It’s 2008, I’m strolling off Brick Lane and into 93 Feet East on a wet weekday, literally walking into the life of Paula Varjack, a smokey dim-lit bar and lots of trendy artistic-looking men, grinning at the pink high heels, full red lips and glossy long legs of poetry. Varjack impressed me immediately.
The first time we spoke was at Farrago in Shoreditch where I was also performing, she came up to me after the show with her book and said “hey, if I give you my book will you actually read it?” “of course!” I took it and actually read it. I genuinely wish that everyone introduced themselves to me with a book of their poetry.
We became mates; she was the first person I told about my plan to give up my well-paid full time job as a Personal Trainer for Spoken Word poetry, she’s probably the only person who didn’t question my mental stability. We were sitting on a night bus when I told her, to which she replied, “great, you have my support”
A month later I’m out in Berlin with her, hitting up some slams, she’s quite a celebrity among the poetry heads in Berlin, she had her own one-woman show with the same title as the book she gave me ‘Kiss and Tell’, she created the anti-slam where the worst poet wins and she too gave up a professional career for poetry and documentary film making.
Q. Paula, you gave up a good career in television are you MAD!?
Paula - oh mad without question. But I should probably clarify that I didn't give up my production career for poetry (although that previous life does kind of relate oddly) I was working for an animation company, specifically in charge of all the audio production which meant I co-ordinated and managed all the voice over talent for the voice records of the shows. I didn't realize one day I’d be on the other side of the mic, but I didn't give up animation for poetry. Before I moved to Berlin, in London I’d been working in the same company, with more or less the same responsibilities for years. As fun as it was and as talented as the people I worked with were, it didn't feel like I was going anywhere. Other more uh...domestic matters... went wrong around the same time. Suddenly I very much felt like I needed a change, a drastic one. Berlin was an idea that had been floating in my head for a while, it was almost mythologized and it seemed as good a place to runaway as anywhere, so I rented out my flat and went, moved to Berlin without a lick of German and only a couple friends there. I actually had this crazy idea that in Berlin i could focus and work on my new passion, documentary filmmaking. I rented a little studio near my new flat to edit in (it was actually painted *gold* no lie) and before I knew it I started to make friends and more friends and learned enough German to get by. The crucial turning point was when my thirtieth birthday was coming up; a friend in London invited me to perform at a new cabaret night she was launching. it seemed like a great way to turn thirty. I was never a performer but I’d always been into the idea of slam. I thought I’d put together a short-spoken word set, and from that night forward, well... I never finished that documentary...
Q. You’ve lived in many places (all seem to be cities) Berlin, London, Washington DC, I know you were out in Ghana recently. How has this influenced your writing and performance?
Paula - I’m completely culturally schizophrenic. I speak English with an American accent, London slang and the odd German word thrown in. I’ve always been obsessed with cities. My mum is from Accra, my father is from London, I was born in DC. Summers were divided between London and Accra visiting family.I grew up in the suburbs of DC, but as soon as i was old enough to take the metro into town by myself I was there, at cafes, gigs and art galleries. If I go on holiday I never go somewhere remote and scenic. I like urban landscapes, architecture, art, people, noise. The first performance piece I became known for, was about how living in Berlin felt like having an affair behind London’s back. It is an ongoing theme. In film school, my graduation film was about the city of London giving relationship advice to the main character, through a series of interactions with strangers. I then moved onto blogging where I was always characterizing/personifying cities as characters (mainly female ones...)the characters I constantly meet in cities, are a tremendous influence to me. The energy of urbanism is what keeps me feeling alive.
Q. What came first – The kiss or the tale?
Paula - ah... that’s a ‘how long is a piece of string question’ no? Sometimes the story leads to the kiss and sometimes vice versa. Generally with the work I’ve done to date, the kiss comes first. Then again, I have a writer/filmmaker head that leads me to constantly seek out narratives, subtext, back-story. Sometimes the subtext is even better than the kiss. Sometimes the fantasy is better left as a fantasy, but I’m off the kiss and tell track now. It was a fun adventure and great material for sure, but now I want to focus on other kinds of stories.
Q. You were a touring poet last year with your Berlin crew, how did it go? What did you learn? I want some roadie stories!
