A night of OUT-SPOKEN entertainment
Walking in to The Forge, you might first think you’ve got the wrong place… Woah! Well, hold on there, just a second… Indeed, the venue is a large, open-spaced building with a quirky, kitsch, light scene, a lovely sky-light roof and foliage rampaging down one of the walls (Yes, truly!), but so what? When you take a few paces into a room and your initial sense of anxiety (Think: Do I belong here?) is consolidated, along with your querulous sense of identity or dress to the event, all rescinded by appeasing grooves, one’s mind soon starts to follow their heart and an air of openness dawns and drifts upon you.
The night goes by the name of Out-Spoken, and the location sure speaks for itself. Immediately, any sense that poetry must be for the super-refined, magisterial, or entirely self-aware groups to covet for themselves, is blown apart; here you might just expect to get a couple of drinks to kick off your night out (Recollections of the world cup being screened in the room overhead…), so why not just jam with a select of the finest local entertainment? After all, poetry is for everybody. This seems to be the keen mantra behind Out-Spoken’s thing; hand-picked by the group to diversify the show, the entertainment in store really is of such quality that it has tremendous appeal, even if you aren’t something of a scribbler, yourself. The night, hosted by resident MC The Ruby Kid, was kicked off with a dazzling piano performance by contemporary-classicist composer Karim Kamar, which, for it’s astounding elegance, would have given even the hardiest of misers a difficult time of not being roped in and succumbing to curiosity as to the remainder of the evening.
Run by a tight-knit crew of four friends and long-time contributors to the scene, and headed by acclaimed UK poet Anthony Anaxagorou, the vision of the night’s direction is one such as will cater to anyone’s mood and taste; a varied demographic with each their own unique voice, and the whole thing is never chagrined by unequal levels of talent but is kept in check and curated through inspection and appreciation, securing a night of returning talent as well as those who are new to the scene; each as wonderfully charismatic as the last, the smoothness and setting sees the whole operation glide across various styles and forms, always with something of a musical impetus to cling to and carry it across, there’s a seamless blend of jokes, (Thank you Chris Redmond) anecdotes and poetry; really, it becomes more of a variety act, without the embarrassing clown-school types (Big pants, red noses…) or dogs jumping through hoops. Not here! It’s all kept relatively much more cool and down to earth, whether through sarcasm, or the politically charged aspects of the diaspora. By this point you might think it’d all be too much to carry off, or to take home upon your shoulders, but the acts are broken up mid-way, and there’s always some light-heartedness to be had at the end of a dark day, with such evocative performances; judicial, profound, belligerent, and many things more, that the speakers come to represent something more than just their flesh and blood and become paradigms: sensational ideals incarnate; a ‘movement’, in motion that is sure to catch on.
“I WAS ALSO EVER-SO-LUCKY TO GET A CHANCE OF CATCHING UP WITH ROOMS’ VETERAN HOLLIE MCNISH”
and though I couldn’t hide my preliminary excitement to catch her in the flesh, figuratively speaking, I did soon espouse my professionalism again…
I see you’ve been rather busy on tour recently, so how does it feel to be here?
It’s good! It’s really good, yeah. It’s tiring, but it’s not normally in such a nice venue, to be honest, normally it’s just back rooms in pubs and that sort of thing.
Do you think that’ll have a positive repercussion in terms audience’s reaction to your work?
I don’t know, to be honest, maybe if it’s so much lighter, they might get a bit nervous with the sexual content of my work, but I’m not sure…
I guess if people start to look nervous, we could always dim the lights a little bit. Still, it must be nice to have a varied audience and not all people who are reinforcing a poetry elitism.
Yeah, I come from a little village and I think people are still intimidated by poetry a little, whereas in London, people seem to be more open to it, I think.
Have you noticed much of a difference in attitudes to poetry as you’ve travelled around?
Hmm, I don’t know. In some places I suppose people see it more, but there’s plenty of people who love poetry all over the country, not just in London, and likewise, there’s probably a lot of people in London who are a bit bored of spoken word poetry, while others love it because they get to go to so many things. I guess maybe it’s more special if you only get to see one thing a year, but generally, no, the audiences are always kind of similar.
I THINK A LOT OF PEOPLE STILL ONLY HAVE THAT EXPERIENCE OF WHAT THEY LEARNT FROM SCHOOL. AND A LOT OF THAT IS ACTUALLY REALLY BLOODY GOOD POETRY…
Do you think people are adapting to poetry more, maybe it’s becoming more spoken of?
