Q&A With Poetry Lecturer, Critic and Faber Published poet Jack Underwood Part 2

Jack Underwood

I attended your lecture at Goldsmith's where you said it is "arguable" that Spoken Word poetry stems from oral traditions - What is the argument and why is there such a divide between the page and stage poets?  

I think I actually said that it is ‘arguable’ that ALL poetry derives from an oral tradition, and this is a very common understanding sometimes used to validate oral poetic traditions that seem otherwise subordinately positioned in relation to glossy Western literary ones. It’s actually a little backhanded, because it validates oral poetry by seeking to align it with the past of literary tradition rather than arguing the validity of subsequent and contemporary oral traditions on their own terms: oral traditions are of interest because they’re interesting, not because they happened to develop into literary ones hundreds of years ago, in the lute-strumming days before television. But this ‘origin’ argument is also upheld because classically, and from the point of view of historicism, writing has always been positioned as a secondary system, predated by speech. Writing came later, we are told, so things like literary rhyme are really throwbacks to the need for memorability in folk song and folk tale. This is the classic line.

I prefer the post-Derrida view which is that there is an underlying false prioritisation of speech over writing in the Western tradition that is in part to do with the perceived idea of the spoken word being somehow transcendental, expressed more wholly, more directly, so that speech is more easily located with personal truth, as if you were speaking from some corner of the body, like the heart, where you really meant it. This is of course nonsense, and writing is not merely ‘knowledge by repetition’ as Socrates argues, when he, ironically enough, transcribes a speech by Plato. You couldn’t argue the distinct qualities of one without the other: how could speaking be a ‘raw’ state of language when it requires the ‘cooked’ written word to exist in order to provide it with that very quality of ‘uncookedness’? Neither one came first. So, the ‘oral beginnings of poetry’ line is a Western philosophical myth based on a kind of common sense essentialism that goes back to Metaphysics and Plato, and is to do with the false division of language into ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ categories.

But then the page/stage ‘division’ isn’t really about any of this. I’d say the division begins with what you, as a poet, prioritise in your work, what you hope it will achieve in terms of an audience or readership, and those hopes are largely to do with your understanding of the tradition you’re working in, and what is deemed successful by that tradition, or within that medium: and they are two very different mediums and therefore very different traditions. In my first poetry classes, where the idea of performing a poem was never even brought up, we were told not to write ‘cry for help’ poetry, not to assume a reader’s interest in our lives, to create an objective distance between ourselves and our work and not to be satisfied with creating an amusing effect or stylish surface. There was general advice about how to interrogate an idea in a poem, how to necessitate an imaginative participation by your reader, how to invite complexity without disappearing up your own arse, and also guidance on how not to merely provide somebody with a didactic instruction towards a point of view. The division came along for my page peers and I, when we saw people at readings doing what seemed like the opposite of these things. There were lots of very good performance poets (‘Spoken Word’ started being used more in the mid-2000s, I think) who probably also spent their time working hard making their poems genuinely funny, or else making sure they were actually telling the audience something they thought was important, something about their lives or politics they wanted to express, and we saw these exact successful performative qualities as a kind of artlessness according to our contrary understanding of what a poem was up to. Written down, the differences between ‘us and them’ were only made clearer. We saw that the traditions were different, the aims were different, but there was a lot of polite attempts in the interests of convivial, community spirit to merrily reconcile the two, and pretend they were the same thing, which actually only cemented the distinction, and framed performers trying to do quite different things, as just being bad at what we were trying to do, which was unfair. I don’t expect a 2^nd wave Modernist to read on the page like I do, so why should I expect a performance poet to? I’m bored by the kind of tribalism that implies something Other is a malformed version of one’s own ‘pure’ form. You have to allow each poem to declare its own terms. You shouldn’t seek to herd up poets into tribes, nor should you be ignorant and suggest there are not different traditions and forces and strategies at play. I’m afraid it’s rather more complex than that, and to deny it either way is to give in to lazy conservative forces. I’ve always felt like this, in fact, only now I’m 34% less likely to declare it drunkenly to someone I’ve just met. Now I’m more likely to demand that a stranger watch a Holly Pester reading on my phone.

