In Ignoble Poverty

If I were to answer the question, ‘Why haven’t I managed a monthly blog-post until the last day of January?’ the answer might be familiar to all self-employed freelancers. The dreaded Tax Return. However, after the usual procrastination, I logged into my account only to find I didn’t need to.

 

It seems that, after years of existing below the threshold, the Tax Office has finally got bored with my paltry finances. While this is a relief in many ways, since trawling through a thousand unanswerable questions was pretty tiresome, it is strange to admit that I’m officially an impoverished artist.

 

It’s also rather liberating. I live within my means, with few frivolous expenses, and I do enough ‘extra’ work to allow the odd luxury while keeping those extra hours for my creativity. Sure, it would be good to be able to earn more from my creative endeavours, but that’s not the reason that I do what I do.

 

Creativity is a compulsion. I can't imagine how I would be able to make sense of this complicated world if I wasn’t an artist. Creativity is good for one’s health, for society’s health, and for the planet. Why do we have artwork along hospital corridors?

Because art makes people better. Yet it does cost money. As Joni Mitchel says, ‘Artists in noble poverty go like virgins to the grave.’ (Meanwhile, on the same album, she was ‘stoking up the star-maker machinery behind the popular song!’)

 

For all my ‘noble poverty’ I appreciate that art is not separate from the systems that, sadly, make the world go round. When creative projects are stripped of funds – as has happened to many organisations in Scotland recently – people have to be doubly creative in order simply to finance their practice.

My good friends at the Edinburgh City of Literature Trust are in this position.
 

A Unique City
 

To have the unique status of being the first ever UNESCO-designated City of Literature is something Edinburgh should be proud of. Our main train station is named after a novel, and throughout the station there are quotes of Sir Walter Scott (thanks to the City of Lit.) At the top of The Mound is a quaint little close where Scott, along with our National Bard, Robert Burns, and Robert Louis Stevenson are celebrated in a turreted museum dedicated to them.

 On the pavement there are quotes from Scottish poets ranging over hundreds of years, and signs advertising Literary Walking Tours. But you don’t even need a tour-guide.

Amble down the Royal Mile to the Canongate and there are light-boxes installed in the windows of pubs and shops and cafés, each with a quote from a writer connected in some way to Edinburgh’s rich publishing history; an illuminated trail to inspire and light up the night during the long winter months.

These are dark days indeed, even if January has basked in two full moons, as the City of Literature Trust’s effort to light up our city’s life with a bright ring of words has been snubbed by a major funder. Outside the Canongate Kirk, a statue of Robert Fergusson attempts to stride down to the Parliament building at the bottom of the hill. His words, incised in concrete around his feet, declare:

          Auld reekie wale o ilka toun

          that scotland kens beneath the moon

 

And on the Parliament too, carved into a slab of Argyle marble, we read the words of Mary Brooksbank:

 

          Oh, dear me, the warld’s ill-divided,
          Them that work the hardest are aye wi’ least provided.

 

...which calls to mind the truth that, during the Festival Fringe, the folk who make the most money are the big businesses who benefit from the boost of creativity and culture. The artists who provide it do so at a huge personal cost.
 

Art is important, and literature tells far more than just the story of a city: it is the city. But it costs money, and the funding cuts people have suffered will leave Edinburgh impoverished in more ways than one.

Generating money for the already-wealthy is a poor show, and I can only hope that someday, somehow, someone will re-elevate the turret-dwellers to their rightful, illuminated place.

Follow the Stars and Stories here – or come to visit Edinburgh and soak up the literature that makes our city so special.

 

Verbosity

 

Sometimes I wonder how many writers stay in on a Friday night to listen to BBC Radio 3’s programme, The Verb? In the case of performance poets, probably as few as the singers who listen to Sunday afternoon programmes of Choral music! I’m not going to start questioning Radio 3 schedules, and as for presenters – ach! At least Aled Jones no longer presents The Choir (now sensibly re-named, Choir & Organ.)

 

But The Verb has always been high quality, and now that the host, Ian McMillan, features a focus on Spoken Word he has a regular guest: the wonderful Hollie McNish. Some years back I took part in a poetry slam – a rare thing for me. I performed my ‘Anti-Slam’ poem, in which I ‘slam’ – or, I would prefer to say, satirise – the poetry scene; in particular, the student slam-scene and the ‘slam voice’. I won’t print it here, for obvious reasons, except this bit:

           

            The poetry slam, the poetry slam –

            for the feisty young woman,

            and the angry young man.

 

The feature poet on this occasion was the afore-mentioned Hollie McNish who, after hearing my poem, changed her set in case she came across as a feisty young woman. Horrified at the thought of criticising someone I admired, I was also, secretly pleased that she’d taken in my words – if a little too to heart. I apologised after, and found her to be a warm-hearted and lovely person.

I was delighted to learn that she was now on my favourite wordy programme.

 

Friday nights are a funny time for Spoken Word events. I often used to find myself thinking, ‘why am I listening to The Verb on the radio when I could be hearing words performed live?’ The fact is, there aren’t so many of these gigs on Fridays in Edinburgh, especially now Rally & Broad are no more. And on Saturdays, fewer still (unless I’m missing a bunch of stuff?)

 

Keeping myself off the beaten track, and trying to squeeze poetry into unusual places, this year found me doing a regular slot at a certain Edinburgh Jazz Bar. Three singer/songwriter friends once had a Saturday tea-time acoustic slot, and I was invited to do some pop-up poetry between sets. It was a tricky gig, since the audience was never the same, and I could never be sure how well my poetry would go down. On the whole, the reception was good.

