Mike Skinner from The Streets has just released a free mixtape and on that he has included a spoken word accapella track. Could this be an indication that Mike is finally standing up as a poet in his own right?
not that he's never been one... I just remember when I fell in love with The Streets all those years ago and I'd hear people say "he's only chatting... pay me to talk over bloody beats, I sound better than that!"
A lot of people didn't get it but I really connected with it... well, a lot of people did.. he's a top selling artist.
I saw The Streets live and to the crowd Mike said rather apologetically "I'm not the best Rapper in the world but I love what I do!"
which kind of disheartened me because it was almost like he was apologising for being an artist who puts substance over style.
Here you can download The Streets Mixtape and I've included other Spoken Word artists who you need on your radar.
also check out one of my favorite bands headed by a poet - Benin City. They'll be doing big things this year. Also, check out an album that should go down in Spoken Word history - The Short Story Long by Shane Koyczan.
Fianlly, Kate Tempest has a new album coming out and this video by the brilliant poet 'John Berkavitch' is testimony of things to come.
Location: Artch Arch 11, Gales Gardens (Under Bethnal Green Rails by Bethnal Green Tube Station
The Lowest Score... Wins.
The anti-slam challenges great performance poets, to write the worst poems that they can imagine, and perform them... well. . We think competition is overrated, actually, we celebrate FAILURE!!!
We launched in bar called S.I.N in Berlin, on July 1st 2009. We stumbled back three months later to an underground ping-pong bar in September. We returned last February to protest Valentines day with the worst love poems... ever (who knew heartbreak could be so funny?)
As friends in Poland began their own event in Warsaw, Friends in London struck back with their own brand of poetic anarchy in ARtch in East London.
The Anti-Slam is back to protest Valentines day again, this year running events in London and Berlin AT THE VERY SAME TIME!!! .
The Anti-SLam London ANti-Valentine's Day Special hosted by: Raymond Antrobus and Captain of the Rant
Orson Welles is one of my heroes for many reasons... He just seemed like a man you could go to about anything... "Hey Orson, I'm writing something... help me out... hey Orson, my girlfriend left me.. cheer me up.. hey Orson ...tell me a story that'll make me cry then another one to make me laugh... hey Orson, I'm looking for my voice... help me find it"
Although he had such a strong and powerful presence on screen which even came through on his radio recordings, I sense this mysterious, troublesome vulnerability about him...
He was a man with a classic and romantic mind who wanted to live in the past even through he was 100 years ahead of his time... He was an extremely progressive thinker... directing Shakespeare plays and casting all black actors in the 40's.. He wrote screenplays, radio plays and made films that exposed mediocrity. He was shunned by Hollywood, slated by jealous and conservative critics... but kept on working despite his genius being overlooked during most of his life... his parents died when he was young... he became a wanderer... a boy who loved travelling, magic and painting... He then discovered the theatre, film and radio.
"I want to use the motion picture camera as an instrument of poetry"
I'm currently reading his biography and he talks about being separate from his art. Even in this interview he's adamant about the concept of "rosebud" being what he least liked about his film 'Citizen Kane' yet, as a human being he admits longing for one place to call home.
Art is a mirror of the artist even if the artist (or anyone) tries to smash it.
Anyway, this is a brilliant interview with the man himself... although rather ballooned... Welles is sharp, poetic and honest (even about the things he can't do).
"The aim of idealogies of ethnicity, nationality, religion and gender is to remove the sense of one's own individual limitions and failure as a human being and to replace the "I" by a "we" - Charles Simic
EYE EYE
I... I... I I’m... I I’m trying I'm trying not to say “I” so much
it’s no way to start a poem.
but I... I... I I... I need I need to start somewhere.
A We Poem
We’re better at breaking things than we are at juggling
We wear costumes better than ourselves We pretend we’re all alike We fight
We go home with all the stupid things we said that day We lock ourselves away We punch walls We go mad because it proves we’re capable of love We see the world like a lonely place We dream in other people’s houses
We have earthquakes inside us We see rainbows while they’re happening We take chemicals and go to carnivals We’re afraid of clowns We’re afraid of flying but we wish we could We’re afraid of going missing we’re not afraid of being missed We’re afraid of smiling at strangers We’re afraid of bombs on train tracks We’re afraid of aeroplanes becoming fireworks We’re afraid of depression We’re afraid of expanding our minds when happiness is a tunnel vision
We want to look for people like us and we want to find them in love We want more than life and the time it lasts We want safety We want people to be honest with us so we can be honest with people We want diamonds in our mirrors We want warm deathbeds and summer rain We want to know if silence exists We want to cut down cities and build rainforests We want cycle paths, quiet parks and fast lanes on motorways
We want sharp brakes, steep slopes and no hands on handlebars We smell like dead grass and featherbeds We smell like heavy traffic and Oregano Mountains like fluoride and drinking fountains
We smell like surgery
We’re arrowheads with neck pain We’re hearts with headaches We’re the weather in our dreams We’re sea water in aquariums We’re blind and photogenic We’re deaf in the sound of sleep.
