Poetry Slam Grand Final BBC at the Edinburgh Festivals

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Helloooo!

Hello!

Wow! There's lots of people here.

There's people here, Sophia, we're fine.

Welcome to the BBC 2014 Edinburgh Festival Slam.

My name's Kevin Cadwallender, and I'm one of your hosts for tonight.

I'm going to bring on my co-host in a minute, because...

- ..I get really tired. - AUDIENCE: Awww!

And sometimes I just need some, erm, enthusiasm.

So I'm going to bring to the stage my co-host, Sophia Walker,

who is the current BBC Slam champion...

until about, ooh, quarter past ten.

Here she is. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Thank you!

Erm, there are many other things to say about Sophia.

They're all irrelevant.

They were irrelevant, but she is a Saboteur award winner

for her show in the Edinburgh Festival.

There are many, many things to talk about.

- (WHISPERING) Free show! - Free shows at the Fringe.

You know...

when it starts, I might even take my coat off.

AUDIENCE: Whoo!

Hold on to your pocket. It's getting serious in here already.

HE SCOFFS How can you cope with the excitement?

Erm, before we begin the slam proper, we have judges...

for slams. Did you know that? Yes, we do.

Not them.

That's Mike, who's doing the scorekeeping.

How do?

We've called him Vorder Man.

And this is Meera, who's doing the timekeeping.

Without a whistle.

And one of our judges is Eleanor Livingstone,

who's the festival director of StAnza,

which is one of the... oh, the biggest festivals...

well, certainly the biggest poetry festival in Scotland

and maybe the entire universe.

So, to the stage, Eleanor Livingstone.

APPLAUSE You can do better than that.

Come on! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Good evening!

Poetry doesn't get any more competitive than a slam.

But all poets have to sell their poetry.

So this is a suggestion of one way of doing that.

This poem is...

Sales Pitch.

This poem has been designed

To maximise your textual experience

It's constructed from a special fabric

As soft and unlikely as moths' wings

Woven into strong lines

And injected with pockets of brilliant white space

It will fill your garden with daffodils in April

And birdsong every evening

When you pass the window, it will wave

It won't melt in the sun and drip...

drip...

drip

No sticky fingers

It will keep you warm in bed on winter nights

In July, it will waft cool words over sweating limbs

And even make you sigh softly or shout out

When you're coming to the last line

But only...

if you buy it.

This is my microphone stand. It doubles as a Zimmer frame.

Our second judge for tonight is Fay Roberts. Whoo!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And, erm...Fay Roberts runs Hammer & Tongue,

a great spoken-word night, in Cambridge.

She has Other Voices show at the Festival - go and see that -

and Allographic Press, many other things.

Fay Roberts! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello, everyone. You all ready for a fantastic night?

- AUDIENCE: Yes! - Oh, yes, I think so.

Erm, the thing about poetry is it's something we use

to express those things that we find difficult to say in other words,

those dark, those difficult things.

It's those things that we use to say, "Hey, I hope you get this,

"but I also hope that you don't,

"because I hope you haven't been through this darkness."

This isn't one of those kind of poems.

This, in fact, is my one and only bona fide love poem...

that I...share with the public.

It's called Song To The Sea.

A glance disarms my invention

My tongue tangles itself, tripping me to drown headlong in two eyes

Like the sea at sunrise -

the exact colour of a long, drawn-out summer dawn in Orkney,

reflected.

Brain neglected, I happily bob and sway

Shamelessly - well, nearly - adrift in the sea of your regard.

That small shame

That crimson shame threads through the blue

Like spice - cutting those cool sensations

with hot, sharp intentions -

The edge to every catching breath

Striking deeper and deeper into my chest

with every push and cresting wave

and every tug and sighing release.

Oh, my love, for you I'd turn sailor

Learn to read the weather of your ways

And ride the tides of your affections.

No longer shipwrecked, I'd learn...

No longer shipwrecked, I'd reconstruct your gifts -

Those glances given, smiles bestowed and words exchanged

Then, on that craft of sighs and hungry nights

I'd traverse you until I lost

All sight of land

And there, rocked on the belly of the murmuring mystery

I'd weave my net of words and music and cast to catch the moonlight

Glinting from your wavetops, and bring it home with me

Come, mermaid, and I'll sing to you

To tell you of the love between the elements.

You'd see me true and sure to you - holding, encircling

Delineating but never limiting

Smiling as again and again you throw yourself into my arms

And run your fingers down my cheek

With a sigh like all the world's hurt...

..easing.

Thank you. Have a great night. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Thank you, Fay. Our third judge and final judge is Michelle Madsen.

- Whoo! - AUDIENCE: Whoo!

Michelle Madsen's a poet and journalist.

She runs Hammer & Tongue in London,

which is kind of the UK's biggest poetry network, really.

So...

..let's get her to the stage.

She's read on four continents,

so she may as well read on the continent of Scotland.

I didn't do geography.

Michelle Madsen! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello. I hope that you have a very fabulous evening here.

So, you heard a love poem from Fay.

This is a bit more of a sort of anti-love poem.

This is more along the lines

of you met someone who is the perfect person for you

and then you meet their girlfriend.

The night you said, "Beautiful"

I laughed, my ribs out

In great bowers of bent, roped bone which broke from me

Choking my protests in calcified smiles

Beaching eventually on the ashen fireside tiles.

And I thought that night

I thought, "This is all a tremendous joke."

That night, we built a table out of those marble arcs

And lined it with the lace of ancient brides

And the pink silk of pigs' ears

Which pricked up to hear you laugh that thick, rich mirth

Which stoppered all our wounds in a liniment of tumbling decibels.

That night, your generosity could have tempted retiring icebergs

Into the sweltering gulf

Where petrified starfish would ease in the aching meltwater.

That night, your generosity could have begged a pause

from a heaving coal train's snort and mass

Better than an entire horizon of red flags

held up by 29 boiler-suited protesters.

That night, you wore your generosity stitched around your neck

in a cravat of courtesy.

