21st March, Chill Pill perform at Hit The Ode (Birmingham)
22nd March, Chill Pill & Anthony Anaxagorou perform at Waxing Lyrical in Brighton
Very much looking forward to performing at these nights across the UK this March. Other news is my book of poems, 'Shape & Disfigurement' is now being stocked at Southbank's Poetry Library, you can order a copy for your own library here -
Book and quote 'EARLY BIRD' for your discounted tickets to 'The Big One' on May 23rd with poets from some of the best regular poetry nights in London. Featuring:
Thanks to Come Rhyme With Me your socialising calendar can be filled with an evening of poetry and spoken word. The night takes place the last Friday of the month at Cotton’s restaurant, Islington and thanks to the imaginative minds of its founders, Dean and Deanna, the show takes inspiration from a meal and is served in ‘3 courses’. The starter consists of an up-and coming poet, followed by a meaty main of an experienced professional. Finally, dessert bears witness to something more light-hearted perhaps some cabaret, comedy or music.
The show starts at 7:00pm and finishes at 10pm with tickets at £7.50 for the show or £12.50 to include a plate of traditional Caribbean food. TSL suggest getting here early to get a comfortable seat at a table as well as staying after the show for some socialising!
February 8th at The Poetry Cafe'
To celebrate his recently published book, "Life In Transit", Sam Berkson invites you to a unique evening of interactive performance poetry, with support from the equally brilliant RAYMOND ANTROBUS and MICHELLE MADSEN, His aim is to make public transport public again, one poem at a time. Taking you on a poetic journey, galloping over social etiquette, cruising through bizarre encounters and hurtling us towards new ways of relating to public spaces, with poems such as "Lust (on a bendy bus)" and "Hitchhiking characters", Berkson promises to transform your attitude towards public transport.
An experienced performer and poet, Berkson is a trusty guide for all those hungry for performance poetry and adventure, so pack your imagination and clean out your ears for a fun filled journey into the unknown.
Copies of 'Life In Transit' and 'Shapes & Disfigurements' by Raymond Antrobus, will be on sale as will delicious drinks and refreshments at the bar.
February 13th Chill Pill Connects at Roundhouse
Chill Pill is BACK with a brand new show for 2013: Chill Pill Connect.
We're hooking up with The Roundhouse team to create a live, interactive radio show, and we need YOU to get involved. Chill Pill Connect brings you all the goodness you've come to expect from the Chill Pill Team, the tunes, the banter, and of course, the poetry, but this time there's a twist.
Connect is being recorded and then moulded by the magic of Roundhouse technology, into a full blown spoken word audio feast. And two open mic-ers will have their poems broadcast as a part of the upcoming show.
This is a brand new concept for Chill Pill and we're very excited to offer up and coming artists the opportunity to be involved.
We'll have eight open mic slots but it's guaranteed to fill up so arrive early to secure a place.
Not performing at this night but Poejazzi play a big part of the Spoken Word & Music movement in London and for good reason, they run one of the best nights around for it. Get early bird tickets NOW -
Musa, Dom and me talk about how we link Football, Football managing, Personal Training and Hip-Hop to our poetry. Includes a few performances and talk about Chill Pill's relaunch.
“I held my 13 Negro tales And made a backbone Swapped it for my own Stood to the wind and dared earth To spin me off its shoulders Not knowing I had soldered my pen to its core And ink planted a metaphor” – 13 Negro Tales by Inua Ellams
Nigerian born Inua Ellams is one of the most exciting poets in the UK right now. Still very young, he’s already published a book of his poetry, sold out the National Theatre with his one man show, toured all over the country and was even one of the first poets to win a Fringe First award.
His words, his passion, his achievements and his humbleness has deeply inspired me as a writer and performer.
Me and Inua are part of the same poetry collective (PiP) and we were speaking recently about whether the artists involved in our art form should call themselves poets, Spoken Word artists, writers, performers, performance poets, live literature artists or show boaty wind bags?