As we zoom out the universe that Niall O’Sullivan has scrutinized under his telescope, we can hang up our lab coats, free the monkeys from their cages and put away the Oxford Dictionary.
Let us now look into an even more ambiguous belief system - one of spoken word performer - James Massiah.
I mentioned religion being a bit of a crowd splitter so I was a bit worried about getting in contact with James just to ask about his religious views, like some kind of overeager Jehovah’s Witness recruit.
Having seen James perform a few times I decided to ask him more specific questions about the topics he tackles.
Here he is performing a piece called Dance With The Devil.
Massiah, you challenge a lot of stereotypes enforced by society on young black boys... what is your role in breaking down those barriers and does your faith provide a role in that?
Everyone deserves a fair shot at life, and because of the stereotypes and assumptions that are often put on young black males we don't really get that fair shot. Throughout history people have come along and changed social ideals and altered people’s perceptions on certain things I would hope that my art allows people to change their perceptions in a similar way to those that have done so in the past in the fields of art, science, religion, politics and so on. More specifically in regards to this question, I'd hope that I change people’s negative or infantile views on ideas about race, culture and ethnicity; through not only my art but my character and moral values too.
Do you think preaching and sermonising can be used as a form of performance poetry?
In as much as a sermon is often a man with a microphone telling a story and sharing his views on an issue I certainly think so. There may be a marked difference in the preachers style and form in that it may not be as verse oriented as a poet's, but I've seen many an evangelist with tons of charisma turn a congregation much in the way that I have seen performance poets rouse crowds with their poems.
I preached my first sermon before I performed my first poem and so I definitely feel there is an overlap between the two that allows for one to be able to learn or appreciate the values of another, stylistically at least if not theologically.
Are you saving the world or saving yourself?
I'm no pessimist, but I shall certainly sound like one when I say that the world is beyond saving. In saying that though, I truly hope that in saving myself, the small pockets of the world that hear my poetry, see my shows and meet me will be changed for the better as a result.
I would like to sign out with this quote from one of my favorite poets of the moment Charles Simic -
"as far as I'm concerned it is not a contradiction to say both - God does and does not exist"
We humans create many things that create division between us. I believe power and the hunger for it is what keeps most people divided.
Of course there is also natural division (what we're born with) but here I’d like to explore another language of human division – Religion.
I had a performance piece exploring my religious views (was listening to lots of George Carlin at the time) and it always seemed to create tension.
I know you can’t please everyone and everyone has their own truths. I can tackle my own truths on many things and instigate a constructive and stimulating conversation through my work.
However that never seems the case when exploring religion.
You seem to enforce the belief people already have whether its for or against religion and it always seems to create division between you and the audience.
Maybe I just shouldn’t drop it at a poetry night full of evangelical Christians.
I’ve seen Baba Brinkman’s Hip-Hop show on Charles Darwin’s theory of Evolution and its brilliant but I guess Baba Brinkman is an artist who has found his audience. (and it isn’t a group of evangelical Christians)
Anyway I pulled in two London poets ‘Niall O’Sullivan’ who runs Poetry Unplugged at the poetry cafe in Covent Garden. He’s published two books called 'You’re not singing anymore' and 'Ventriloquism for Monkeys'.
He’s written many poems inspired by Darwinism.
I also pulled up young performance poet James Massiah for Part 2 of this discussion. James is a regular face and voice on the London poetry circuit.
Niall was quick to point out that James is not the messiah... he’s a very naughty boy!
So Niall, first question is who is your favourite biblical character and why?
The snake in the Garden of Eden. Read in a certain way, the collection of Semitic literature that we call the Bible begins with a world of dumb perfection brought into being by a god who is very much involved with human affairs and ends in a world of our own abyssal freedom with a god who is no longer involved and has, perhaps, stepped away from the act of being itself. The snake, and the subsequent exile from Eden represent the first step of this narrative.