I searched in the arrows of the print for a caveat of infidelity

Made out and pointing to me

But you soothed the edges of her sadness

Her night fizz balked at you

With the tight-sprung release of so many spring lambs

Those boundless, leaping mutes bleating soundlessly into the dawn

And I stand alone and leave you with a gift of seven lemons.

Strung up to dry in the August heat, they have lost their bitterness

Tanned by the sun, they are almost sweet

You palm the fruit carefully

As if its blanched skin would bleach the humanity from your fingertips

But the fruit is innocent

And I will wait for years for the ears of your eyes to open

And the eyes of your ears to awake

And until then, I am forbidden

I will sit between you like an unbloodied Banquo freezing the air

I will make time still.

Thank you very much!

Well, that's my exercise over for this week.

Hello. And now we're going to start the slam proper.

Erm, but before we do that...

That's not really starting, then, is it?

- Well, kinda. - We're poets. We're supposed to be

- specific with words. - I discovered this.

This is The Slam Prayer,

which was found on the back of a beer mat in Chicago by Slam Papi.

Our slam, which art with Kevin and Sophia

Now that young Dawkins is in Tasmania

Loud be thy name

Thy winner come

Judges will be done

On earth as it is in Edinburgh

Give us this night the gift of memory

And forgive us our swearwords

As we will eventually forgive the winner who shall come before us

And lead us not into the Banshee Labyrinth

Or to shows which keep us out without sleep for days

Unless it be your will

And we can blame you or you can sign our medical certificates

For thine is the BBC Slam final

May we be powerful and glorious

And enthusiastic with the obvious exception of Kevin

For ever and ever

Or at least until about ten o'clock

When all hell will break loose

- Amen... - AUDIENCE: Amen!

..And A-woman.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

So, erm, Kevin mentioned foul language in there,

and you've had a foul-language warning, but this is a poetry slam.

These poets are going to come up here... This is bloodthirsty.

People are going to be getting into some tough topics.

We don't know what they're going to say.

Some of it might be quite risky. We apologise to you in advance.

But this is the point where you brace yourselves.

That said, you are a very important part of these events.

I was listening to you back there during the judges' poems,

and while their poems were excellent you were just woefully disappointing.

You need to react. One third of the poets' score is your reaction.

I mean, you're about as much as Kevin is.

A little bit more enthusiasm from everyone in this tent

would not go amiss.

SHE CLEARS HER THROAT

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

About time!

OK, well, all the other rules are rather boring, so forget them.

This is the important one. He can do them.

What we need you to do is we need you to react.

So a poet comes on this stage and he does something rather good,

pretty impressive. You know, way above school quality.

This is like "free bottle of wine with dinner" good.

What does that sound like?

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

All right. The next poet comes on.

This is the equivalent of having

Caitlin Moran and Sue Perkins permanently in your living room.

WILD CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

All right. The next poet comes on.

This poem was so earth-shatteringly transformative

you have been promoted at work.

We are now living in a country

where Edinburgh has the climate of Tenerife.

The world has shifted. What does that sound like?

EVEN LOUDER CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

We need to keep the energy right up here all night.

I did this last year. This is terrifying.

The least you owe those poets back there is that level of noise.

The rules are the poets come on in the order that they've been selected

and they have three minutes in each round.

So we go through the first round. But first,

we need a further sacrifice. We do need a further sacrifice.

For the gods of poetry.

OK, so our sacrificial poet is the Farrago UK Slam champion,

Sara Hirsch. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I meet you at Natalie's birthday

In a Soho swanky far-too-fancy bar

You know who you are

You're the friend of a friend with the flamboyant tie

And the pinstripe perfect suit

"The corporate guy"

I ask your name and you reply With a confident "Simon...

"But you can call me Si"

And I sigh to myself and I try to like you

We're chatting casually

I'm clutching an overpriced G & T and you're telling me

That you work in IT And your office is over in Battersea

And THAT'S how you know Natalie!

Oh, I see, she does your marketing for you, does she?

"Ha! How funny," I laugh Even though it isn't remotely

I order another drink and so do you

And then comes the question

"So, what do you do?"

And for a moment, I consider lying Tell you I work in admin

But you're staring at me and smiling And there's no point in denying it

And before you know it I'm replying with...

"I'm a children's entertainer"

And I know you want to laugh Most people do

And then, so predictably You look at me and frown

"So, you're a clown"

And it's in that moment that I want to say this

You know on Sunday morning When you're snoring in your bed

Recovering from your nine to five?

Well, instead, I drive

To a village hall somewhere off the M25

And when I arrive I'm awaited with bated breath

Alison's turning five

And, yes, I dress up And, no, I don't wear the make-up

But I do have massive shoes

And, yes, I know the hokey cokey inside out

And even though I know it's not really what it's all about

For two hours on a Sunday For me it kind of is

And for these kids It pretty much sums up what life is

And if you listen to the words, it really should be what life's about

You have to put your whole self in in life to get your whole self out

Do you... LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Do you put your whole self in, Simon? Because I do

And when I do, I shake it all about!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And, yes, you correctly assume That I make balloons

But not just any balloons

I can make a bike out of balloons

And for Alison, that is literally the best thing she could hope for

And I make that happen

I give a five-year-old the best thing she can imagine

Before you've even had your breakfast

I can sing all the words to # I like to move it, move it #

And if that's not a skill Well, I'd like to see you do it

I can dance to Gangnam Style I can make a crying toddler smile

I can keep 40 kids completely silent...

If only for a while

And, yes, I have a degree

But I've also got conga lines and magic on my CV

And, yeah, I know nothing about IT

But I am fully qualified in puppetry

I can limbo dance and disco dance

And I can do the cancan dance

Dressed as a princess

For four minutes straight

Whilst blowing bubbles and simultaneously making sure

That none of the kids touch my stuff or steal my stuff or break my stuff

Or kick me or each other

In other words, I can multitask And before you ask

Yes, I can make water disappear And just to be clear

I love my job

I mean, I get to play on a daily basis

And judging by the look on the children's faces

I'm pretty damn good at it

And it's that look that makes me want to do it

That "happy and you know it and you really want to show it" reaction

I mean, talk about bloody job satisfaction!