And of course, like most page poets, I do readings too, and must admit that I get a lovely narcissistic whoosh of the kind that only a room’s full attention gives you, so I know the appeal, but I also feel that when it comes to poems, desiring that whooshing feeling is actually a bit gross, because I don’t like the sweaty arrival of my needy ego into a room, because I feel I’m betraying the hard work I undertook with the full philosophical weight of my convictions towards ART, deliberately with a view not to make this about me, but rather about an idea or feeling of potential universal, philosophical value, and to make poetry thereby an essentially empathetic act. So when I’m up there, reading my work, reattaching the words to me, their author, it’s not empathy I’m enjoying, it’s self-love, it’s feeling agreed with, feeling loved. I don’t like the idea of monopolising what a poem is about by furthering the attachment of what it says to my authorial intention. I want to give it up to an Other so that it becomes more about them. I also dislike the ugly idea of my gauging something like the ‘mastery’ of an audience, which is vaguely pathetic when you think that most people don’t come to a reading to resist the charming poems in the first place.

So, I write for the page because I think that for all the social kudos of a decent reading, I should prioritise the making of a construct that is built to exist separate from me, to be absorbed quietly into the life and throat muscles of another, to be reliant certainly as much on their imagination. I’m fairly sure other page poets feel the same, if by degrees. To have something intoned, or acted out to me makes me feel like it is being indexed to the author by their performing it, and while that can be thrilling for some, it basically runs counter to the whole philosophy of language I ascribe to. I’m finding advantages, or disadvantages, I know. And of course there are plenty of performances that do not reattach the words to the central agency of the performer so much, and part of the distinction between performance poetry and Spoken Word seems to be about this; I’ve honestly not got much truck with crass tribalism or creating hierarchy. If I don’t like something it isn’t my superior taste or morality doing the business, it’s to do with my own hang-ups and priorities about what I do. So, I’m sure I’ll have put my foot in it again with this one, but I’m prepared to suggest that if there is still a divide, it might be to do with a hardening and poor handling of these kinds of feelings or reservations among page poets generally, and similar (if opposite?) concerns among performers about the awful poems they see on the page: the banal anecdotal poem, the politely emotional poem, the elitist, deliberately obscure, over-written arch and pretentious poem, the faux-postmodern reference to gaming, internet-chat-speak, and popular culture poem, the predictable anthropomorphising poem…Professionally, as a reviewer and lecturer I spend infinitely more time and energy attacking these prevalent deficiencies in the page world than I ever do bemoaning the laboured rhymes of a barroom versifier. The erstwhile politics of self-affirmation seem dumb when you realise how little you identify wholly with your own tradition, and equally how much else there is out there on the fringes. Have you read any Jennifer Knox, for example? I’m more interested in reading more widely and variously than I am chucking rocks over whatever wall at my stage-dwelling cousins. That sort of thing seems conservative and adolescent now. For me it’s about pursuing what interests me, and that could indeed be a stage poet, sure, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t more intuitively and far more regularly drawn to other corners, and I think many other page poets feel the same.

Part 3 of this interview will include my response to this discussion, stay tuned.

PiP Poets In New York pt 3

Me and Maria got to the bar that supposedly put on poetry events, it was a dark Brooklyn night and no one knew what we were talking about when we said “we’re here for the poetry” in fact, the bouncer outside looked at us like we offended him, “POETRY!? nah man!” he scoffed. We decided to go in and have a drink anyway. We got a lot of curious looks from the people in the bar, we certainly stuck out, my bronzy mustard skin and Maria’s Pilipino features were carried loudly among the dominant black crowd. Most women had angels, flowers and names like “Daze-E” or “Shawty” tattooed on their arms or chest. They also had weave in their hair, wide gold looped earrings and bellies that hung down too much to be a pregnancy, we could have been in Seven Sisters or Wood Green back in London. It was someone’s birthday, me and Maria sat at the bar as a cake came out and everyone sang Stevie Wonder’s funky ‘Happy Birthday’ genius, the vibe was contagious and even me and Maria stood up, clapped our hands and sang Happy Birthday to the strangers at the table, we got a few head nods and took our seats with the complete feeling of acceptance.

“Wow New York, your poetry is as big as your buildings”

The crowd whooped and clapped, I had just been called to the stage, I was on Marcus Garvey Boulevard. The venue had a chess chequered floor and dimmed lights generating intimacy. The audience seating was scatted but filled to capacity (about 60-75) I was dazzled by the poets that got up before me and changed my mind about which poem to perform four times, throughout this trip Joshua tells me my best two poems are “my dad poem and my ‘hit me’ poem” but the ‘Hit Me’ poem seemed too delicate considering I’ve been asked to “never perform that poem in public again” so I played it safe with my dad poem (Not For The Dead) and it went down alright, Josh gets up and kills it as usual.

