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.
If Pete The Temp ruled the world it would be squeezed between his chest and arms in a giant metaphysical man hug.
If Pete The Temp ruled the world the C Word would be "Classism".
If Pete The Temp ruled the world he’d sell a lot of CDs.
Every now and then you pick up some roadie stories as a travelling artist and one of my favorites involves the day I met Pete. We were on the same bill at a Festival in Cambridge and Pete had a late set. As festival audiences go the later you’re set the higher chances of a drunken and disorderly audience.
Pete launched into a poem and some disgruntled, pink-eyed drunk woman in the audience barged onto the stage and wrestled Pete. Unable to get Pete on the floor she decided to jump on his back while Pete (without stopping his performance) punched his poem out his panting lungs. He completed his set carrying the woman off stage on piggyback…
Pete The Temp instantly became my hero.
Q. So Pete, you’re a temp?
I graduated with an arts degree and consequently spent my early twenties as a temp. Much of my early work was workplace satire. The Temp part of my name is about solidarity with the underdog. It is for everyone who believes that there is more to life than mindless work that devalues people as human beings, pays them fuck all and channels all their productive time into menial tasks that make a small minority of people rich. You know those vans, that drive up to dusty roadside junctions near the Mexican boarder to pick up men and children desperate for half a days work? That's the same thing as a temp agency. I have spoken to countless people who find an escape from this in writing and performing. By laughing at it and poking fun at it we can make something positive out of something negative.
I used to do human rights work in Colombia where standing up for yourself as a worker can lead to assassination at the hands of a death squad. Workers there are at the sharp end of the same system – one that values profit over people and seeks to trivialise and casualise employees. The temp thing is also an expression of solidarity with them. But no, I’m not a temp, I haven't been for years. I'm now a corporate lawyer.
Q. I thoroughly enjoy the social commentary in your poems but does poetry and politics have a good relationship?
My big mouth is my gift. It is my duty to channel my creative energies into making a song and dance about what I believe to be important. Historically poets have always been a bit subversive. Poetry engages you intellectually and creates arenas of public discussion and critical thinking. It could be about sexual politics, relationship politics or politics politics. People who prefer to spend their evenings in these environments rather than watching TV are less likely to accept what 'The Man' tells them.
I am currently working on a spoken word stage show: 'Pete the Temp verses Climate Change! We are in the process of finding people and venues interested in hosting it. The aim of the show is to get people talking about climate change and laughing at the same time. While the mouths are open you can throw in some food for thought. Q. You teach performance poetry. How do you teach someone to become a good Spoken Word poet?
Games are an important part of the creative process and are missing from the school curriculum. De-constructing the text of John Hegley and Benjamin Zephaniah from books is not enough to spark young imaginations to engage with 'spoken word'. A large proportion of the workshops we carry out at Hammer & Tongue are warm up games, improvisation games, rap battles and mini – competitions. Games are fun. They engage your body and get blood pumping to the brain which releases endorphins and sparks creativity. I believe this is how we can bring the words to life, get people performing and resurrect the oral tradition.
Q. You sing and play guitar and you have a lot of call and response material in your performance catalogue. Do you feel poetry on its own is never enough to engage your audiences? You can do anything on a spoken word stage – satire, music, character acting, audience participation. I’ve even got away with doing sketch comedy once. The call and response stuff creates a nice dialogue between audience and performer. For every ego on stage there are another twenty in the audience. When it comes to the guitar, stand up poetry has masses of musicality in it already – even without an instrument. Imagery and metaphor is important but that is not to say that it cannot be brought to life! I don’t think that there is any less 'content' or 'writing' in heavily performative poetry – it is just that the pieces are designed to have different effects on the listener.
Q. You were born and bred in Oxford right? When I think of Oxford I think of the place that isn’t Eton or Cambridge University but it might as well be. How the hell did you become the public menace you are?
I exist in the badlands of Oxford. I eat rats in tunnels below the colleges and periodically jump out to eat rich people with my fingernails and teeth.
Q. You’ve performed all over the country how do your audiences vary and what does this teach you as an artist?
Being a performer has given me the great privilege of backpacking round my own country and experiencing new places and people. Poetry is about community as much as it is about words and spoken word audiences are unlike any other – open minded, attentive, aware and friendly. Each venue, night and point in time has its own demographic and its own vibe. The challenge for me is to tap into this and to orchestrate the right set for that particular audience.