But I don't say any of that

I never do!

I normally just look at the ground and nod

And mumble...

"Yeah.

"Yeah, I'm just a clown."

Thank you!

LOUD CHEERING

Kevin didn't tell you this part,

but she is currently ranked the third-best poet in the world.

- AUDIENCE: Whoo! - Yeah!

That's pretty cool.

So, we have seven poets competing for tonight's title.

I am going to give you an introduction to each of them...

which they wrote.

They probably don't want me to have told you that part!

They are going to come on in this order, and this is the last time

we are going to tell you their order, so pay attention to these names.

First up is Kevin McLean. He is a member and organiser of Loud Poets.

He won the Edinburgh Lit Soc Slam, the Soapbox Lightning Slam,

Lach's Superhoot and competed in the Scottish National Slam Championship.

We asked them to write one sentence about themselves.

Kevin McLean is one of the Loud Poets,

though his loudness can also be witnessed

in these following areas of his life -

the pre-dawn ritual sacrifice,

the moments following a Prada reveal

and "right now, look, he's behind you."

Next up will be Charlie Dupree.

Charlie is a spoken word and rap artist

known for combining literary influences

with a rhythmic characterised delivery

described by Annexe magazine as "a unique brand of poetic wizardry".

On the spoken word circuit and festivals such as Latitude,

Secret Garden Party, Soundwave and Troyfest,

he's supported Scroobius Pip, Ghostpoet, Kate Tempest,

is a multiple slam winner

and three-time Hammer & Tongue national finalist.

His sentence is a pulsing concoction of literary influences

and kinetic verbal onslaughts.

I don't know what half those words mean. That's fantastic.

Kirsten Luckins is the Northeast programme coordinator for spoken word

organisation Apples and Snakes, she is a performer and poet in her right,

often looking at themes of spiritual, sexual and emotional identity.

She blogs at kirstenluckins.wordpress.com

and unfortunately you've missed it,

but she did an amazing show called The Moon Cannot Be Stolen,

it was on a national tour, it will probably go on another one,

look out for it, it's wicked.

David Lee Morgan has travelled the world

with his saxophone as a performance poet and street musician.

He has won many poetry slams, including the UK SLAM! Championships.

His 2013 spoken word show Science, Love And Revolution received

rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe and was featured at StAnza.

He is a long-standing member of the Writers' Guild,

has a PhD in creative writing, lives in in London, grew up in the USA,

was born in Berlin and has been published

in really a very long list of places.

Toby Campion was part of Georgetown University's Poetry Slam Team,

which competed in the national American slam.

He came back to the UK, he set up a slam team at Edinburgh University

and they won the British University national slam championships!

That's kind of cool. Go, Toby.

Toby Campion is an exciting, up-and-coming spoken word artist

from Leicester, currently based in Edinburgh.

Agnes Torok is a spoken word poet, workshop leader,

event organiser and human.

She is part of running Open Mic Soapbox,

events collective Inky Fingers and Loud Poets.

She has won slams in two languages

and been a sacrificial poet on three continents.

That's pretty cool.

She did an amazing show called Sorry I Don't Speak Culture,

which has also closed,

but was the talk of every single poet on the Fringe, so watch out for her.

Agnes spits and slams in two languages

about life, hope and political ignorance.

Sometimes, if you're lucky, she's even funny.

Our last poet up tonight is Amanda Baker.

Five proudest poetry moments in reverse order.

Five - delivering a set despite falling on my face on stage

at the Playhouse Theatre, Newcastle.

Four - Richard Madeley chortling at my Royal Wedding poem on radio

then chickening out of reading it.

Three - being short listed in the 2011

Bridport International Poetry Prize with a poem about grief.

Two - deciding after my second experience of slamming

never, ever to do another slam EVER, EVER, EVER.

Um, Amanda? LAUGHTER

One - winning a big orange

and yellow satin rosette for a poem in a birthday card

I made for Beatrix Potter at my local library when I was six.

AUDIENCE: Aww!

Amanda Baker, laughmaker, syntax shaker, word whittler,

tonsil tickler, author, blogger, poet.

First up to the stage, kicking off the slam,

please put your hands together - Kevin McLean.

CHEERING

Once she said I was precious to her like a diamond

Never realising that I would rather be

The rough stuff you find them in

And I know she meant it as a compliment

But how do you compare a spec of glitter

To the substance of a continent?

Honestly, diamonds are fucking stupid

LAUGHTER

"Hey, sweetheart, I got you this ring to prove what my love is worth

"All I had to do was rip open the earth and enslave a whole race

"And their children, and their children, and their children...

"Will you marry me?"

Well, that's not the kind of shiny that I want to be

She said, "OK, then you're the best thing since sliced bread"

I told her, "If I was a loaf, I'd be 100% crust

"The part that nourishes us No pre-sliced white fluff

"I would be uneven and filled with seeds

"And you would have to cut into me to see what treasures I bleed"

So she went for something simpler

She said, "I love the way your hand fits perfectly in mine", and, er...

I didn't believe her. LAUGHTER

And it's not that I don't appreciate it a lot

It's that my stomach churns

At the thought of accepting a compliment so grand

While remaining so self-conscious

About my size, my hair, my misshapen hand

And maybe that's why sometimes I lack

And the compliments that I choose to give back, see...

She never felt at ease when I would play her ribs like piano keys

She would beg me "Please, stop...I'm too thin"

Couldn't see that all I ever wanted was for her to sing along

Couldn't see that when I kissed the scars on her wrist

I was saying, "You're strong"

Because I understand that the war waged against oneself

Is the hardest one to fight

And so somewhere along the line I guess we both just lost sight

Of what the other was trying to say Which in its simplest terms is

"YOU...are pretty great"

So the next time someone I love tells me I'm their needle in the hay

I will try and feel less like I'm under attack

I'll try and see that while everyone else is wearing gold

Sometimes it's silver that stands out in the stack.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Things

Everywhere I look, I see things

Things, things, things encircle my body like a big stack of rings

But what are things?