Afterwards, a poet called “Jon Sands” is announced, he walks onto the stage with the cheeky smirk of a precious infant with secret knowledge, the crowd transfixed before his jaw even flinched, a smooth and genius crowd engaging technique… “DAD HAS A PENIS TOO!” he yells “HIS PENIS IS MUCH LARGER THAN MY PENIS, HIS BODY IS LARGER THAN MY BODY, HIS PENIS WOULD LOOK RIDICLIOUS ON MY BODY!” the audience laughed and cringed at the same time as Josh poked my ribs, and muttered “and you were scared of doing your piece” I laughed and shook my head, in fact I probably continued these motions through Jon Sand’s entire set, I was witnessing one of the best all round performers/ writers I’d ever seen, the guy was electric and gave a performance that managed to stay with me. He had balls, passion and his poetry was sharp and filled with the sly kick of sudden heart attacks.

A poet called Chris Slaughter got up and did a terrifying poem called ‘Blood Line’ about two guys in a street fight – “every time (a fist or a kick) landed the crowd howled as if they were looking at two moons” woah! I must also give an honorable mention to a poet who had me spell bound with a story about the future self when your present self is plunged to despair and how the future self that got through your present hardship comes to you to comfort you through the process of pain, and how you’d feel in that moment, to have that connection as if you were your own God” … ugh, I cannot do it justice, just trust me, it was amazing… unfortunately I can’t remember his name.


My initial expectation of New York or even American Spoken Word performances was that they were going to be great performers with weaker writing, I was wrong, very wrong, New York’s Spoken Word artist carry a standard alien to the UK. Poetry in general holds greater appreciation, which is shameful considering the UK produced Shakespeare, Keats, Blake, Wilde, Byron and even Chaucer.

Spoken Word artists make it onto daytime and prime time TV (HBO, Comedy Central etc) as well as having Def Poetry Jam to aspire to as well as the National Slams, poetry is referenced on the walls of most subway stations, the pavements leading towards NY State Library have poems and quotations by Emily Dickinson among others graven into them on bronze plates, there is a strong community of poets and many weekly poetry and performance workshops are held, Spoken Word/poetry is the hustle of many, all the poets in the higher ranks sell merchandise rather well at their shows, venues such as the NYrican poets café and The Bowery are huge theatre venues dedicated to Spoken Word poetry.

I spoke to poet legend ‘Tshaka Campbell’ about this and he helped me put it into perspective “the poetry in NY is different and intense, the UK for the most part is still only interested in the entertainment side of poetry and there is much much more” I agreed.

Something I found interesting was not only was there similarities between the areas of London and New York, there was also similar characters, I went to a poetry venue which resembled The Poetry Café in Covent Garden, just bigger, I noted how professional the lighting was, a small, slightly elevated stage with a mic in a spot light is simple but very effective, it was called the ‘Cornelia Street Café’

This venue was indeed just like Tuesday night at London’s Poetry Café’, I think there was a London equivalent of every poet that got up and read, I mean in terms of form, style, voice etc it was quite surprising, I think I’ll sway from judgments and name dropping but if you haven’t been to the Poetry Café’ in Covent Garden you typically listen to about 40 poets with 5 minutes each and an average 35 of them will think their audience is either a shrink with a caring ear or a lump of meaningless matter that doesn’t matter more than their delightful poetry.

Anyway, Joshua had his video recorder out and captured possibly the most contrived, pretentious performance poetry I’ve ever seen in my life! I refer to this poet as “the awful one”. I will get him to upload that video as my description will not do it justice. There was a poet who was up before “the awful one” who was telling an amusing story about a car crash that changed his life and almost crippled him and his father.

“as our lungs shrieked and impact threw me and my father through the window screen, we lay bloodily…”

A bell rang and the female host walked to the stage and said “I’m sorry we have to move on” it was so abrupt; the poor guy was approaching a climax in a painful story of his life. He smiled awkwardly, “ok thank you” he said and hobbled off stage probably in the same manner he hobbled from the car crash… bless him.

I got good feedback from a few audience members after the show, I tell you, I can’t stress that enough, if you go to a poetry night and you like a poet, please tell them, "most poets die without compliments." - Niall O'Sullivan.