 

Sadly, that tea-time acoustic slot has been moved to Friday where the post-office crowd are less responsive. Which is ironic since Friday, for office-workers, is POETS-day:

 

Piss

Off

Early

Tomorrow’s

Saturday

 

So instead, I stay in and listen to The Verb which, in November, celebrated 35 years of Spoken Word. It seems that this novel phenomenon isn’t that new! As someone said, either on The Verb or The Essay, on Radio 3: “It’s been the same old shit since Shakespeare!”

 

I get irritated when some younger performers claim that they’ve rejuvenated poetry. If they ask a classroom of kids, “Who thinks poetry’s boring?” they’ll get a cheerful ‘Yeah!’ since it is a leading question anyway. But to perform what they think is ‘better’ poetry is arrogant... especially if it is their own.

Offer school students Chaucer, Catullus, Shakespeare, Byron, or Larkin at their sauciest and these young people will never say poetry’s boring again.

 

What’s important here is, whether you write on the page or for the stage (and this heated debate will rage ’til old age) what cannot be compromised is craft. As John Agard – a doyen of the early Spoken Word scene – said on that episode of The Verb in November, when talking about the early days of the scene:

 

Something interesting was happening. It wasn’t a ‘dismissing’ of literary poetry, because I’m a firm believer – no matter how stylish you are on stage; no matter how much charisma you have physically – if you don’t apply craftsmanship and let your words resonate, it will be a fleeting, momentary experience.

Every so often in the spoken word community in Scotland, a discussion occurs debating the various habits and traits among performers. The one that most riles me is when a poet steps up on stage announcing, “Here’s one I wrote on the bus this afternoon,” or something similar. Every performance – whether of a single poem, a five-minute open-mic slot, a full feature-set or a seemingly impromptu recital – should be crafted as carefully as possible.

 

Perhaps that’s just me and my classical background. You wouldn’t see a singer or actor stand on stage and say, “Oh: what shall I do now. Oh yes, that one about the...” and then trot out a performance that they cobbled together earlier in the afternoon.

 

On that same programme, John Agard said, “It’s very crucial – in this celebration of ‘the word’ as utterance, and as spoken, and performed: we don’t forget that Shakespeare is a performance poet.”  Not the ‘same old shit’ then. To perform poetry that aspires to Shakespeare, just as all art should aspire to the condition of music, is no bad thing to aim for.

 

I’m not saying I’m immune to the foibles and failures of poetry performance. Besides my penchant for props, pictures, playing a recorder and occasionally bursting into song, I am also prone (apparently) to over-long introductions. From time to time I turn this into a feature; other times, I just launch in. But the important thing in this is learning to read the room.

 

That said, a poem should be able to speak for itself, so my long introduction to the poems in this post has already shot itself in the foot. Yet sometimes it’s good to have a bit of background. There may be references to learn, unusual words to gloss, or an amusing back-story to bring to the fore – these may illuminate the poem if performed live, off-page.

 

Here, then, are some more of my poems from the sequence written for my good friend and muse; 26 sestudes on doors, friendship, and journeys between the two.

 

 

26 Doors Between My House and Yours...

 

The first requires more than a few musical references, so I will post the poem first and then, in a retro-introduction, gloss all the pieces of music with the help of Youtube!

 

Gymnasium, Pleasance Courtyard

 

Kate Bush had doors opened that

she thought were shut for good…

 

Peter Gabriel walked through the

FRONT DOOR of his Big Heaven…

Bob Dylan kept knock-knocking.

 

Schubert shut the door and, like

Vaughan Williams’ vagabond, he

wrote ‘gute nacht’ upon the gate.

 

While Howell’s Little Door beheld

the gift of Life and Death: eternity.

Lift up the latch to this epiphany.

 

Gymnasium, Pleasance Courtyard

Kate Bush had doors opened that

she thought were shut for good…

 

Peter Gabriel walked through the

FRONT DOOR of his Big Heaven…

 

Bob Dylan kept knock-knocking.

 

Schubert shut the door and, like

Vaughan Williams’ vagabond,

he wrote ‘gute nacht’ upon the gate.

 

While Howell’s Little Door beheld

the gift of Life and Death: eternity.

Lift up the latch to this epiphany.

 

 

The second poem needs less introduction or explanation: it’s all in the poem. My only addition is to mention that, not only was my father born 81 years ago, on December 24^th he entered his eighty-second year – and is still going strong!

 

Substation, Carnegie Street
 

 

You have to love this city!

It’s crammed with hyperbole;

much of it a front, or folly.

Take this substation for example:

a grand façade for something

so perfunctory, to gauge electricity.

Even the warning, ‘Danger of Death,’

seems to over-state it’s claim.

Only the date above the door

says something more – to me.

It is the year my father was born.

 

And the last of my doors for this year has a valedictory tone. While these poems (and photos) celebrate a particular friendship as well as the symbolism of doors, this poem – I feel – has a universality about it which – hopefully – speaks to anyone who reads this ranty, grumpy blog. The sign above this door, translated from the Latin, reads ‘May you enter in peace, and exit in Health.’
 

84, Canongate

 

 

      PAX INTRANTIBUS

      SALUS EXEUNTIBUS

 

We enter and we exit.

Sometimes we hide

behind closed doors

for fear of what’s outside;

othertimes, for reasons

much the same,

we venture far too far

beyond the frame,

eager to learn more.

Sometimes the door

is locked within;

othertimes, outwith.

So be it. Amen, I say.

I wish you peace, health,

but above, far, far above,

I wish you love.

 

Whoever you are, wherever you are, I wish you a peaceful and healthy New Year.