The things that we sense or something else?

Are the things really things for the things themselves?

Or are they just things for us? Do we make the things things

By giving them their thingness? Are they just ours

Or can they be their own? Do the toys stay alive when you leave the room?

Stuff...

LAUGHTER

Everywhere I look, I see stuff

Stuff, stuff, stuff, am I swimming in an ocean of subatomic dust?

Both time and space have a liquidy feel

They're not as solid as they wish they were

But getting back to stuff

Now, most of the stuff we have our own words for

But do they really relate to the stuff that they serve for?

Or are they just sounds?

Sounds that distinguish stuff on the grounds

That their English invention is for the intention to use to apply

To particular sections of stuff

But maybe language isn't enough to encompass what it means to be stuff

So things and stuff, things and stuff

Things in themselves become stuff for us

Ordered, arranged into causal space

As the flow of time forth when the thoughts give pace

So you're not to me now what you seemed to me then

Everything you are is rescreened in my head

Memories disagree when you meet up with friends

Cos the details run free in the bleed of your sense

The cup's half full on one day, half empty the next

It's the jester perception infecting its guests

Cos words and things have separate lives

Have separate potential hidden inside

But I don't mind as long as every day I can bathe in the stuff

Swim in the things, wallow in the beauty of my surroundings

Paddle in the atoms of this totality of things and stuff

That make up this reality

But there's so much stuff

In my lifetime I can try as I might

But I won't have a hope of grasping the full scope of this

Awfully enormous exorbitant border

This raucously orderless ocean of stuff

And the same thing goes for every single one of us

We rush through our days in a haze of lust

But eventually, like diamonds We are cut with our own dust

Cos the human brain can't comprehend much

And everything it does is usually contentious

I'm just being charmingly observant, not pretentious

I can wax lyrically about the mystery

Far more things than are dreamt of in philosophy

See what you can, see what you got

With big black cloak draped over the top

Short for the truth, short for the real

Short for the juice behind the peel

Short for what's born inside your mind

Short for the whips and scorns of time

So I'll draw a line there

You've probably had enough

That is my ode to things and stuff.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

AUDIENCE: Whoo!

When it's getting...

Getting, getting, getting

Getting-ting-ting-ting-ting-ting- ting-ting-ting

Getting on for June

It will be monsoon, soon

When the rain - thin, pin rain

Rain - slap, drop rain

Fat, green bean rain

Double time, ring-ting rain

Rain tings, tin court

Slap-bang, pan court

Pantiles, sing songs

Terracotta pan-pan-pan

Stay on when the rains come

There's not a lot to do

Just talk a little tittle-tattle Listen to the palm tips rattle

And the dripping and the dropping And the drumming on the leaves

And the flowers For hours and hours and hours

Bougainvillea, pink... Pink, pink, pink, pink, pink, pink

And the rain - thin, pin rain

Rain - slap, drop rain

Fat, green bean rain

Double time, ring-ting rain

Rain tings, tin court

Slap-bang, pan court

Pantiles, sing songs

Terracotta pan Terracotta pan-pan-pan

Stay on when the rains come

The beaches are deserted -

Candolim, Calangute, Baga

Baga-baga-baga-baga-bag

Backpackers packed up, shooting through

Bombay butterflies gone back to Juhu

On the catamaran, the catamaran, the catamaran, the catamaran

And the rain - thin, pin rain

Rain - slap, drop rain

Fat, green bean rain

Double time, ring-ting, rain-rain tings

Thunder...

LAUGHTER

Tin court Slap-bang, pan court

Pantiles, sing songs

Terracotta pan, terracotta pan Terracotta pan-pan-pan

Cos when the rains come down

The rains come down in a rush

In a rush, drops are dripping, drips are dropping

From the drooping tips of palms On the paddies and the brollies

Of the people on the mopeds On the heads of the cattle

Like steam from a kettle Rain comes down

In a rush, in a crush

On the terracotta pan-pan-pan-pan-pan-pantiles

Of the veranda, the veranda, the veranda, the veranda

The veranda, the ve-randa, the ve-ran-da

The ve-ran...

..da.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The Congo Free State 1885 to 1908

We are the hands that hold nothing We are the hands strung on a string

We are the hands counted in bullets

Body and bloodless bone and skin

We are the hands...

It's not cruelty, it's logic, simple logic

Guns do not kill people, bullets kill people

We give you bullets for killing Africans

Not white people

So here's the deal

You fire a bullet You give me a hand

You hit the target You cut off a hand

You fire and miss You cut off a hand

Any hand, so long as it's African

This is how the rubber is harvested

You take a knife and cut into the bark

Cut into the limb and the tree weeps

Cut into the root and it drowns in tears

You smear the tears onto your body

The tears dry into a second skin

When we rip skin from skin

You howl in agony

It's not cruelty, it's accounting

There were too many bullets and never enough hands

So they became valuable

And one severed hand is pretty much like any other

So they became exchangeable

They functioned as currency

In other words, hands were money

Slavery, ivory, rubber and gold

Look at the photos from the days of old

When the Congo was owned by Leopold

Look at the villagers lined up in rows

Look at the stump at the end of the wrist

Nothing but air where the blade has kissed

Not even girls and boys were missed

Cold hand, tantalum, tungsten, tin I am the plague the wind blew in

The warrior leaders and the warrior peoples

Mulamba, Kandolo, Yamba Yamba

Kimpuki, Nzansu, Mulume Niama

The Boa and the Budja The Yaka and the Chokwe

The Sanga in the caves of Tshamakele

We blocked up the last cave and starved you for months

But you never gave up

We set fire to the mouth of the cave Still, you wouldn't surrender

You never surrendered So what?