I think it’s slowly changing but there’s still that traditional attitude where people think ‘Oh, I don’t like poetry’, and they remember the poetry from school. Maybe not so much if you’re in the city centre, and maybe it’s changing more with YouTube, but I think a lot of people still only have that experience of what they learnt from school. And a lot of that is actually really bloody good poetry, it’s just maybe taught a bit crappy. It’s about getting it spoken and animated, I think, because if you read it, it’s a bit different. But a lot of kids love poetry for the rhyme and rhythm, and with my daughter, if I say ‘That’s poetry’, she says ‘No it’s not! It’s just a rhyme!’
Ha! Really? Why’s that?
Because she knows I do poetry and she doesn’t want it to be the same!
I’m sure she’ll come round to it, in time.
I hope so, but she’ll probably be embarrassed by it, to be honest. I can’t imagine what it’d be like if my mum wrote poems about sex or birth and they were all online…
Ah, it’s all very valid.
Haha, I’ll see what she thinks when I let her listen to it! One day.
She may well turn around and ask: ‘Who even is Flo Rida?’ One day, hopefully, he’ll be a thing of the past and it’ll be your poetry that keeps him alive.
Hopefully, yes! Haha… I think I’m going to read that poem tonight, but you can never tell if it’s the right audience. They’ve already dissed me back stage, saying they were going to snatch my book away from me, because I’m the only one that reads my poems, really, lots of other people recite them, and they know it by heart, but I just can’t.
It just means you do the most work, that’s what I’d say.
Well, I do an hour long set a lot of the time, and I know people can, but they’re usually used to drama or they’re used to acting, and I’m not used to that. They said they were going to hide my book, backstage, and I said ‘Don’t you dare do that!’
That sounds like bullying, really.
Haha, I know! I swear that’s what happens when I come to London.
You gotta hold your ground, y’know? Or, just get someone to keep a beat going for you and do it all freestlye.
I don’t know what I’d say if I tried to freestyle; the worst things would come out of my mouth… I’m really terrible.
Are you sure?
Yeah…
I bet you’d surprise yourself…
No, my partner’s really good at freestyling and he always does it on our journeys, like on our way to London, and I try to start it but I just say things like, ‘willy’, I don’t know, just the most stupid things come into my head.
I guess there’s a reason to start getting into writing silly kid’s poetry instead.
Yeah, definitely! I think that’s the thing I’d like to do next, start writing loads of kid’s poetry for my daughter, and just other kid’s stuff.
I think older generations kind of lose touch, maybe not with ‘creativity’, but with getting out of practice, perhaps people become intimidated to try, in case of fear of failure, by getting out of touch with expression, maybe you feel you can never express yourself properly.
Yeah, that could be true…
So, if you can always instil this love, to always be creative from a very young age…
Yeah, in whatever you do. Because I don’t know if I’ll be doing poetry for a very long time, I might want to be doing something different, for sure. But yeah, so long as they have an outlet in some way. I’m not too precious about my poems, I don’t think they’re great poems, in terms of not every word has been carefully thought out, they’ve just been written quickly and so if I feel dissatisfied with a line, I’m quite happy to scribble it out and write something else in.
That’s pretty good though, it becomes about instinct, in a way. No one ever goes out of their way to tell you ‘You’re really good, you’re really good!’ you know, everyone tries to make you second guess yourself- you’ve just got to be very confident!
Yeah, exactly. And I quite like my old job, anyway, so I don’t mind so much if I go back to it.
You’re just trying to further the good of humanity!
Oh, I don’t know, haha. It’s just, people write so much rubbish, and in newspapers, they’re full of so much bloody rubbish, it’s just good to do something that goes against that… I think the show’s about to start again, so I have to go!
And thus, we said farewell.
“I was also ever-so-lucky to get a chance of catching up with rooms’ veteran hollie mcnish,”
and though I couldn’t hide my preliminary excitement to catch her in the flesh, figuratively speaking, I did soon espouse my professionalism again…
I see you’ve been rather busy on tour recently, so how does it feel to be here?
It’s good! It’s really good, yeah. It’s tiring, but it’s not normally in such a nice venue, to be honest, normally it’s just back rooms in pubs and that sort of thing.
Do you think that’ll have a positive repercussion in terms audience’s reaction to your work?
I don’t know, to be honest, maybe if it’s so much lighter, they might get a bit nervous with the sexual content of my work, but I’m not sure…
I guess if people start to look nervous, we could always dim the lights a little bit. Still, it must be nice to have a varied audience and not all people who are reinforcing a poetry elitism.
