then a big fat man in a beige jacket grabbed a wax candle and smashed it over my head. The candle wasn't lit, so I didn't get hurt but I was definitely thrown for a few seconds before finishing my act in style. I later grabbed a candle and got one back on the guy who attacked me. He'd meant it in good spirits so they were no hard feelings and said he'd actually enjoyed my set. When I told him about the guy who said "That is NOT poetry" he said "Well that's like you glassing him and saying, this is NOT violence."

I have been fortunate to meet many interesting characters from my performing. I've mentioned Vis the Spoon but honorable mention should go to Dangerous T, a wickedly inventive poet who's been at so many of my gigs. Dangerous T is dyslexic, which makes his poetry and capacity to read an audience all the more remarkable. There's also the Worm Lady, who comperes Foundry, a delightfully eccentric elder lady who does poems all about worms.    Her catchphrase is "Humans need worms more than they need us", refers all to her fellow poets as 'wigglers' and ends every night by saying "That's it for Wormworld - another wiggle, successfully executed."  

In June 2008, I scrambled down the Telegraph Pub in South-West London to take part in the Farrago Poetry Telegraph Slam, which I went on to win.  The venue was in the middle of nowhere and took a long time to reach, and as I had hay fever at the time, was not feeling my best at the time.  Still the victory was nice and at the end I got a lift to Wimbledon station from two of my fellow slammers.

My next slam victory was during the heats of the Hackney Empire Spice Slams, hosted by my good friend Richard Tyrone Jones.  I was up against some of London's best performers including Raymond Antrobus and the Irish girl Catherine Brogan.  A careful selection of poems from my now vastly-expanded set (including the poem on my profile) saw me somehow progress to the finals, getting down to the last three of thirty competing poets.  In the final I was hammered and finished a distant third.  I didn't mind too much as my two fellow poets (Saran Green of the triumvirate Partna's In Rhyme, along with awesome winner Poetic 3dom) were fantastic.

Other slam experiences have not been such an easy ride.  A couple of weeks after my appearance in the Spice Slam finals I appeared at a Slam Too Far! in the Marie Lloyd Bar at the Hackney Empire.  The contrast to the previous event could not have been more distinct.  The compere failed to sufficiently warm-up an already rowdy audience and the judges were not what I would describe as being sympathetic, giving most of the poets (myself included) low-to-average scores.  After congratulating the winner (who deserved congrats after surviving the night intact) I sat down for a drink with Poetic 3dom who had been featuring that night, and a friend of hers who had taken part in the slam.  Then one of the judges came over to tell me why she'd given us a low score.  Already in a lousy mood, I can't say I responded to her in the most mature fashion, especially since it came out of the blue and like a fool stormed out in a fit.  Still, it was a lesson to learn and I have to come to concede that most of what she said about the poetry I did that evening was in fact accurate.  Taking criticism is a necessary part of our development as artists and I wish I had responded a little more productively.

In the New Year I will perform in Aberdeen again, plus a gig in Glasgow, my ancestral city where most of my family come from.  Hopefully this will turn out OK and I will carry on learning and developing as an artist.

I wish all my fellow poets out there the very best.

Regards,

Alain