Q. Inua, are you a show boaty wind bag?
In my younger days, I wrote and performed things, which if I saw on stage now (with a better grasp of what this game is about) I’d consider to be hot air. Yup, I was the wind baggiest of them all. But now, I consider myself a poet and a performer. I don’t write poems for stages, and don’t see a stage as the end-goal of a poem. For me, the performance of a poem is secondary to the act of writing and creating. The label we choose to attach to what we do should come from a sort of honest, critical S.W.O.T analysis. Only then are they meaningful.
Q. How can you tell when a poem wants the stage or a poem just wants the page?
The difference between a stage poem and a page poem are as thin as line breaks. That is to say, a poem on a page fools around with visual tricks, with layout, with shapes, with word spacing etc and a poem on stage is purely audio. If with a voice you cannot recreate the tricks of a page poem, then it has no business being on stage, and would make for a poor reading / performance of the poem. – That does the poem a disservice. // Anything else should work decently on a stage, if the poem is read with enough command, intention and control.
Q. A mate of mine once said “one of the biggest influences of a writer is their environment.” How does your Nigerian heritage combine with the experience of growing up in London and how does that translate into poetry?
Nigeria itself has had little to no influence on my writing. I only discovered the power of language in Dublin at 16, 5 years after I had left Nigeria and 3 years before I would consider myself a writer. But it has created a strong sense of responsibility. Naija, holds the belief that stories, poems have to carry a message otherwise they are pointless, might as well be a large dot in the centre of a page / a black hole centre stage.
The Nigeria that exists as a shared headspace within my family has however; my father is a great story-teller, my mother is moralist. My father is quite daring and charming, my mother very respectful. These traits of theirs are tinged with their strong Nigerian backgrounds. Subsequently, I am coloured with it and it dictates what I write about, why I write about it and how I do.
Q. You write a lot. I’m jealous. Apparently writers block is a necessary part of writing quality work. Do you agree?
I don’t think I write a lot. The last poem I finished, that I am happy with, that I have shared on a stage and has been published in Journals took a whole year to write. // I do think a writer’s block is necessary though, if you liken it to climbing the steps to a waterslide, the actual slide is the pay off, the fun bits, in order to get to it, to enjoy it, you gotta climb up. Q. Your book and your one man show ‘The 14th Tale’ was funded by The Arts Council. Do the recent cuts in arts funding worry you as an artist?
YES and NO. // YES because it means that work such as mine will be difficult to create without support. NO because art will always find a way. // YES because undoubtedly a smaller amount of art works will be produced. NO because when things are created, when free time and effort are spent on it, it’s gotta be good, will be brilliant, has to be worth its while. // YES because some good artists will give this up to find 9 – 5s. NO because it is poetry, we are not exactly rolling in it anyway. // YES because we will have to think smaller and go back to the basics. NO Because we will have to think smaller and go back to the basics //
Q. You’ve achieved a lot this year. What new tricks have you learned?
“This above else: to thine own self be true.” As Ol’ Bill put it in Hamlet. There will be critics and counter critics, poet and rival poets, room to be jealous, and rooms full of jealousy. The important thing is to stick to your guns, do what makes you happy, run your own race.
Q. Lastly Inua, your book is brilliant, I’ve read it front to back many times. Plus your one-man show blew my mind, even my girlfriend really liked it and she thinks “poetry is naff!” Can I have your autograph before you get too famous for these kinds of interviews?
haha. You can get an unlimited supply of graph anytime, but it’ll cost you a gourd of Nigerian palm wine, Ghanian red red, Senegalese Jollof Rice, 3 kola nuts, a stick of pure white chalk, and the Tail of a Blue bird. - deal?
I first met him at a poetry slam where he was disqualified for using props – I thought he was a genius straight away and felt his disqualification was part of the act. Once you made it into my books as a genius you get a license to get away with anything in my world- a bit like Phillip Seymour Hoffman when he gets an unlimited arts council ‘Genius’ grant in the film 'Synecdoche New York'...