Q. Are the rumors true? Do poets die poor?
Someone once said “there is no money in poetry, but then again, there is no poetry in money.” Bollocks! There are too many fantastic performers out there who are not getting paid for the professional work they do. This is not the case in other branches of spoken word like stand up. It doesn't have to be this way. In France and Germany poets regularly perform to audiences of 400 plus. Not all nights have a budget to pay performers and that's fine. Poets in the UK do after all operate in a small artistic economy but this is changing all the time. People are waking up to the fact that poetry can move you, inspire you and even get you singing along. How many poetry gigs have you been to where people are like “Wow! I never knew poetry could be like that!”?. I don't know any poets who want to be rich but they do want to be able pay their rent. Valuing our work as poets is part of the task of changing public perceptions of poetry. If you are a poet and someone asks you to do “a reading during the interval” - decline the offer!
Q. Pete, I love your work and you’re a top bloke... I’d give you a permanent contract any day!
I'd be your office bitch any day my friend. Keep up the good work.
27/10/10, Starts at 7.30pm at ARTCH, (next door to ten gales gallery) Arch 11, Gales Gardens London, Bethnal Green, E2 0EJ (just around the corner from Bethnal Green Tube)
Flying in from Berlin is Paula Varjack and coming from his Hackney housing place, one of the Anti-Slam champs Raymond Antrobus will host the night.
Judging over the mayhem is a glittering ensemble of London's spoken word hosts and poetry promoters. in no particular order...
Richard Tyrone Jones (Utter) Niall O'Sullivan (Unplugged/ The Cellar) Michelle Madsen (Hammer and Tongue) Naomi Woddis (Poetry Gazebo)
the evening will commence with sacrificial poet: Simon Mole putting himself forward bravely for scoring calibration
And as for our anti-slammers, pushing themselves to failure...er glory..badly
Hollie McNish Bohdan Piasecki MC Angel Musa Okwonga Pete The Temp Niall Spooner Harvey Mark Walton Sabrina Mahfouz Rob Auton Captain Of The Rant
Our DJ/ bad poet on the night will be BBC's Mista Gee.
“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?
Mike Skinner is not a shit rapper; he’s a good poet. Someone needs to tell him that… However, no one needs to tell Polarbear he’s not shit.
Steven Camden aka Polarbear doesn’t like to be hyped up but many would stand by me when I say he’s one of the best writer/performer/Spoken Word artists in the UK by any standard.
If you like your wordsmiths to be humble, home grown and clean cut storytellers in flat caps I may have found you a street corner hero.
Polarbear, your last one-man show was called ‘Return’ and on the flyer it says ‘A Spoken Film’. What is ‘Spoken Film’? Are you pioneering a new genre of theatre?
I dunno. I doubt it. Not on purpose anyways. A spoken film is me speaking a screenplay; shot description, dialogue and so on. I had a story I wanted to tell and an idea of how I could do it. I sat down and with Yael crafted a screenplay for my mouth. The idea is really an extension of what I’ve been trying to do with shorter pieces for a while now. I really wanted to test how filmic I could make a story feel as an experience both to tell and to listen to. I’m touring it until Feb 2011 on and off. It’s been a brilliant process and I’ve grown as a writer and performer through it. I worked really closely with a couple of people and I’m happy with what we made. It’s feels nice to take a starting point and get a piece to be exactly what you wanted. ‘RETURN’ is that.
I want you to know, there are a lot of little Polarbear imitators out there… I saw a performer completely rip you off a few weeks ago and it hurt to watch.. what should I do when I witness such horrific crimes against creativity?
Everything is borrowed lad. I wouldn’t worry. I think when you’re just starting out at something it’s inevitable that what you’re into will be present for people to see. That’s just a development thing I think. People sometimes need a base to grow their style on. A biter is always gonna shoot themselves in the foot at some point, either directly or indirectly. I remember teachers at school saying that imitation was the best form of flattery. I guess I should be flattered. Once, then it’s just lazy.
You’re a Dad. How has fatherhood impacted you as a writer? I imagine you’ve had to have your discipline on lock?
Fatherhood just made me have less time and as a consequence of that a desire not to waste any. I can now get done in three hours what it used to take a whole day to do. In terms of discipline and my work I think it’s added some maturity maybe. I’m now a man capable of acting like a boy as oppose to the other way around. I still wake up at 4am needing to write ideas down and sometimes that can mess you up when you have dad responsibilities, but it’s like anything else, I only do what I’m excited by so if I’m excited by an idea I make time to realize it.
Seems you’ve had a pretty good career as a Spoken Word artist so far but how do you measure success if not by your capital?
I don’t really think beyond the next idea. It’s funny cos every now and then I’m around a conversation about spoken word and important artists in that world or whatever and it always strikes me that the people using the word success the most are the ones I find least interesting.