Paula - yes I’m one fourth of a crew called *skint but sexy* an anglicized version of when Berlin’s mayor famously (infamously) called Berlin "poor but sexy”. It was a brilliant tour, mainly because the people I toured with: Michael Haeflinger, Moon, and musician Joe Czarnecki are such wonderfully talented people, and soooo not egocentric. I mainly learned how both draining and exciting the experience of performing in a new city each night can be. Roadie stories? Oh loads... our arrival was pretty rock and roll, we were picked up at Bristol airport by Andie from the acoustic night at halo, in a big shiny white Mercedes van. Ending up having late night whiskeys in a soho members bar with Salena Godden after the book club boutique gig was pretty cool too. There were definitely tour casualties,like Moon's passport, and very nearly Joe’s laptop (Which he realized he'd left in the train just as we saw the train leave. It was saved by a sympathetic station controller)
Q. The Anti-Slam concept is genius! What inspired the idea and how’s the night going?
I can't take the credit for the concept. I visited New York last fall and saw a performance at the Nuyorican poet cafe by Jamie Dewolf. As part of his feature set he performed a winning piece from his anti-slam event in Oakland. I was totally blown away. It managed to satirize every bad habit in performance poetry. There were cringe-worthy rhymes, shaking hands holding the poem, defensiveness, terrible metaphors (etc) I knew right away that I wanted to bring the idea to Berlin. As soon as I came back I started asking everyone i knew on the scene what they thought about the idea. The response was so positive I knew it would take off if I did it. I've hosted/produced three of them now. With the concept you can't really do it too often I think. I also like the idea that it’s a special event, without any clear regularity of when the next one will happen. The last one happened on Valentines Day and was an anti-love poetry special. It was seriously hilarious. The next one will be mid July with a political theme. I’m extremely excited and curious to hear some pathetic political ranting. Wolfgang Hogekamp is producing this one with me which I really think will help take it to another level in terms of promotion and event production. I'm really keen also to bring the event to London in the fall. I just need to find the right person or people to produce it with, so if anyone's interested, holler.... Q. Many of us poets are hungry to jump into the world of one-person shows – Is this the way forward for Spoken Word artists who have been on the circuit for some time?
Paula - I think theatre is a logical progression from spoken word. I think the best slam pieces are in effect microcosms of theatre, or at least very much monologue based. Music is another direction a lot of performance poets move towards. I don't think any of these things are mutually exclusive either. However, I don't think that solo shows are for everyone. I also don't think a solo show should simply be thirty to sixty minutes of poems. I did this in a way with my last solo show, built up a narrative through poems and monologues. It did work in a way, but I realized that theatre being a whole other medium, I’d rather connect with that medium in its own terms, not force another medium (spoken word) into it. Its something like adapting a book to a film, you know? The question is an individual one, what each artist personally wants to achieve. You shouldn't do a solo show just because you've been doing slam poetry for a while, you should do a solo show because that’s a medium you want to explore, and it suits the story you want to tell. For me, as much as I love slams, I want to perform and tell stories that are longer than a three-minute limit, or even fifteen-minute feature sets. I want to combine multimedia elements of music and video projection; I want to work with physicality and silences as much as text, so theatre seems the best way forward for me.
Q. I want to go back to Berlin and do more performances out there – what’s the scene saying at the moment?
Paula - The scene is always open to you coming back Ray :-) the English language scene is very much thriving, a beautiful new English literary journal has just been published called Sand (http://sandjournal.com/) that kind of commemorates this. Berlin's slam scene is varied, expansive and receptive to English language performers. It’s a large part of what keeps me here.
Q. Have I been Varjacked? Its hard to tell?
Paula- ah no, trust me, when you've been varjacked... you definitely know...
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.
When you go aboard to a place you’ve never been you tend to walk around it with the naivety of new couples that have not yet met the sinister bones of their partners. On a particular Sunday night Josh and me had our honeymoon bubble popped when we were knifed by the realization that we are more vulnerable as outsiders.
Josh had read about a club in ‘NYC Time Out’ and suggested we check it out; it was a few blocks away from where we stayed so we walked there. When we got to the club they tried to charge us more than the club was advertised for, we showed we were wise and they folded, letting us in for the correct price. We strolled in, walking through the dance floor to stand next to the bar; this was to be the only space we’d occupy for the night.
A tall black guy with muscles as tight as his pouting lips danced in front of us like dust in a whirlwind, he was gay, no straight man points his toes, flicks his wrist and vibrates his hips like Beyonce’ on a power plate. His moves were slick, combining Salsa and Body Popping Street dance with progressive Drum and Bass/house music. The kind of sound you’d hear in Herbal in Shoreditch, just instead of fitness fanatic, toned bellied dancers you find teenage dirt bags in their late twenties zoning out on drug-fuelled cocktails. Josh turned to me and said he preferred watching druggies dance to this kind of music, I laughed.