I am the hand that grows back

Fist, fingers blossoming around your throat

Blood money coursing through my veins

I am the steamboat and the banknote The machine gun and the hedge fund

I am the World Wide Web of profit and loss, supply and demand

If you want me dead Don't cut off my hand

Cut off my head.

We are the hands that hold nothing We are the hands strung on a string

We are the hands counted in bullets

Body and bloodless, bone and skin

We are the hands

We have no teeth, no mouth, no tongue, but we speak truth

We are the bulletproof.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

This poem is a true story about me,

that I actually wrote when I was a baby.

I don't know if you know, but in England you only have 42 days

to name your baby before the state assigns it one.

I'm 41 days old, still anonymous, and I'm not happy about it.

Sitting in my crib

I'm a glass bottle

Parents throw names at me like ring-toss at the fair

But none stick

Do they blame me?

Hate me?

I know that they're angry

They keep getting in my face making babbling noises

And I'm like, "Back off or I'll pooh again."

We've been through the Biblical stage, the Noahs and the Peters

Through the international phase, Pierre, Pedro and Demetrius

Made it through the terrifying time where Ambrose was on the table

Apparently I'm too bouncy for a David

Too quite for a Daryl

I've too much hair for a Henry

And too much penis for a Carol

I'm too blond for a Jamie

Too grumpy for a Stan

And according to my Uncle Mikey

I'm too chubby to be a Dan

Not looking so skinny yourself, Michael

How's the second divorce going?

Are my features so obscene

That no combination of letters will rest easy upon them?

They named my sister quickly enough - Maxine

Little did they know in four years' time

Eminem will write a song about a prostitute crack-fiend

Called Maxine, who needs a vaccine

So joke's on you, Mum and Dad.

LAUGHTER

Am I destined to remain a nameless bottle for ever?

Will letters on the side of Starbucks cups and Coke cans

Never convince me that companies actually care about who I am?

Will there ever come a day when I walk down the street

And people think, "Yeah, he's got a name"?

I suppose that day is nearly upon me

Tomorrow a man in a grey suit behind a desk

Will call me something like "Stapler" or "Semi-colon"

But until then, I sit here

A glass bottle in a crib

No label to gender me

To dictate my characteristics

To be my success or downfall in this moment

I can be whatever I want to be

So maybe I don't want a name after all.

Or maybe they'll call me Toby at the last minute

and for the rest of my life will make "Toby or not Toby" jokes

Or tell me I share a name with their pet dog

Either way, I will smile and take it

Because the bottom line is

I'm not too chubby to be a Dan

A name is whatever you make it.

Thank you.

CHEERING

The old ladies in the hospital

They've got it all figured out

They crown you family when you were a stranger only a minute ago

And they talk about everything

All the good stuff

Like how nice the nurses are for bringing extra toast at night

And whose grandchild is meant to come for visiting hour today.

They joke about everything

"Why, I don't know what I ever did to that man Parkinson

"To have him give me his disease!"

Nothing is serious enough to take serious

When death may be at the door

These beds have been rolled around more than once before

And I don't know who left, or through what door

For me to earn a place

But I know I no longer need to earn it

Because the old ladies in the hospital have got it all figured out.

When things get rough

You talk about the worries and the scaries

And you get through them

One compliment, one smile and, yeah, one cup of tea at a time.

Ain't no each man to himself here

Ain't no survival of the fittest here

It's the survival of those most able to co-operate

The survival of those most able to care for more than themselves

It's the survival of us, collectively

What does it matter if I get better if you get worse?

How could I be winning if we are losing?

So it is with society

And so it is with ward 210

Because the old ladies in the hospital have got it all figured out.

When things get real rough

I mean, when things get real rough

When Jessie struggles to reach her straw

Only to get it stuck so far down her throat

She starts suffocating

And Nancy is too far away from her walker to reach her in time

And the rest of us have too many things hooked into our bloodstreams

To move when things get real rough.

You call for help.

Capital H.

But when helps come and helps help

You ask how help's doing today

Because no-one's life is easy.

Did help get some rest after her shift last night?

Has her youngest stopped crying from the toothache?

You listen to help too

Because we are all in this together

And the old ladies in the hospital have it all figured out

Because they are fearless in the face of fear

Because they will literally hang their laundry out in public

And flash each other by opening their gowns, daily

Before they will feel shameful in the face of shame

Because they put their hearts and minds and scars out in the open

You know you can trust them

With your life.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello, blue tent people.

My first offering for you tonight is rampant consumerism.

A while back, I was listening to a commercial radio station -

accidentally, obviously!

And an advertisement caught my attention

and the first line of this advertisement became

the opening of this poem which is called Aspirational Bathroom.

All of us aspire to have the most beautiful bathroom we can afford

If you want to be adored, get aboard, we'll get you credit-scored

To get this orgasmic quality in your voice

Simply make the right choice of dining room chairs

Singles or pairs

Want that sense of together?

Buy them in leather

Buy now, don't pay for years

No financial fears we want you to have it

We REALLY want you to have it

We don't see how you can live without it

Get it now.

To show your success, you must posses somewhere expensive to sit

Or your life will be shit

So come and indulge on this upholstered bulge

Here's a car that's sexy

Will do much more than go A to B

Empty highway, pretty house with a sweet, smiling spouse

Kids called Emma and Zack

Don't fight or puke in the back

For those girls and boys

Rooms full of toys made in sweatshops in Asia

Or risk the inevitable possibility they'll want to euthanise ya.

Then fly away to paradise

Smiling locals are so nice

Drink, servility and food?

Enhance the exotic mood

Because you deserve to have everything your heart may desire

Let it be to the very best bathroom that you aspire.

Thank you.

APPLAUSE

It's a lovely room, isn't it?

Lovely, kind of cubist fireworks.

Erm...

OK, well, that is the first round,

so what happens in the second round is the order is reversed

and they all come on again. But first, we need to...

I had a text from the god of poetry.

And it said it wasn't appeased yet.

So, we didn't really have anyone else we could sacrifice,

so what we thought we'd do is

bring on...the current BBC Slam champion.

