Read at an open mike in a Borders book store in Islington. They still have a copy of my collection on the shelf in there, same one that was there two months ago.
Anyway, I don’t normally do open mike, even though I host it, and wow, I’m going to be a lot nicer to the open mikers from now on. I turned up because my good mate James Byrne was doing a feature slot at the end of the evening and I also had a few flyers for my own event to toss about. I think I was first up, so I got up there and read a polemic about self help culture, followed by one I knocked out yesterday about watching gorillas on TV and watching foxes on a railway line.
The entire audience were poets, who spent most of my set flicking through their own stuff to see what they would read. Combined with that, there was the hubbub of the in store Starbucks and the staff tannoy system adding some interesting ambience to the performance.
Sometimes, being on stage or behind a mike can be a lonely experience. When it’s good and you’re on form and the audience are up for it, you feel like you’ve found the cure for cancer. But when you’re bad it doesn’t matter whether the audience are good and when the audience are bad it doesn’t matter whether you are good. There’s a great story about Larry David getting up on stage during his stand up days, taking one look at the crowd, saying No, and walking back off the stage. That’s the sign of a man who has learnt all he needs to about speaking in public.
I’ve performed at squat parties with trustafarian punkers booing me. I’ve stood there on stage, reading at the same steady space, lapping up their hatred. When you’ve decided the audience are wankers and you’re getting grief off them, it can be a wonderful and liberating experience. You know deep down that if you were mediocre, they wouldn’t be booing. So, you’re either very good or very bad, and I consider both to be an achievement.
I pride myself that I’ve never stormed off stage once, I’ve always believed that you can be spoilt by a good show and expect the next audience to love you. There is always something to be learnt from a bad show.
A lot of poets make some kind of acknowledgement at the end of a poem to let the audience know they’ve finished, some say cheers or thank you, others nod or make some kind of gesture. I’ve stopped doing this, apart from perhaps slowing down and annunciating the end of the poem as I read it. If someone hasn’t listened to me, that’s fine, but they don’t have to clap just because I’ve given them the signal to do so. Some of my best audiences have been the quiet ones, they’re the ones that come up and talk about the poems in detail afterwards, most importantly, they’re the ones that end up buying the book.
Tonight the duchess will be reading at The Island Queen, again in the fancy manor of Islington. There will be some good readers including Clare Pollard , Francesca Beard and Jonathan Asser. Other legends and good mates of mine like Hugo Williams, Salena Saliva Godden, Tim Wells and Roddy Lumsden should be in the crowd. They’ve got Leffe on tap and Duvel in the fridge, so not being part of the line up won’t be problem for me tonight, heh heh.