Q&A With World & National Slam Champion Harry Baker

Harry Baker is odd… he’s a poet even through he was born in the 90’s. Actually he’s more than that, he’s the UK, European and World Slam champion and he’s doing a set at Chill Pill on 29th November at The Albany. 

When on tour in Germany almost everybody knew Harry Baker, he’s referred to as “the perfect Slam Poet” and I don’t think anyone can disagree. I caught up with him to interrogate this young poetry star. 

Q1. Even though I’ve seen you wear orange tights you’re a pretty cool dude…. how can people adopt the swagger of a young poet? 

Thanks - my edinburgh show this year involved the tights, some tartan trousers and a dressing gown amongst other things... I think if you're trying to be a cool poet you're doing it wrong. I generally go for the shy awkward teenager vibes… it takes years of practice.

Q2. When you and Keith Jarrett (former UK Slam Champion) went back to back at Chill Pill, that was magic and I remember watching that thinking “that’s how you know they’re both Slam Champions… what makes a good Slam Poet? 

 That was a good night - I'm looking forward to the next one! I used to think you made a good slam poet f your poems happened to be around 3 minutes long, but as I've seen more of it there are common themes. Partly you've gotta have something to say. Once you get to a certain level as a spoken word artist/poet/whateveryouwannacallit you can make anything sound nice but with slam here's a definite message behind it, you've only got to look at all the big political American slam poetry to see that. For me it's more about being aware of your audience. Make them laugh, or cry, or shiver, or wet themselves.. Slam works because they have a say, if you've just spent 3 minutes listing everyone you have had or want to have sex with etc (I've seen some weird ones) then quite right they can give you 3 out of 10.

Harry Baker is not rubbish

Q3. You’re like 19 man…. Wtf?

20 now! I love that I've got into it this young. Managed to do a gap year of open mics and saying yes to every gig, i did 12 festivals over the summer and 2 shows a day at the fringe, and I'm currently doing 17 gigs this November (all building up to the fabulous chill pill) so Its not like Im inexperienced, but i guess it means I'm funding it from a student loan rather than arts council grants.. and I'm still doing it because i love it. 

Q4. If your poetry was a wrestler what would it’s special move be?

Beach elbow. (Ray wishes Harry said "The Proper Pop -Up, Purple, Paper People's Elbow)

Q5. Edinburgh Festival had its first official Spoken Word programming; you were at Edinburgh and had great success, you working on a show? 

 I've done two shows in the last two years, both went fantastically, you hear all sorts of horror stories about having audiences of 2 people and losing loads of money but everything fell in place nicely. I think I'm going to have a year off next year - make the most of the 'world champion' title and go back to the states where they care about such things, then by 2014 I'll have potentially had a year in Germany and have something new to say. 

Q6. Wtf! I just tried to tweet you! Did you UNFOLLOW me on twitter? 

Gosh. yes, it was either too profound for my tiny head to comprehend or things that you tweet like this - “That moment in the barbers when you have an itch on your head & the barber runs over the spot with the razor #Bliss” 

Q7. It's true! I thought that was kinda profound... anyway, you’re studying medicine.. or was it maths? either way you’re a bit of a brainiac and you’re being a poet. Don’t your parents think you’re wasting yourself? 

Maths and German. I was going to study medicine but got into poetry so the obvious choice was to switch to math’s. I think my parents were relieved because if you're good at science at school they try force it on you but it wasn't for me. There's 4 people for every place doing medicine so someone far better would've taken my place, but if i don't write poems about dinosaurs and dessert, who will? My parents are incredible. I remember first seeing poets do incredible pieces about how their dad's weren't there for them and thinking my life was too boring to write about in comparison so stuck with prime numbers and bees for a while. But they're fully supportive and have got into it, My dad even quotes kate tempest in the foreward to his latest book! 

Q8. Finally Harry, if it breaks will Jim fix it? 

ummm no? Obama might.

Follow Harry Baker on twitter - @harrybakerpoet
website - www.harrybaker.co.uk

Again, come see Harry alongside Lyric L & The Albany Poets at Chill Pill on 29th November!
We tend to sell out so book advance tickets here - http://www.thealbany.org.uk/event_detail/846/Spoken-Word/Chill-Pill

Quick update on Poetry Tour of Germany & Switzerland

I’m halfway through the tour of Germany and Switzerland and it’s been amazing to meet and share a stage with poets out here. The audiences are big, between 150 – 350 people per night. The tour started in Frankfurt last week at The English Theatre. A sell out show hosted by my good German friend Lars Ruppel - a lot to say about this man.