The snake is often lazily labelled as the Devil or Satan within Christian cultures. The Devil is the product of the collision between Judaistic mythology with Graeco-Roman Paganism. There is no mention of the Devil in the Hebrew scriptures. Satan is mentioned a few times but is often appointed as a devious associate of Yahweh rather than an outright adversary (one translation of his name is The Prosecutor, a role that is carried out in accordance with Yahweh's as Judge, such as in the Book of Job). The snake is not the Devil, neither is it Satan.
The story of a man, woman, tree and snake is older than the Book of Genesis, images of the scene appear in Sumerian seals. The comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell points out that the snake is revered in other cultures and religions. Its body flows like water and its tongue flickers like flame. The snake is also a symbol of transformation, illustrated in how it sheds its skin.
What were Adam and Eve before the fall? A couple of babies wandering about Eden, with no problems to contend with, snug in the mind-numbing tedium of perfection. The fact that they were threatened with expulsion if they ate from the fruit of the tree of knowledge presented it as the only way to reject the dull, predictable world of perfection. In place of this world they were given a world that contained pain and struggle, but with this pain and struggle their lives were given meaning and freedom. Campbell also goes on to explain that in other versions of the story the serpent is the mother goddess. Is it not curious that in the story of Yahweh, the male god, the mother goddess snake and Eve are both scape-goated for the presence of pain and struggle? With those out of the way, we get the dominance of the genocidal, ethnic cleansing Yahweh of the Flood and Exodus. But this is also the Yahweh that no longer walks with man in the garden. Moses can only glimpse his “hind parts” during their meeting at Mount Sinai. Yahweh becomes a human in the Gospels and is put to death. Finally, he disappears into the skies. What is left is a Holy Spirit, the brother-and-sisterhood of humankind. Could this not be read as the gradual retreat of a god as mankind takes responsibility for itself, all put in motion by the agent of transformation, the snake?
So you’re sitting on an empty tube carriage at midnight and your drunk and on the way back from Jesus’s birthday party (Christmas) and Charles Darwin gets on at Holborn and sits next to you... what would you say to him?
Darwin was a quiet, humble man during his life. He sat on his theory of Natural Selection for decades before Alfred Russell Wallace forced his hand by also discovering the theory. So I'm not sure Darwin would have felt comfortable with some drunk guy yammering on at him on public transport. Darwin is often portrayed as some kind of iconoclast, but evolution itself was a much older idea and non-literal readings of Genesis go back to Thomas Aquinas and St Augustine. If anything destroyed Darwin's faith, it was the death of his daughter rather than evolution. Even on losing his faith, Darwin would walk his family to church of Sundays and sit outside until it was time for them to leave.
As an atheist, I find myself just as exasperated by the appropriation of Darwinism as the last nail in god's coffin as I am with biblical literalists. Both the vulgar atheists of today and the Young Earth Creationists of the evangelic community are tied together by a mutual misunderstanding of mythology. The relevance of mythology has nothing to do with its facticity, mythology is a mirror of human nature.
So, back to Darwin, I don't think I'd waste my moment with the great naturalist talking about religion. I'd tell him about what we've discovered since his work on the Origin. He knew the mechanism of Natural Selection, but he didn't know of the unit of inheritance, DNA. I would also have told him that his hunch about Africa being the cauldron for human evolution was also true. I guess I'd ply him with knowledge about how far we've taken the science so far and after giving him ample time to take it all in, I'd ask him where we are currently going wrong. Of course, if Darwin had figured out how to get and use an oyster card, he probably would have got up to scratch on the current science and wouldn't need it explained by pish like me. I think I'd be happier to leave him sitting alone as he did outside that church, his mind hovering around the periphery of something brilliant.
Considering all holy books and scriptures are written poetically does that imply there is some form of authority and empowerment embedded in poetry and how does poetry and religion interact with each other?
I'd not go as far as to say all holy books are written poetically, there are countless tedious passages in the Scriptures about who begat who and furnishing tips. For every Ecclesiastes we get a Leviticus. We should also remember that our idea about the uniform poetical qualities of the Bible are more inherent to the King James translation than to the variable content of the original Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament books.
That said, it cannot be denied that there is plenty of beautiful language in religious texts. An otherwise ridiculous and nonsensical statement can seem to make sense when phrased poetically. The ear tends to casually accept that which flatters it. Rhyme, assonance and alliteration all lend their own logic to a sentence. Moral instructions are often phrased in rhyming mnemonic ways to help them lodge within the brains of children and adults. I've often heard poetry audiences hum in approval to lines that Larkin would have dismissed as beautiful crap.