Rob Auton is from York!
He was at PoeJazzi recently and I took a CD off him. I loved the way it was packaged in a little cardboard slip, stapled together with a child like drawing of what looked like a whale with a beak and little wings – bless him.
The CD was brilliant – 21 short satirical poems and short stories–
“I can tell by the look of her cat that she doesn’t like cats I can tell by the look of her dog that she doesn’t like cats”
There was also a poem about a car spotter.
“I am a car spotter, my favorite type of traffic is jam”
I call this genius and that might make me a dunce! Who knows?
Q. Rob Auton, how are you, who are you and should we care?
I'm OK thanks. I'm writing this in the heart of an Internet cafe in Walthamstow. Not a hot drink in sight. There is however a vending machine, it's full but the light is off. Does that mean the drinks are luke warm? Yes, yes it does. 14 minutes of my 50p hour have passed.
Q. Are you comfortable with being called a Spoken Word poet? Do you see yourself this way?
Are you calling me a spoken word poet? If so, then yes I am comfortable with it. Nobody has ever called me that to my face. My iPod batteries have just run out. So I can now hear the tapping of these keys, and people talking on skype. The guy next to me is talking to his girlfriend, I can see her, but she can't see me. Or can she? No she can't. I’m not looking again. They are having a private conversation, what better place to have it than in an Internet cafe?
Q. What’s your work ethic as a poet/ writer and performer?
If I have an idea, I write it in my notepad or into my phone, whichever is in my pocket at the time. If it's an idea that I like and it keeps poking me in the centre of my forehead throughout the day, then I will work on it when I get home, or on my lunch break. Sometimes things work on themselves, other times I've got to do it. I like the ideas that come like ready meals and I've just got to heat them up with as little effort as possible. I want to get as much stuff down as as I can so I can go back to it and see if it is rubbish or not. Is that an ethic? I want to put things in people's heads that are not already there.
Q. How do poets make money?
Working in art shops in soho.
Q. You run a night called ‘Bang Said The Gun’? Is it successful by your own standards and what would you advise on someone who is starting out their own poetry night?
Since Bang Said The Gun went weekly in February it has really started to fizz. I jumped on the Bang wagon after it had been going for ten years, by that time, the guys that started it had cemented the spirit of it to have real guts. We keep trying to build it and add things every week to keep it fresh. I think you have got to have the audience at the front of your mind all the time, you can't put on a poetry night for you it has to be for the audience. Not that I put it on, I help to put it on. I think it’s important to be part of a team of people that you share a goal with.
Q. What is the future of poetry? Is there one?
The future of poetry is the people who feel the need to comment on this thing that we have all been born into. I remember one of your status updates saying something like "a lot of people have died in the past, we are the small few who are alive." It's true you know, all the people who are alive now, it's like we are on the front of a really wide train powered by the past and we are all clinging onto the front with the wind in our faces travelling into the future. Say you had a black rectangle that was 50 meters long and 5 meters high we would be the yellow millimeter at the right end. The future of poetry is people feeling that thing of going, ‘YEEEEAHH come on lets have it, pass me that pen, I want to WRITE about this stuff that going on’.
Q. As a poet are you under-rated or more so misunderstood?
I didn't consider myself to be either until now.
Q. Is your poetry consciously outrageous or have I just insulted you?
I don't think my poetry has ever caused outrage. I got an old woman in a brief loving headlock on the tube after a large amount of Tequila, that was outrageous behavior that I regret.
I've been doing this for 51 minutes.
Q. Where do you see yourself tomorrow?
I will be in the art shop at 8am dealing with a Daler Rowney delivery. Tomorrow as in the future, I will be having ideas, seeing if I like them, then seeing if other people like them.
Q. Rob – your stuff is brilliant – you know that right?