Speaking English has been a barrier some nights, the audiences speak German, Swiss-German and French. I made an effort to introduce myself in the local dialect and slow down the delivery of my poems while performing.

It’s the Slam people come out to see, the German National Slam Championships are coming up in November and if you make it into the final your performances are televised throughout the country.

I’ve been participating in the slams some nights and featuring as “the special guest from London” in others. The Marburg, Gießen and Freiburg shows were mainly students from the local universities but Kressbronn was interesting because it was a Slam in ‘The Literature Hotel’. Every room was dedicated to a German poet with quotes written on the walls and various collections of their work left on the beds.

The show in Langenthal, Switzerland had the smallest crowd but has been one of my favorite shows so far because the venue was perfect, amazing acoustics and atmosphere so big up Valerio
 Moser for the space.

Switzerland was special in general, they made it snow just for me, so me and a bunch of Swiss-German poets went outside, had a snowball fight, got drunk, then went to a Dubstep warehouse rave, got drunk, had another snowball fight, then found a cozy bar and played on the pinball machine. In the morning there was a local election so I followed the poets to the polling station, then we built snowmen and spray painted them gold. After eating my Swiss breakfast of bacon, sausages, scrambled eggs, croissants, tea and jam I had a lot of people to thank for the magic.

CHEERS SWITZERLAND!

Headed back to Germany and performed in Leverkusen last night, which was an interesting show, the hosts 'Lasse Samström' and 'Catherine De La Roche' made me feel super welcome.

Now I’m in an area called Cologne for tonight’s show, Catherine took me up on a rooftop to marvel at the beautiful city.

It’s also great that books and CDs have been selling after the shows; not sure how many copies I’ll have left when back in London.

Right, that’s it for now… Heading to the theatre to prepare for the show.

Back on the road... Spoken Word in Scotland, Edinburgh.

I heard there is an uprising Spoken Word scene in Glasgow and Newcastle.

I don’t know any poets out there but I do know a poet in Edinburgh called Harry Giles. Me and Harry used to be Slam poets and almost always ended up head to head.

What I really loved about that is the fact we’d always hang out and have a laugh afterwards. We both understand that slams don’t mean shit and you’re only as good as five people say you are on the night.

So, I jumped on the mega bus and headed up to see Harry and hoped to get some insight in Edinburgh’s Spoken Word scene.


The bus took eight and a half hours but to be honest it wasn’t a bad journey...

Well, to me there is no such thing as a bad journey if you get a good piece out of it.

I put my headphones on and listened to Polarbear’s 2006 EP ‘Keep It Simple'. There was a line I needed to hear.

“...I got to keep telling myself it’s not a lottery, just put in the work and the rest will come properly...”

I arrived in Edinburgh in the early evening and met with Harry. We headed down to a local arts centre called 'The Falcon'.

There were three rooms of different things happening. On the main stage there was a band who plugged a Game Boy into an amp then cut up the sounds into break beats with a man half rapping half doing Spoken Word. Sounds cool right? Well... It was more like being slapped around the head by butch lesbians; I didn’t know how to respond to the assult on my ears... I just stood around and as the room formed a mosh pit my head formed an ache.

In the next room there were some art films being projected, each film based around narrative poems written by the students. The idea was good but the subtitles moved too fast so it just became a mental game of “how many words in a paragraph can I read in 5 seconds”.

The third room was the poetry. There was a vintage arcade version of Pac-Man set up where the poets were reading and ironically the poetry was themed around technology. The idea being whether people are in a que to play Pac-Man or standing around in a trance by the bright red, blue and green flashing screen at least the poets have an audience... ah the things we do to feel appreciated.

I’ve spent most of the day walking around the town. I think I’ve walked most of Edinburgh in 7 hours.

It’s a great place to go and lose yourself in. It’s not a complicated town, it’s almost like it’s built within a bowl that you can climb out of and look down on.

I love that there’s a lot of greenery surrounding the old grey buildings.

Every sociologist should be a travelling poet.

I’ve performed in quite a few countries and cities now and it’s really made me reflect on how the environment reflects the art that’s created within it.

I wrote about this in my ‘poet in New York blog’ and having performed in a few other cities since then I can expand on that idea.

Most of the poetry I’ve heard in green lands like Edinburgh has come from a place outside the artist. For example it’s mostly been nature, landscape, political or historical poetry and these are the themes explored commonly by suburban poets.

Poets from the city seem to be more neurotic in their work, more detached from nature and perhaps more in their own heads and up their own asses.