As someone with an inherent distrust of organised religion, I find it heartening that we can appropriate the poetry of religious texts to strike against it, in the way that William Blake and Friedrich Nietzsche have. Is Nobodaddy not one of the most perceptive names man has given to god?
It is interesting that a lot of contemporary poetry has shied away from the “heightened speech” of religious texts, making use of more intimate and casual terminology. Poets that try to bring “heightened speech” into poetry often end up sounding comically archaic. That's not to say we might not see a return of this kind of rhetoric, but it takes a poet as good as Blake to make the breakthrough.
Slavoj Zizek made some interesting points about god in a recent lecture ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68Lco_PFKXg ). Many have removed the need for a god in our discourse on reality. We know that god doesn't exist, but does god know this too? What does this question mean? It simply means that we cannot get rid of god by disqualifying him from reality, not when so many religious and theistic assumptions make up the functional fictions of our world. Those functional fictions come from religious poetry and mythology, deeply meshed together within the implicit and the unconscious. We have killed god, but every time we open our mouths, he lives again.
She said you are the centre of yourself and I couldn’t tell if it was criticism or advise for someone outside herself but considering her surname, Copernicus I imagine she’s shoved telescopes down the burial ground of her gut pointed it up with her jaw dropped from the weight of what she see’s through the lens of her heart looking up towards headlights in the sky.
stars.
when she talks she talks like she’s visiting planets.
It’s amazing how the muscles in her throat are so small but she pulls in the universe drawing breath and giving it back, layered black and bright like every season in space.
she see’s all my flaws in the ways I try to hide them
in the ways I say things that aren’t worth breaking any silence
in the ways I keep dreaming in other people’s houses
in the ways I get depressed and say it’s because I’m an artist
she said fine, be a perfectionist but know you are not the moon you cannot shine every night but I’d never tell you not to try.
In 2011 I’m determined to help get the London Spoken Word scene whipped into better shape.
Less self-indulgent, un-interesting, unexplored writings and performances, less spoken word nights filled only with the friends of performers and failed bitter poets... less having to sit through a bunch of painful nonsense before getting to anything decent!
We need to connect the movement and establish a hierarchy of ability in performers to give progressing poets more to aspire to.
The US poets may aspire to be in Def Poetry Jam or a slot as a featured poet in the top Spoken Word nights or featured in a popular podcast or tour... these are the ingredients for progress.
If I didn’t know what Spoken Word was and I walked into some these nights I’d never have known its potential or value... some of the bollocks that’s displayed is putting off people that would actually make brilliant spoken word artists themselves and forcing the already well practiced spoken word artist to disassociate themselves with the overall movement... This is discrediting the art form.
Thank goodness the first nights I went to were filled with inspiring magic... but those nights were either in other countries, closed down or they're still going but they lost the spark)
Everyone seems too precious about their own space in a pond... forget the pond.. and even the garden... we live in a city.
I know it sounds a bit ranty and arrogant but the fact I see a lot of good spoken word artists who are good but would absolutely flourish with a strengthened, quality and well connected scene (myself included) is slightly disheartening. I’ve sat down with some mega talented poets and people to discuss how to keep this movement as progressive as possible and things are taking starter kicks.
“I'm excited at the prospect of developing a platform that is driven by *quality* (which accommodates a variety of tastes and styles) rather than *access*, which is already well provided for in the performance poetry scene.
Such a platform would not undermine or compete with the current model, rather it would complement it by establishing a standard to which poets can aspire, and acting as motor to raise our expectations of what top-end performance poetry can look like.” –Sian Robins-Grace
My ex-girlfriend said to me she’d read in the paper "writing poetry is good for mental health"
Considering she has a degree in psychology it surprised me this was a revelation to her but apparently on a degree level art and psychology are never linked.
Recently I sat through a set of poetry by London based poet and Spoken Word artist Jasmin Cooray.
Jasmin captures something disturbingly beautiful in her work.
Some of it goes beyond bone to the marrow. She has a piece called ‘How The Tiger Got His Stripes’ which intensely explores self harm from a personal perspective.
She’s training to work in mental health and this led me to approach her to find out if the drive to get into mental health is connected to being a poet.