The fact is I make a living from ideas and that’s something that will never not be nuts. I’m lucky. I’ve paid dues and I deliver so I get opportunities. There are words that I’ve written that might live longer than me. Crazy. I work on a lot of writing/performance projects and have made a lot of friends. Thanks to my email inbox I know there are a couple of writers who have an interest or passion to write stuff in part due to me and that there are a few more people who believe that stories can be written by anyone who’s good at it regardless of back ground. That’s pretty cool. How do I measure success? To be honest lad I don’t know. Where I come from work is work and play is play. I get to blend the two and that’s as successful as I need to be.
I once read an interview you did a while back where you spoke about your frustration with the lack of quality in the UK ‘Spoken Word scene’ and you went on to disassociate yourself with the term “poet”… Has Spoken Word poetry moved along or are you sticking to your claws? Again I’ve gotta be annoying and say I don’t really know. I rarely go to spoken word events I’m not involved with because of time and I still have no desire to be known as a poet. It’s pretty simple to me. The form of spoken word at it’s best to me is immediate, engaging and hopefully has a lasting resonance. I just wasn’t seeing a whole lot of stuff that met all of those points. There are lots of strong artists doing it and a whole heap of absolutely crap ones (in my opinion) but none of that really enters my head when I’m writing.
I don’t consider myself to be a poet. I feel comfortable speaking work on stage to an audience so I’m cool with the spoken word label, but if I wake up tomorrow and decide to write a cookbook, then that’s what I’ll do. Has spoken word moved along? Of course it has and so have audiences. There’ll always be good and there’ll always be awful, it’s just with spoken word there’s nothing to hide behind. It’s important that individuals keep pushing themselves and their ideas. That sounded a little more political than I intended.
You are part of the OneTaste collective. Each poet in there really holds their own. Kate Tempest, David J and yourself couldn’t make a better example of how three completely different styles of writing and performance can be equally as powerful as each other. Are you three on any kind of mission as the poets in a collective dominated by musicians?
No. OneTaste is a bunch of artists who just do stuff together. Sometimes people collaborate, other times we just perform on the same night. We’re friends who make stuff. Some of us talk, some of us sing and play. I don’t see the rest of them half as much as I used to so I don’t want to speak for them, but for me it’s just a mark of quality. Justice League, although to be honest I always found Justice League to be a little bit wet, but I mean when you’re around quality you want to bring more quality and that just makes it good for anyone watching.
Musa Okwonga once said to me that the term “Spoken Word Artist” sounds apologetic. So many of us essentially do the same thing (write and perform) but market ourselves with different names e.g. poet, writer, performer, live literature artist… why can’t we all come together and figure this out… aren’t we confusing our audience or are we trying to avoid the stigma of the terms “poet” or “poetry”?
Man you think properly about this shit eh?
I don’t have these thoughts lad. I’m a writer. I can say that with confidence now. Sometimes I speak my work to an audience, but I don’t need to. I don’t have dreams about being on stage in front of screaming crowds. Used to be that I spoke stuff cos it was the quickest way to share stuff. Now I enjoy the craft. Musa’s funny. He can be the most apologetic person ever then switch and be proper hardcore. I get called all kinds of stuff from beat poet to everyday word wizard and it’s never once changed what I do. I’ll just keep doing that and let other people worry about the definitions.
Finally Polarbear, you’re an absolute legend and an inspiration to so many poets and writers out there… you’re going down in history and your imitators will die nameless. Yay!
I come from Birmingham.
Here's Polarbear at Chill Pill a few weeks ago with his poem 'The Scene' - "there's a reason they call it 'the scene', it's because it's not real"
I met Indigo Williams at a show I did with her at Middlesex University last February. She writes and performs with such intense conviction she could be considered a weapon.
Slender at the waist, cheek bones high and a flower beaming from the silk branches of her afro… she’s cute… but the name ‘Indigo Williams’ can only belong to someone who could shake down a temple.
See, I was expecting some intimate campfire poems, but she left me dwelling in the world of an imagination that sparks fires!
Q. Indigo, I’d never have guessed it but you’re fairly new to all this ‘Spoken Word stuff’ aren’t you?
Yes I am indeed, everybody assumes I’ve been doing this for years when in actual fact I only decided I wanted to be a spoken word artist in august of 09 and by November 09 I was performing- so that’s about 9 months. (Performing that is)
Q. How did South London make a poet out of you?
It didn’t. I’ve always been talented at writing I just never took it seriously. I wanted to be a writer as a child but then I had a teacher who told the 8 year old me that I wasn’t smart enough and so I stopped for a while. In any case I don’t think you can really make a poet you either are or you’re not but you can inspire a poet and many things about growing up in south London have inspired me and that is evident in my work.