CHEERING

So, welcome to the stage, Sophia Walker.

CHEERING

He says, "Faggots, man, took me a while to be OK with them

"But lesbians, never had a problem with lesbians."

If you ever address me directly

Forget you think lesbians are sexy

That you can somehow decide that dykes are fine

While gay men vile

Please, say what you mean

If you hate gay men then you hate me

So name me "faggot"

Faggot, noun, bundle of twigs

Faggot, noun, contemptuous term for a woman

Faggot, noun, disparaging and offensive reference

To a male homosexual

You claim your words are just figurative

That there's no linking hate to hate crime statistics

But each time you say, "Faggot," others use that as excuse

To bash faggots whilst standing up for your views.

You say, "Faggot," like there's no consequence

Like others aren't inspired by the ire you spit

To us, stone wall isn't a convenient surface for violence

You can't act like these attacks aren't actively happening.

Faggot, noun, 15th century

Bundle of twigs

Specifically the sticks used to set fire to heretics

Faggot, noun, 16th century

Contemptuous term for a woman

Inferring the twig definition

This reference to women as something awkward

That has to be carried

Meaning baggage

Meaning burden

Meaning worthless.

Faggot, noun, 20th century

Offensive and disparaging reference to a male homosexual

Which, to some, means "less than human"

Means carte blanche excuses to get violent and abusive

Keep the word faggot but mind how you use it

Meaning changes through evolving uses

What started as wood would grow through usage

Twigs branched out to meanings abusive.

We don't need to redefine

Words don't stay rooted

In time, we'll have re-sown the seeds of its usage

In origin, faggot twigs were lit and burned to ground

Then ashes turned the term to women

Burdens unbundled, women whittled, new beginnings

No longer worthless, the term yet again shifted

Gay men came victim

Love is fuel to flame when twigs turn matchstick wicked.

But through history, these ashes have led to same vision

Each time, revived, a fiercer Phoenix has risen.

Thank you.

CHEERING

Thank you, Sophia.

And now we're going to start the second round.

So, in reverse order, which means first up, Amanda Baker.

APPLAUSE

You look familiar. I know you.

OK, so second piece of observational, satirical, character-centred,

issue-orientated, randomly-topical, neo-contemporary, pseudo-retro,

variety-type, sketch-style, political-polemical,

depression-inspired, stand-up-comedy-theatre,

kind of, narrative, humorous, performance poetry for you.

This piece is called African Journalist In Britain.

People who were at the heats, I apologise,

I did do this one earlier in the week, but it's quite relevant.

As a nation, globally and historically,

we're absolutely mad about sticking

our noses into other people's business,

so this is my take on what it would be like the other way around.

I've come to Britain to study the natives of this land

From what I heard in Africa

Things were going grand

But I found the children were sick with swollen, bloated bellies

Suffering the syndrome ECSIFOT -

Eating crap, sitting in front of tellies.

I went to the town centre at night

I was shocked at what I saw

The people there were so sick

They could only lie down on the floor

This ailment made them vomit

They could not speak or move

Oxfam should start a charity here to help things improve

And in a nation with a history proud and imperial

The women could afford only dresses made of tiny pieces of material.

Your Mr Clegg sold his principals

Dragged them in the muck

In my country too, politicians don't give a...

Lot of consideration to the democratic process.

LAUGHTER

I will take this report back home

Show it to the people of my land

We will set up Help Britain scheme

She seems to need a hand

We will collect the things that are needed

And drop them in parcels by air

A bit of perspective, some humility

Cos they don't seem to have their fair share.

Thanks very much.

CHEERING

When did you realise?

How did your parents take it?

How did you know for sure you were straight?

Did you have a lot of straight role models?

Are all your friends straight too?

And how can you be sure though

If you've never had sex with, like, anyone of the same sex as you?

How can you be sure though if you've only had sex with, like,

A few people of the same sex as you?

How can you be sure though if you've never had sex?

Sorry, is this making you uncomfortable?

I've heard that straight people never have sex. Is that true?

I've heard that straight people have sex, like, all the time.

Is that true? Doesn't it ever bother you that you'll be able to have kids?

Like, even if you really don't want them?

You might still have kids one day.

Sorry, is this too personal?

Would you say that there was, like,

A particular trauma in your childhood

That led to you being straight?

Do you think that being straight is more of a nature or a nurture thing?

Do you believe that being straight is a choice?

Oh, my God, I've always wanted a straight best friend!

We should totally hang out

And do prescribed straight family activities next week.

So, let's just get this straight though...

If you have a partner of the opposite sex...

Does that mean that you're straight?

Or just straight-curious?

Or is it like a phase thing?

So, if you're straight, does that mean that you like to eat food?

Occasionally listen to music?

Have hobbies? Oh, my God, me too!

So, if you're straight,

Do you have to, you know, do you have to dress straight?

If you're straight do you have to go on the straight parade?

Is it true that bi-sexual women only make up with men

To get women's attention?

How does your being straight fit into your religious beliefs?

Is it really hard to be both straight and white?

Sorry. Is this offensive?

I can tell straight jokes, right? I mean, I have a straight friend.

I have this one totally cute straight friend.

I should totally hook you guys up.

Did you ever watch that one TV series?

You know, that one about straight people?

Do you know there's one other straight person that I know.

Do you hate men?

Do you hate women?

Do you hate yourself?

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

It's not a brainstorm. It's a mind map. Yeah?

They're not trannies and benders They're gays and transgender

Coloured people are now people of colour.

So the feelings towards them and the problems they face

Might no longer exist and have all been erased, right?

I'm left sceptical

Because while slums and favelas have magically transformed

Into places of mass dwelling

The perceptions of those in the towers above looking down

Looking down haven't faltered.

And what's more those inside

Still denied, still deprived remain unaltered.

Remain hungry.

As their oppressors eat on in the extra time

They've been bought away from the global spotlight

While campaigners congratulate themselves

On a false victory of change.

A lexical distraction that pauses real action, nothing has changed.

