Drunk Poets Society (Open Mic #5)

This was a night when spoken word arrived at my open mic, interspersed with lashings of live music and random vinyl.  The poetry was brought to us by Petra and Victoria (pictured) from The Nook Writers Group, as well as Tim from the Holmfirth Writers Group.  All of this happened in the same week as George the Poet appeared on Later with Jools Holland – so to coin a phrase from the film Zoolander, poetry is “so hot right now!”

It all started with a vinyl record party including San Quentin (Live) by Johnny Cash, Pocket Money by U Roy, Hell and Sorrow by I Roy, Kool Thing by Sonic Youth and People are Strange by The Doors.  The big idea had been for people to get their old records out the loft and bring them along to play between acts.  As it happened, I was the only person to take part, and for this reason the music was mostly old school reggae, punk and country – I don’t know how others felt about that, but I was in spiral scratch heaven.

Tim began the spoken word with a well crafted piece about the floods of Holmfirth seen from the perspective of Digley Reservoir. 

Stranger, as you walk my shore

and think my home a tranquil place

look closer, do you see a frown

within the ripples of my face?

A gentle and thoughtful reminder of the power of water through a valley and in great contrast to Petra’s first piece, which was all about ex boyfriends and relationships that went sour - with every expletive under the sun arranged in a diatribe about falling out of love.  In a polite town like Holmfirth you wouldn’t expect this to be everyone’s ‘cup of tea’, but my night’s promote freedom of expression and I stood by Petra for her right to let it all out!

Victoria’s poetry was also in a punk vein, and she read her poetry with a perfect balance of rant and humour.  Not so much as to be ‘in your face’, but just enough to make everyone sit up and listen.  Spoken word has to be like that, containing performance as well as words, this is where the term ‘performance poet’ comes from and Victoria fell into that category.  There was also something of John Cooper Clarke here, rhythmic beats of a poetry heart running out across a landscape of sound.  Some poetry should be read, other poetry should be performed.

Terry, from Hemel Hempstead, with one of the loudest singing voices I’ve ever come across growled his way through an Ian Dury song, strumming along on a neat banjolele.  My Mate Dave from Leeds (right) brought us a strong set of covers, including Gold Lion by Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Road Rage by Catatonia.  Matthew played a cool set of original songs including one about his favourite road, the A19, which runs from York to North Shields.  And a young singer called Lucy ‘Lou’ Robinson played her own well crafted songs, the last of which was cleverly called ‘Heads I win tails you lose’.

Leo Brazil and his Twitch (below) rocked the place with three different guitars on each different song.  Dave, the bass player with The Twitch, is a force to be reckoned with, kicking his leg in the air sporadically throughout the set.  And Petra and Victoria, who had by this time consumed large quantities of alcohol (in the spirit of true beat poets), were dancing happily to the music, and making the open mic into something of a party.

Dave and James played us out with a few more ballads and then we flipped some more vinyl - and drunk in charge of a turntable, my seamless changes were no longer seamless (truth is they never had been) with Prince-Far-I, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Motorhead, a scratched Happy Mondays and some Stone Roses.

The next open mic is Thursday 27 June 2013 at Cellar 88 in Holmfirth.  Bring instruments, songs and more vinyl!