Hey Jasmine, ‘How The Tiger Got its Stripes' is a bold and a brilliant piece of work. I’d like to ask you if it was written for your own therapy and how does the line get drawn from a poetry reading/ performance and a public counseling session?
I wrote 'How the Tiger Got His Stripes' to tell a mishmash of stories. It contains a combination of moments of my own experience of self harm, partial fiction, and complete fiction. It would not be accurate to say it had a therapeutic function for me: my internal work around learning why I self harmed and how to cope with emotional difficulty in a healthier way came later, and continues. I didn’t ‘feel better’ after writing performing that piece, because it only contained some of my story. I don’t think you can do it halfway. People said it was a brave piece, but I think that is because it is uncomfortable to talk about spaces of vulnerability, and then, in front of an audience you increase that vulnerability. But I was emotionally detached from myself so it wasn’t therapeutic to perform personal work. What was nice was having people come up and talk about the significance the piece had for them, that it spoke for some part of them that was silent.
But it is a risk. An audience holds no guarantees: they owe you nothing, so you could receive compassion and sympathy or rejection and shock. To impose a demand for support on their audience, a performer would have to indulge in a serious illusion that their audience had an investment in them, and, on a more basic level, were listening. Most of the time, social guidelines mean that audiences display a basic level of respect. The convention is that they listen to you, but they could wander, switch off, chat. No one is obligated to really come with you into what you’re saying, because no one will pull them up later. On the flipside, there is also a wall between you which is protective, at least in this culture.
Counselling is about being listened to and supported. The only two similarities I can identify at this point between performance and therapeutic work are 1: having a space to say what you want to say and 2: having some form of validation, whether that is applause or someone showing that they are listening without judgment. The spaces are very different, though. Performance is often one-way, not interactive, often edited, not spontaneous, and it calls for approval rather than exploration. If you’re asking where the line is between the self indulgent and personal…who is at liberty to say? If we can take indulgence to mean taking beyond need ( ‘I will have another potato even though I am well fed’) then you could suggest that writing/performance that calls for the audience to do work the artist should be doing for themselves is indulgent. Often we can stimulate audiences to respond to us in particular ways, and take from them that way. For example, maybe I rarely use explicit humour in my work because I don’t like being laughed at. Maybe I use personal subject matter because the silence makes me feel I’m being listened to, which I need. I don’t think it is possible to always give yourself everything you need. Performance can be a go-between.
Therapeutic work and where it meets creativity is highly complex, and at the same time, extremely simple: we need to be heard, we need to find ways to be and survive, we need to work through difficulties. There isn’t one way. Each of our ways is different. where should the lines be drawn between the poet and the poem or the art and the artist and can art be cathartic?
I wonder if it is possible or useful to draw a line between an artist and their work. The work does not come about by itself. Even if someone reads or hears a poem and doesn’t know of the writer or anything about them, what we write is born through our opinions, feelings, the patchwork that is woven of our experience. I love this: I want to meet the person in their work. Even if something is anonymous, it still holds the person who made it within it: the same way everyone makes a cup of tea a different way. Beyond this, I think it is up to the consumer how much importance they assign to the creator of something that they like or enjoy. Often the work means more to a person than the creator. For example, Michael Jackson often inspires the phrase ‘I don’t care what he might have done, he made great music’. In this case, whatever importance the listener places upon their enjoyment outweighs questions that challenge the integrity of the maker. But then we live in a society where denial courts convenience. It’s our choice whether we engage with the full picture that frames both artist and work, or choose to crop it according to our comfort level.
Considering the craft of writing poetry is largely to do with finding your own truth in your own voice how can this be achieved without becoming overly self conscious, egotistical or vain?
I think it depends on who you are. Some work relies on arrogance to carry it- but then the sacrifice can be a connection with the audience. A lot of people don’t care if they display inflated ego within their performance, it’s part of whom they are or what they want to present. That is for the onlooker to decipher. But we have to have some form of self-confidence to even get up there and share our work. In terms of truth: only we really know what is true and what is not. If we perform work that doesn’t fit with who we are, we can create a split in ourselves, so then the choice rears its head: stay in the cushioned safety of a persona or venture into yourself. If you are validated as a persona it is safe but meaningless. As yourself, the risk is bigger, but at least whatever comes your way is really for you, an at least your audience can trust you.
Mike Skinner from The Streets has just released a free mixtape and on that he has included a spoken word accapella track. Could this be an indication that Mike is finally standing up as a poet in his own right? 