The spelling is different but the semantics remain

Connotations cling on like mould on a wall

While new phrasing and political correctness

Whitewash over it all

And the rule-makers and their mouthpieces stand by.

Sleeves rolled up and toolkits out

Ready to put decking over the Third World

And cover riots with a trellis and reassurance

So that all we're left with

Is developing countries and urban disorders.

And they'll slap on the varnish and change what's expected

So this word lasts a while before hate corrosion infects it

But for now, the paint is fresh

And the wall has been whitened but the bricks are still rotten

And I am still frightened We have missed the point.

The point is, it's not what you build

It's the feelings behind it

Because you can dig up your roses and put down hydrangeas

But they're in the same dirt

And sooner or later the vines of opposition and the weeds of fear

Will wrap their way round to give an all-too-familiar veneer.

Committing racially motivated unprovoked, actual bodily harm

On a man of ethnic minority heritage is still Paki-bashing.

The boy who was a retard at birth, a spastic at three

Handicapped in school, special needed in adolescence,

Is today mentally disabled.

Who knows what he'll be tomorrow

But I bet someone will still laugh As he walks down the street

At the twinge in his hand and drool on his cheek.

He doesn't need another change of label

We need a change of mind.

For rule-makers to put down their paintbrush

And stop the orthographic DIY.

Stop hammering new words over the same old cracks

Cos our dictionaries are bursting but we're still off track, yeah

We don't use the N word

Or the P word and for that we are better

But the Q word and Z word We're running out of letters

Instead of moving lips, start opening eyes and broadening minds

Because they aren't changing minds

Changing language like this is doomed for demise.

I'm not saying our foundations haven't dramatically improved

But there are still some blocks that have yet to be moved

So if you want to make a change where semantics can't hide it

Try fixing the problem Not the words that describe it.

Thank you.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Crazy Santas occupy the World.

Imagine you were this cool old guy who loved children, truly and deeply

Loved every beat of the way they stiff little tick-tock walk

And the monkey talk and the roar of the buzz and the whisper

The butterfly why of honey and wonder and thirsty hunger

They give you their hand with everything in it

And your heart lurches into...

Give me a place to stand and I will move the universe

Squeeze it down into the perfect toy to light the smile inside your eye.

Would give you anything.

Imagine this

Multiplied by every newborn smile in a heartbreak world

If you could be Santa for every boy and girl

Imagine a magic workshop powered by twinkle of the eye drive

Quantum indecision and reindeer jive

Every elf in all 11 dimensions drugged and demented

But working with manic precision

A just-in-the-nick-of-time engine

That's why they call you Saint Nick

And in the back of the sleigh, a bag big enough

To carry its weight in wishes. This is it.

The delicious impossible minute when every child on the planet is given

The one perfect gift that says, "This is your world and you belong in it."

Imagine you could do this one wonderful thing.

But for the rest of the year that was all you could do

And the toys would go out and be used up and worn out and broken

And that was good, the way it should be

That was why you would build them.

Toys were made to be broken, not children.

But in the war-torn days of the in-between year

The names would change but it was always King Herod's reign.

And the soldiers would go from door to door with bloody swords

While you all worked on through tears in horror

Knowing you could never make it right

No matter how magical that one perfect night.

What would you do?

Would you go on working when you could only give the one magic minute?

Better than nothing and who could argue with arithmetic?

Or would you go crazy with the weight of anger and grief?

Would you feel responsible?

Would you feel like a thief living a life so sweet

Full of hard work done well when so many children were living in hell?

Some people can't ever get enough

Give them a minute and they want eternity

The kind who can never be happy with even a scrap of cruelty

They go crazy at the thought of one child dying a needless death

They can't rest

They got to be moving, making more than a difference

Making everything different.

These are the crazy Santas who never give up, crazy Santas, mad with love.

Crazy Santas get up at the crack of dawn

Work boots on, march out onto the field, into the street

Get beat, fight back, get shot at, don't stop, live life hot-wired.

Crazy Santas are dangerous But it's a dangerous world

Some people can't help fighting back

Whenever they see the weak attacked

They live like champions in the Army of the never-had-a-chance.

Some of them pick up the gun Some of them live like saints

All of them are powered by love

All of them make mistakes

Some say we need more magic minutes That's the best we can do

But I believe we need to reach out for eternity

We need to be crazy Santas who never give up

Crazy Santas, mad with love.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Talking Myself Round.

The sudden drop in the temperature of your attentions

Has left me feeling stranded like a lizard.

Caught out by nightfall.

Frost hobbled. Frozen.

Six diamond inches from safety.

Six diamond inches, six million light years

It's all the same when you're helpless.

I must have come a long, cold way from my home if yours is the hand

I wish would reach out and squeeze blood from my stony heart.

If yours is the body heat

The arcing sun in the radiant daydreams of my reptilian mind

I find there are galactic wastes between us.

I have launched my Voyager heart and it is an obsolete probe

Lopsided and hairy with chaotic antennae

Beeping out some futile code.

Beep.

Do you like me?

Beep.

Can you hear me?

Beep.

Are you still there?

Beep.

I'm turning cold flanks in the void. Solitary.

I've missed your orbit entirely.

Well... We're not suited anyway.

We are completely different shapes, you and me

I am a fractal kind of female My mess proliferates

And you are so Euclidean

So very, very straight You are a cube.

You are a white cube.

You are a...perfect white cube.

Six sides neatly spackled

And I am slum-built, 17-dimensional

Ramshackle held together with bits of string

But I have a theory

I think the thing about white cube spaces is, you can't live in them

And the thing about shantytowns is that people can and do live

Cheek by jowl in a squalid Eden of sheds

Survival ritual carnival Meat between our teeth.

I think you think the world would be more beautiful if it was tidied up

It's not a toy box

It's poetry and puss

Bacteria and butterflies

Us killing them, them killing us

It is everything.

You go ask Shiva on the burning gats.

He is grey-faced and greasy

With cremation ash and rendered human fats

Red eyed and rabid, he gnaws the holy flesh

From the black bones of the world

Untroubled by asymmetry or dust bunnies.