As the place gathered we then noticed everyone there was some kind of street dancer, lots of annoying dance moves that involve elbows and not drumbeats were flying around the room, busy as epileptic fits. We wanted to dance, but we couldn’t share the floor, not just because we wanted to two-step but because these guys were floor hogs, if we stepped two meters forward we’d been in ‘elbow to face’ impact zone, then we would have had to sport sunglasses like the clowns in the Hip-Hop, R&B night clubs.
So we shifted, I was hungry and Josh was tired, the plan – get money out the ATM, find good pizza, go home.
Josh finds an ATM outside a deli, the card, clamped in his hand moved in slow motion towards the slot when we heard a man shout “STOP!” everything in the world froze, even our hearts. “BEFORE YOU DO THAT! I AM NOT GOING TO ROB YOU!” a black guy, about 5’9 and wearing a bomber jacket that made him look like a turtle in a hard-shell stood before us, holding out a piece of paper “I HAVE JUST COME OUT THE STATE PENETENTARY, THE BUS DROPPED ME OFF AND I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE” our eyes were wide, any tiredness we may have felt vanished as we anticipated any sudden movement “ALL I NEED IS $2.75 TO GET OUTTA HERE! ARE YOU GOING TO HELP ME!?” … silence, the heavy hands of time fought against us, Josh moved the marbles of his eyes without blinking, they swung back and forth like a restless lunatic. We were straight jacketed in 10 seconds of awkward silence, procrastinating… “errrrrrrrrrrr…. Errrrrrrrrr…. Errrrrrrr…. Nooooo …” now I half expected the worse “muthafucka!” he mumbled to himself and quickly walked off, fading into night.
Josh and me looked at each other, relieved. Josh then realized his arm was still extended with his credit card still frozen in his hand. It never made it to the slot of the machine. Josh said “ok. Won’t be getting out any money, you can buy my pizza” and put the card in his pocket, it took me about thirty seconds to laugh at his cheeky comment.
We then saw a pizza place across the street, we jay walked across it and I noticed five hooded up black guys walk in just before us. We took one look at the flat and plastic appearance of the pizza and walked back out, but as we did one of the guys says “what’s good black!?” to Josh, he ignores them “HEY!” he shouts and then we hear another voice this time aimed at me “HEY WHITE BOY, WHITE BOY, COME HERE MAN!” we power walked out the shop and up the road before Joshua says “ohh’ kaay .. This is getting a bit strange.. lets go home!” we found a Pizza joint by a busier road that we were familiar with, we sat hidden at the back, nibbling our pizza in nervous silence like mice under thin floorboards.
On another night Josh and me separated, I went to Brooklyn with Maria, the lovely lady who we stayed with for the first few days. She told us about a poetry night uptown and we went. During that journey we ignited conversation, the type of talks you can only have with a handful of people. It was mainly about love and loss until we got into politics. I should know to sway from any political conversation from any American citizen; it nearly got my head served when I was in Ohio three years ago when I referred to George Bush as “the worlds biggest terrorist”. Maria and me were sitting on the train when 9/11 came up in our conversation. I shared my views about it being a dirty inside job…Maria was appalled, I defended myself until she explained she was there on that day. “No one person could do that, I saw it, you weren’t there, trust me no one would do that to their own country” “Hitler did” I said hastily “but I guess that’s another story”, she got upset with me again, I thought fast, quickly springing our friendship to the rescue … “well I love OBAMA!” a smile then swam to the surface of her face and we shared our favorite Obama facts.
Having seen so many films set in New York, when I actually got there the entire city looked silver.
I'm on the subway clattering uptown. The buildings, traffic, streets etc all share such a strict symmetry, if the city were a set of teeth they could only belong in the mouths of clean cut American dreamers. I'm from London; my teeth have cracks, gaps and black fillings. Seeing such order makes me suspicious. I met a New Yorker later that day that filled me in, explaining how most crime was happening in alleyways so they closed them up so the city can advertise a prettier smile.
Second night and me and Josh are in Essex to perform an 8 minute set in a basement of a bar called 'Happy Ending' which I later realised was probably an innuendo. I met a lady who works as a journalist who tells me she's been out most nights of her life since she was 15, “YOU DEVIL!” I scream, “Well, I need to suck the blood out the city if I'm to write about it” she then disappeared into the red lights oozing out the ceiling to find the warm necks of her subjects. I took out my camera and got busy sucking my own blood.
Joshua and me performed by the DJ booth and the crowd gathered in their comfortable corners. I got to say though; following Joshua's epic 'My Love' piece is like a punishment for not being a better writer or performer. The crowd was attentive and mildly responsive. I believe my work will improve when I stop trying to make people like it.