I find this an accurate reflection on the people because poets are subjective reflections of their enviroment.

The more greenery you’re surrounded by the easier it is to put yourself into perspective as a human being in a world that's so much bigger than us.

Too much grey makes you lose perspective of real life because real life isn’t the bubble that consumes you in the city.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a city boy to death but there’s nothing I needed more right now than to get out of the bubble of London so I can look at my life and my art at a distance where it's more green.

Q&A with London and Birmingham based poet and Spoken Word Artist - Deanna Rodger

In my first ever performance in a Slam Poetry contest, I was shouty, monotone and over-animated but I somehow reached the ‘Farrago UK Slam final’ head to head with the energetic, loose canon ball that is Deanna Rodger.

Deanna has this charm she carries to the stage, her nerves hold her face in the widest but shyest of smiles. You don’t quite expect to witness the breakage of a storm... but you do... and I take no shame in losing that final to such a wild force of nature.

She has this way with stretching out a multi-syllabic metaphor and delivering four lines in one breath while steering you through the heavy winds of emotion contained in the voice of her poems.

She’s a natural and unconsciously pulls off some of the finest crafted Spoken Word poetry London has to offer.

Q. Yo Dee! Remember when we met? How the hell did you end up at the Farrago Slam that night?

Dean Atta who was my sort of mentor at the time told me to go down and do it, so I did!

Q. I was so amazed when you said you don’t read much poetry and you couldn’t name many poets – where on earth does your fire come from?

I could name a poet I just didn’t have an interest in it! I have always been a bookworm and still read an awful lot, but I didn’t read poetry unless I was in a classroom. To be honest poetry found me, I never thought of myself as a poet and I certainly wasn't searching for it. I think I have always had something to say but was never really able to speak it with sense. Poetry was a safe way to do that.


Q. Got a favorite poet yet?

Ah I'm ready for this question!! I got given a book of the entire collection of Langston Hughes and I am enjoying it, I even memorized a quote! I try not to have favorites. I don't think I've seen enough (defiantly have not read enough) to put a name in paper. Though there is a sonnet by Shakespeare I really like.

Q. I know you are uncertain about whether you can have financial stability and an active career in Spoken Word – would you believe me if I said in ten years time poetry is going to make us RICH!?

Yeah I would! I have no doubt that there are a lot of young people that see a Market stall for poetry. However I have to ask myself whether I want to rely on an industry that has the attention span of a toddler? As much as I would love poetry to become more lucrative, I would prefer it to stay beautiful rather than turn into a competitive brawl of people calling themselves poets because they exploit humor, shallow clichés and rhyming couplets to win the crowd.

Q. You have got into events organizing; you did the Lyric Lounge with Dean Atta, which was a big night! How’s that movement going?

It's grown and left home! We are focusing on a new night called 'come rhyme with me' which launches on the 30th July and features some of the hottest fiercest talent in the scene. Excitingly Bothyself and Dean (Atta) are associate producers of a festival in association with Richmond MENCAP called Play at the Waterfront which will be on the 7th August. I've also linked up with you and Mista Gee to organize a more accessible weekly evening 'Chill Pill' which is a beautiful thing! I'm trying to try everything. I'm young, I'm still learning. Luckily I have got some very good supportive and inspiring people around me!

Q. Where do you see yourself in 4 years?

Lord knows his plan for me; I can't be trusted with it just yet! I can only hope to be more everything than what I am now.

Q. Spoken Word has taken you all over the nation and to parts of Europe – Germany, France etc how has travelling influenced your performance and writing?

(smiles!) I think this question is better suited for a conversation! In short though, travelling has shown me that there is no limit to what you can write and perform! The slammers in Germany are very performy! And it definitely makes their performance universal. In France I was lucky to see a world of talent and styles and I would say that although I'm still writing from me, I feel like I am a richer writer able to draw from different societies. Visiting different lands also helps me to put my own life into perspective and reflect.

Q. If you have kids would you like them to follow your footsteps as a Spoken Word artist– if that is what you pursue?

I will have kids! And obviously I would love for them to be writers and to be creative but that could be in anything they love. I don't want to put ceilings over my kids. Boundaries yes, but not ceilings.

Q. Finally, you’re sick, and the London Spoken Word circuit needs you – you know that right?

Ahh that's nice! I don't know about need me. I think that's a bit too much pressure, I think I am good at what I do and I love what I do, I just want to do my bit, encourage other young talented writers, have fun, make friends, create experience, make money and a name then bounce and make space for the younger’s!