He holds forever in his mind the entire river's course

From the fetid, fecund mangroves of the delta

Back to the crystal glacier source

The mighty Ganges is just one dread

In the big blue topknot on his big blue head.

And we... BUZZER

Aw.

..are all just bodies of water. You and me, we are sacks of shit.

Spindled around our walking guts We are miracles, we are profane.

The birth cord sets us off like tops

But when the force that spins us stops...

Crash down, splashdown

We are all just dirt again.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hey, guys. Right, so this next one is what happens

if you read too much existentialism.

I'm sitting on a train.

The window is ablaze I'm feeling tickled by my day

About which there has been little to complain.

And I start...to chuckle.

Nothing over the top

No diaphragm expulsions

Just a little titter shapes my face's happy muscles

Elation laps and fumbles at my brain state's traffic bustle

As I share a friendly giggle with myself for absent trouble.

But then the planet plunges

As I realise with abject disgust that...

I'm being watched.

Watched.

Looked at. Observed.

Two beady eyes toad-like in the puddingy countenance

Of some crook, some turd, fixed on me

His lips tensed in a wry derisory smirk.

Instantaneously my eyes avert away from this tyke this jerk

Who's just used one look to decry my mirth.

I do all I can not to cry out berserk

There's fire in my bones Every fibre is groaning.

How dare he invade this most private of moments!

I try to now focus on passing hill things, farms and buildings

But I'm too painfully aware that this perverse little incident

Has caused my whole cosy little world to disintegrate.

His gaze has blown the pixels from my screen of pure bliss

Now they've regrouped to run from me and flee towards him.

He's torn through my contentment, my blessedness, my reverie

His stare like a sword through my self-tended ecstasy

He wrenches me away from my self where I'm meant to be

As his object in the midst of his reverie.

Now he drives every stride like a knight on his nag

I find I with his eyes am in-flight from my am

I can't be my version of me Now I'm his version of me

I'm redrawn in his kagita He prefers me to be

My meanness is chief rehashed in a blender

I'm a play in his perceptions of my act, he's director.

Recasts me in shapes Replanting my nature

Hustles me on stage from the darkness of the wings

His eyes multiply into 1,000 leering faces

Descending on me from the gods as I realise I am in hell.

The hell of other people

And the various theatre of all that's truly evil!

And then I realise that I've just thrown myself out of the window

Of a moving train.

Thank you very much.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening

I guess it all depends how long you've been awake

My watch calls it 36 minutes past the 42nd hour

And I think I'm just about to get my second wind!

Ha-ha-ha!

HIS LAUGHTER DIES OUT

Speaking of wind

Did you know the windiest place in the world

Is the George V Coast in Antarctica

Where Wikipedia reliably informs me

Winds can reach speeds of up to 350kph?

This of course pales into insignificance when compared

With the speed with which my brain will go off on a tangent

Due to a lack of sleep

I...AM...TIRED!

But I cannot rest

An adult human brain works best after eight hours of peaceful slumber

If only my nightly diet of every TV show ever made

And Tumblr had the same affect, but hey!

We all love Dr Who/Sherlock crossover

Get some passive-aggressive comments

About getting more sleep from Netflix

What...was I...talking about?

LAUGHTER

His brain has begun to phase in and out

As he attempts to perform on stage

His sleep-starved psyche tries frantically to remain focused

On the task at hand, he mumbles a curse

As he realises he's begun to narrate his own life

Out loud

In the third person

LAUGHTER

Damn

I'm tired

But I can't rest

I was eight years old when the nightmares started

I would lie in bed in a room endlessly expanding

A voice would boom with an accent made of thunder

And stone and I would have to clutch the quilt to the side

Of my makeshift ship and ride that till I'd wake

And feel my body ache from the ripples so

Now he spent his time daydreaming about mornings

When I would fall back to reality

I'm tired but I can't risk screaming because at least when you wake

In a cold sweat you know

You've achieved

Escape

But in all that extra time you must get so much done!

List of accomplished tasks since last sleeping 36 hours ago - one

After three minutes of staring, finally found the comma key

B - visited two rooms - four! I'm tired but I can't rest

One - after three minutes of staring, finally found the comma key

Two - created list of accomplished tasks and it's just not right enough

Can't write enough, bruises appear, don't know how from

Maybe they came when I'm about to fall, I'm tired

But I can't rest, can't remember the word, lyrics to my favourite songs

I'm tired but I can't rest

Don't dare drive!

Can't... WORDS BECOME INDISTINCT

So brightly red, I'm tired

Can't rest, pressure down like a diamond tired but I

Can't rest, can't rest, can't...

Can't...can't...

Can't...

CHEERING

Oh, God.

What's going on?

I'm down with the kids on the street.

LAUGHTER

I'm telling them to be quiet.

Mostly.

What?

OK, so we've seen the second round. The judges are adding up the scores,

and in a moment...

we will know who's in the final.

- It's very tense. - What is?

- Who's in the final. - Oh, yeah, it's very tense.

It's really interesting, actually,

cos last year we were back stage

and we engaged in this massive group hug in this horrible, hippy,

American kind of way and right now they're all back there working out.

They're furiously pacing up and down and exercising.

I'm exhausted just watching them.

I'm exhausted.

LAUGHTER

- You're also exhausting. - Before I came here.

But I've got my hat on.

I really wish you wouldn't.

Oh, look, Mike Dillon,

former Scottish national slam champion,

and score keeper.

Oh, I'm not going to keep going. I'm going to turn you into a rapper.

CHEERING AND LAUGHTER

How long do I have to explain?

VOICE FROM CROWD: Give us the Dalek one.

Oh, God.

For the final time ever.

IN DALEK VOICE: As a busy working Da-a-alek

Conquering planet after planet

Sometimes I neglect my skincare...regime

Which leads to metal fatigue

And telltale signs of ageing

Or r-r-r-r-rust

As you humans call it

I recommend Brillo Pads

And battery acid