After the show I discovered the upstairs room was a “pleasure party”, a gathering of people who pride themselves on their sexual awareness, meaning they are aware they like sex and they want more of it! There was a long, thick banana on the table and lots of fat women with cupcake flab and breasts that looked like over inflated lungs, which amused me. After an hour the crowd had filtered, those that still stood around were the uglies left out the orgy. I'd seen enough and followed Josh and his new friends to a venue across the road called 'Weird' (deliberate typo) it was a smoky dystopian lounge full of 20 some-things that looked like runaways. Scruffy clothes, tattoo's, piercings and faces that looked like they were washed with collage diplomas. I'd tired myself out taking photos and faking my enthusiasm for the American punk and rockabilly music – I'm snobby like that, if something doesn't feel authentic I will not move. The DJs stopped and a band came on stage. Imagine a dark and minimal Little Dragon that uses lots of heavy bass lines and echo re-verbs in their vocals, now imagine it doesn't sound very good. Josh and me headed back to Queens at 2am, exhausted, grateful and envious that the New York Subway runs 24/7. We slept like babies with hot milk.
The next morning I wake up and Josh turns on the TV, a commercial for diet pills lights up the screen. “IT’S GREAT TO BE THIN!” shouts a smiling fake tanned white teeth white woman, “she did not just say that!” says Josh, unimpressed, “MY LIFE IS GREAT!” she says, running along a beech in a bikini barley covering her nipples, Josh changes the channel and I think about America’s suicide rate.
We went into town that morning to look for a café with wireless Internet; we go into three Star Buck coffee shops before we accept they don’t have it. It was on the street walking towards what I thought was the Empire State building that we both realize New York is just like London, just built a lot higher and wider, Josh called it “London’s bigger brother”, I agreed.
The New Yorkers themselves were also on a similar but larger scale compared to Londoners. I walked into many NY pizza joints that could have been run by the same grease as a typical Kebab shop in Brixton or East Ham.
The R&B and Hip-Hop club we went into had guys like they do in the London mainstream clubs, wearing sunglasses, standing in the corner either playing with their phones or just staring at the wall, slightly nodding their heads to give themselves just enough reason to be there. The girls were mainly dolled up, quite a few of the really pretty girls were underdressed and overdressed at the same time, dancing with some of the meanest muscle bound mugs I’d seen in my life. It could have been London’s Bar Rumba in a bigger venue.
The poets too, some of them were like the American equivalents to some of the London poets I know, not just in their style of writing and delivery but their humor, stage presence and mannerisms. This got me thinking about how the environment influences its artists, it was fascinating to discover these doppelgangers and how it’s likely they exist because of London being such a similar setting.
Some parts of Brooklyn looked like Hackney, Manhattan was like Westbourne Park, Queens was a bit like Brixton, Times Square looked like West End, there is probably a London equivalent for every part of NY.
The streets are definitely cleaner and Josh spent days trying to figure out why his breath disappeared when he glared down the busy roads between the skyscrapers. He was so happy when he figured it out, “I GOT IT!” he said resuming a three-day-old conversation, “the streets don’t end” and he was right, you can see right down the throat of almost every high street, unlike London which has more turns and dead ends than teenage relationships.
Another thing I found interesting was the fact that almost every carriage I got into on the Subway had a homeless guy asleep in the corner, if I had taken a picture of every case I saw I could have made a pretty cool collage of homelessness.
Life for me right now has a strange atmosphere... You know, I personified that question but I’m not sure if it is just me. There’s loads of politically charged tension about as well as other funky energies burning in the people around me. I’ve felt a lot of anger and strange tension at the average person I pass in the street recently.
Last week I saw a dead body in the road, a man was shot four times in a “blood thirsty vengeance” from a shooting the week before... All this blood has painted my doorstep.
ANYWAY... Sorry...
I logged on to write about my hosting experience last night with Wale Ojo and I’ve taken it somewhere else... sorry about that, it wasn’t as bad as Nick Griffin on Question Time or "nigger-bots" in Transformers 2 ... but it was rather shambolic... although the feedback was positive, people did enjoy it and I guess, that’s most important. The problem with mixing a spoken word night with a music night is you tend to attract two different audiences. The people who show up for the music wants to drink and dance... the people who show up for the poetry wants to sit and listen.
We did however compromise at the beginning of the night by having Catherine Brogan do her set backed by a musician on African Drums. Which went well... but as the night wore on complications grew and the audience seemed to become either frustrated or confused.
I try to sway from making generalizations but apprantley musicans don't respect poets.
When Wale came on with his band the first thing he said to the audience was “OK, Now we’re going to show you how to do it!”
OK, I guess poetry is not the way “to do it”
Ironically almost everyone left.
YAY POETRY! :-)
Thank you Zainab, Bridget, Andreas and Dr.Stew for repping.x