Yeah, I come from a little village and I think people are still intimidated by poetry a little, whereas in London, people seem to be more open to it, I think.
Have you noticed much of a difference in attitudes to poetry as you’ve travelled around?
Hmm, I don’t know. In some places I suppose people see it more, but there’s plenty of people who love poetry all over the country, not just in London, and likewise, there’s probably a lot of people in London who are a bit bored of spoken word poetry, while others love it because they get to go to so many things. I guess maybe it’s more special if you only get to see one thing a year, but generally, no, the audiences are always kind of similar.
“I think a lot of people still only have that experience of what they learnt from school. and a lot of that is actually really bloody good poetry…”
Do you think people are adapting to poetry more, maybe it’s becoming more spoken of?
I think it’s slowly changing but there’s still that traditional attitude where people think ‘Oh, I don’t like poetry’, and they remember the poetry from school. Maybe not so much if you’re in the city centre, and maybe it’s changing more with YouTube, but I think a lot of people still only have that experience of what they learnt from school. And a lot of that is actually really bloody good poetry, it’s just maybe taught a bit crappy. It’s about getting it spoken and animated, I think, because if you read it, it’s a bit different. But a lot of kids love poetry for the rhyme and rhythm, and with my daughter, if I say ‘That’s poetry’, she says ‘No it’s not! It’s just a rhyme!’
*Ha! Really? Why’s that? *
Because she knows I do poetry and she doesn’t want it to be the same!
I’m sure she’ll come round to it, in time.
I hope so, but she’ll probably be embarrassed by it, to be honest. I can’t imagine what it’d be like if my mum wrote poems about sex or birth and they were all online…
Ah, it’s all very valid.
Haha, I’ll see what she thinks when I let her listen to it! One day.
She may well turn around and ask: ‘Who even is Flo Rida?’ One day, hopefully, he’ll be a thing of the past and it’ll be your poetry that keeps him alive.
Hopefully, yes! Haha… I think I’m going to read that poem tonight, but you can never tell if it’s the right audience. They’ve already dissed me back stage, saying they were going to snatch my book away from me, because I’m the only one that reads my poems, really, lots of other people recite them, and they know it by heart, but I just can’t.
It just means you do the most work, that’s what I’d say.
Well, I do an hour long set a lot of the time, and I know people can, but they’re usually used to drama or they’re used to acting, and I’m not used to that. They said they were going to hide my book, backstage, and I said ‘Don’t you dare do that!’
That sounds like bullying, really.
Haha, I know! I swear that’s what happens when I come to London.
You gotta hold your ground, y’know? Or, just get someone to keep a beat going for you and do it all freestlye.
I don’t know what I’d say if I tried to freestyle; the worst things would come out of my mouth… I’m really terrible.
Are you sure?
Yeah…
I bet you’d surprise yourself…
No, my partner’s really good at freestyling and he always does it on our journeys, like on our way to London, and I try to start it but I just say things like, ‘willy’, I don’t know, just the most stupid things come into my head.
I guess there’s a reason to start getting into writing silly kid’s poetry instead.
Yeah, definitely! I think that’s the thing I’d like to do next, start writing loads of kid’s poetry for my daughter, and just other kid’s stuff.
I think older generations kind of lose touch, maybe not with ‘creativity’, but with getting out of practice, perhaps people become intimidated to try, in case of fear of failure, by getting out of touch with expression, maybe you feel you can never express yourself properly.
Yeah, that could be true…
So, if you can always instil this love, to always be creative from a very young age…
Yeah, in whatever you do. Because I don’t know if I’ll be doing poetry for a very long time, I might want to be doing something different, for sure. But yeah, so long as they have an outlet in some way. I’m not too precious about my poems, I don’t think they’re great poems, in terms of not every word has been carefully thought out, they’ve just been written quickly and so if I feel dissatisfied with a line, I’m quite happy to scribble it out and write something else in.
That’s pretty good though, it becomes about instinct, in a way. No one ever goes out of their way to tell you ‘You’re really good, you’re really good!’ you know, everyone tries to make you second guess yourself- you’ve just got to be very confident! Yeah, exactly. And I quite like my old job, anyway, so I don’t mind so much if I go back to it.
You’re just trying to further the good of humanity!
Oh, I don’t know, haha. It’s just, people write so much rubbish, and in newspapers, they’re full of so much bloody rubbish, it’s just good to do something that goes against that… I think the show’s about to start again, so I have to go!
And thus, we said farewell.