Q. I like your facebook updates, there was one that stuck with me – “Its not hard to woo a crowd. The true test is whether you can touch and leave them changed” what is the change you hope to give to your audience?
Good question! I am a strong believer that if you want to help make the world a better place then you are to be the example of the change you hope for. The only problem with that is there are millions of things that will probably work against you but I believe if you can change the way a man thinks you can change a man. So I would say the change I hope to give to any audience is the power of thought; the power to take them out of their world and into somebody else’s so that together we learn empathy, we learn patience for one another and we learn to think outside of our own boxes. Hence my slogan ‘Painting worlds with words’ (yes I have a slogan) lol
Q. I noticed you feel all the creative industries are saturated with fakes and cop-outs. Is the fact that Spoken Word is away from the mainstream and more of an underground movement part of its appeal to you?
This is such a funny question lool. I HATE COP OUTS! Fake people are inevitable but a cop out is just laziness. For example the old saying “sex sells” urm…yeah, but so do other things BE CREATIVE!
Anyhoo...
What appealed to me wasn’t the lack of fake people because anybody who knows enough people in the scene will know that is far from the truth as I am discovering lol (ooooo no she didn’t -yes is I did.)
I joined the scene because nobody knew who I was, nobody gave a shit about who I was and that was exactly what I needed at that time especially. I’ve come from the music world and I’ve grown up around extreeeeemly talented people, which meant a VERY high standard was always expected of me from a very young age. After a while music wasn’t fun anymore and then I found spoken word and I could be free with it, I could do a bad show and it really wouldn’t matter. I didn’t have that freedom when I was a singer but it turns out I’m better at spoken word anyways. (In my opinion)
Q. How far can a Spoken Word artist go to be successful before "selling out"?
You could sell out at any point it depends on why you do what you do. Ultimately the only person you are going to answer to is yourself, every choice is a declaration of who you choose to be so the moment your actions contradict your conscious choice then you have gone back on yourself. Its just a matter of whether that bothers you or not and it also depends on your interpretation of success. Q. You’ve been performing a lot of your poetry at festivals recently. What is this teaching you as an artist?
It’s taught me that I would only ever go to a festival if I were an artist because you get privileges any other way is straight up LONG! Those toilets are just nasty!
Q. What’s next for Indigo Williams?
Graduating uni, Freelance journalism, starting a company called ‘The Platform’ (look out for it.) Acting, films, Art + poetry exhibition, writing a book, dusting off my guitar and combining my poetry and music and hopefully leaving a trail of change wherever I go especially with young people. I plan to work with young people in all of this…at some point.
Q. Finally Indigo, next time you perform and I’m in the crowd look at my “wow, what the fuck “face and tell me if you like it?
Haha okay. I’m gonna actually take a picture of your, ‘wow, what the fuck face” lol.
Anis Mojgani is one of the world's leading Spoken Word artists... quite frankly.. he's incredible and a master of our time... watch how its done.
incredible right?
now let me show you how it's not done... I've seen biters before... but rarely as blunt as this..
Push (2009)
wow!
This made me think about a story someone told me about what happened to North-Essex based poet 'Luke Wright'.
At a open mic, some guy gets up and blows everyone away with a poem... a poem that he'd heard Luke Wright perform and he'd wrote it down and tried to pass it off as his own work... HOWEVER, in the audience a friend of Luke Wright JUST so happened to be there and gave Luke a call... Luke then drives down to the venue and makes the guy get on stage and admit he's a big phoney...
If Pete The Temp ruled the world it would be squeezed between his chest and arms in a giant metaphysical man hug.
Q. I thoroughly enjoy the social commentary in your poems but does poetry and politics have a good relationship?
Q. You teach performance poetry. How do you teach someone to become a good Spoken Word poet?
Q. Are the rumors true? Do poets die poor?
“I held my 13 Negro tales
Q. Inua, are you a show boaty wind bag?
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?
This blog just isn't legit without acknowledging those that are sitting on the top of their game right now.. 
Mike Skinner is not a shit rapper; he’s a good poet. Someone needs to tell him that… However, no one needs to tell Polarbear he’s not shit. 
Seems you’ve had a pretty good career as a Spoken Word artist so far but how do you measure success if not by your capital?
Musa Okwonga once said to me that the term “Spoken Word Artist” sounds apologetic. So many of us essentially do the same thing (write and perform) but market ourselves with different names e.g. poet, writer, performer, live literature artist… why can’t we all come together and figure this out… aren’t we confusing our audience or are we trying to avoid the stigma of the terms “poet” or “poetry”?
Q. I like your facebook updates, there was one that stuck with me – “Its not hard to woo a crowd. The true test is whether you can touch and leave them changed” what is the change you hope to give to your audience?
