Live poetry!

Last Friday (24/11) I was invited to Poetry Live! at Central Hall Westminster, the first time I had ever attended an event on this famous tour. It’s a powerhouse of poetry presentation, curriculum momentum and reader development. Poetry Live! brings poetry in English to around 75,000 GCSE students every year at whole day events that are packed. Over ten years or so that means that getting on for a million students have been brought into direct contact with poets like (our own) John Agard and Grace Nichols who live in Lewes, Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke, to name a few. That’s an amazing achievement. It delivers results in that poets now meet adults buying their books who say “I first heard you on Poetry Live!” How’s that for audience development. It also demonstrates the benefit of thinking big but also thinking simply. Identifying a need for poetry presentation and satisfying it professionally. This is stadium poetry, and very enjoyable it was too.

I think if you said to most people that 2000 plus 15-16 year olds would sit through a day of contemporary English poets presenting and talking about their poetry, they would laugh with that peculiar hollow laugh they reserve for occasions when the word ‘poetry’ is heard. But they didn’t just sit through it. London students of just about any and every cultural and ethnic background positively enjoyed their interaction with poetic language.  For me it reinforced again the raw power of rhythmed language heard aloud to spellbind and energise.

The organisers have generously invited THE SOUTH to have a booth at the Brighton event at The Dome on January 18th when we can make contact with teachers and students alike. So if you’re going look out for the man by THE SOUTH’s display – it’ll be me, though hopefully not too much like the Ancient Mariner. By the way if you’d like to volunteer to help man the stand at this event and get a chance to see some of the poets in action, please get in touch with me – john*at*thesouth.org.uk. I’d say we need about three people.

A couple of moments stood out. A girl in front of me had blacked out Gillian Clarke’s teeth on her picture in the event booklet. The student also added an eye patch and a scar to create a very credible pirate.

Simon Armitage said when he was at school there was a boy with a glass eye. For 50p he’d take it out and you could look into his brains. Or did he say mind. For a quid, said Simon, he’d let you poke your finger in. Simon Armitage told this story as if it were his own but I’ll swear this is an old music hall joke. During question time one of the students asked if Simon had ever thought about being a comedian. The rest of the audience erupted, some with glee, some with disapproval. Simon chewed the cud for a while and let the uproar subside. He pushed his chin toward the microphone, angled his head toward the student and said in a flat tone, “No.”

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