James Bunting

Who the Real Young Poets Are

2012-10-02T15:26:36-04:00

I once read a call for submissions to a young poets anthology that required all poets to have been born since 1970.

People born since 1970 are legally allowed to be grandparents; they remember the fall of the Berlin Wall; they were alive when John Lennon and Bob Marley died. I'm not saying they're old, per se, but calling them 'young poets' seems to rather miss the point. If young poets are 42-year-olds, then the established poets that are thrust into the public eye and into the school books of kids are still no further from the dusty cliché of poetry than they ever were. And I, for one, am sick of it.

Every time I go to a poetry gig, every time I host a night, every time I look to see who won a slam I see younger and younger talent coming through and lighting up stages. By young, I don't mean 40-year-olds, I mean 18-year-olds; people only just old enough to be in the venue itself, let alone capturing it in enraptured silence.

Ask anyone who considers poetry to be more than Wordsworth who the current poets they admire are and you'd be hard pushed to find anyone as old as 40. Even the esteemed and established likes of Aisle 16 are only just turning 30. So why do so many publishers insist on publishing 'Young Poet' anthologies that, quite simply, don't feature young poets?

This is where Burning Eye Books stepped in. The CEO, Clive Birnie, set out with a vision to start publishing performance poets, and as part of that vision he wanted to publish an anthology of young poets who could truly be classified as such. He approached Jack Dean and I to edit this and, one year down the line, we've just launched it.

The reason I will harp on about this book isn't because of my involvement in it -- though that has been an honour and a privilege -- but because it features some of the poets who I watch on stage and think, "wow, that person is incredible and they're only just starting out."

That is what brings us here. Not to raise the flag of performance poetry in a Stage versus Page war, but to give another side to the story; to offer up the voices of people who have won acclaim from audiences before critics, and from the people who actually got to experience their talent first hand and understand why they are so important.

It contains 21 poets who Jack and I managed to convince that taking their work and putting it a book was as exciting a prospect as we found it. Luckily for us, they bought it too. What came about from this is an alternative book of young poets that will switch people on to what is happening in poetry that they might not know about. If a poetry fan picks up this book they will be hit with poems unlike any others and, upon reading about the poets, they will be able to go and see these energetic young poets perform these very poems and light them up. That is something so exciting for poetry; to be getting new faces into audiences with the desire to learn more about the surge in performers and poets that is going on just below the surface.

This National Poetry Day the theme is stars. Well, without wanting to go too cliché, I'm going to bite the bullet and say that if you're looking for stars, you could do a lot worse than to read the poets in Rhyming Thunder to see who the stars are; stars that are only going to get brighter.

Do Poets Really Care About Slams?

2012-06-05T19:00:00-04:00

For one reason or other, lately I've been having the same conversation: do poets really care about slams? It got me thinking because I help run the Hammer + Tongue Bristol arm - which features a monthly slam - and I'm a part of the team behind the National Team Poetry Slam run by Jack Dean. On top of that, I've competed in my fair share of slams over the last couple of years with varied success.

This repeated conversation got me thinking about whether I care about slams. Ultimately, I do - it's the competitive nature in me - but, I never mind losing or getting a low score. When I try to explain this to people I compare it to speed dating: the evening comprises a snippet view of a multitude of different poets and you, the audience, choose your favourite to see more of. It's a great way to see lots of poets without having to see too much of someone you don't like. And it's a great way for poets to meet each other and get their names out. But, is putting a score on a piece of art wrong?

I asked the two current national slam champions Adam Kammerling, Hammer + Tongue National Slam Champion, and Harry Baker, Farrago National Slam Champion, what they thought about it all.

Harry began by coming joint first in the Edinburgh slam with (the now viral) Mark Grist and, he says, "from then on I was hooked."

"It makes the poet consider the audience", he says. And this has to be one of the strongest arguments for slam. Short of heckling, there is no other way to express an opinion about a poet than at a slam. "Poetry has a danger of seeming self-indulgent...slam is the antidote", and it is clear to see he has a point. Poetry is so often typified by self-centred teenage angst and heartbreak. By slamming, you are forced to engage and consider the audience, and invariably this makes you keep that stuff inside. But does this dilute poetry, stopping people writing what they want to write?

It is often quoted that, "the point is not the points, the point is the poetry", and this is what saves poetry from dilution. If a poet falls into the trap of points counting, or pandering to audiences, then that dilution is their own fault. There is a fine line between writing what you want, and sharing what you want. Slam makes you walk that line by teaching you to only share what should be shared, regardless of what else you have written.

Adam Kammerling has mixed feeling about slam. "They're great," he says, "and I love them and they work so brilliantly at engaging audiences. But they are flawed."

When Adam started out he said he was far more interested in slamming than in going to open mics because there was a competitive element involved. But, he points out, "Often the most transparent, trite, clumsy, over-performed dog turd of a poem wins a slam", so "If you just treat it like an open mic and genuinely couldn't care less about the score then that's alright."

Harry mentioned something the poet Raymond Antrobus once said to him: "the people who like slams are the people who have won slams." And there is some truth in that. Slammers do open themselves up in a way no other performance does. You take a gamble that what you think is good will have the right effect on an audience. And if you score badly it can be pretty crushing and make you not want to slam again. But, that's all part of the brilliance of slams, it teaches you to learn from this.

The one thing I've learned most from slams is how to read an audience - though I still get it wrong an awful lot. In a room of young, energetic twenty-somethings, your poem about your grand-child might not have as wonderful an effect as your poem about the things that annoy you about riding on the tube. And, as you never know what an audience will be like until you get there, you can't write for that audience so you have to just be prepared with a variety of poems. What a great test!

At the Hammer + Tongue national final, I was interviewed by some guys with a camera who asked me what I liked about the day. I told them that my favourite thing was how this competition actually brought all of these amazing poets together. Some of the loudest cheers on the night were for one poet from another because they know what it's like to be up there.

Both Adam and Harry said something similar when I spoke to them. Harry, who is off to the World Cup next week, said, "Whilst anyone would love to be a world champion, what is more amazing is these different voices and cultures wouldn't be on the same stage in the same way if it wasn't for slam."

Adam spoke of the Hammer + Tongue final at which he claimed victory with utmost warmth, "there were so many different styles and voices, and they were all brought there because of the slam. It was like a poetry festival! Yeh, it's a gimmick, but a gimmick that works well".

That seems like a good way of summarising it: a successful gimmick. There is a clear progression for poets starting out to slam for a few years until they've made a name for themselves then give up to focus on headline shows, and this epitomises the joy of slam. It's about meeting new poets, sharing work, engaging audiences, and all with a 3 minute timer. Sure, some people hate it, but there are few better ways of getting your name out than by entering slams and pushing yourself to learn from them.

And if you've never been to a slam, go. You never know where it might take you...

Watch James perform his poem 'Conkers' on The Huffington Post here.

Dean Atta - When Poetry Speaks Up

2012-01-12T19:00:00-05:00

As someone who deals in words, it is too often that I forget what they are able to do. For better or worse, sometimes words mean everything.

In the last week I've been watching the steady spread of Dean Atta's poem 'I am Nobody's Nigger'. Since the moment I saw and heard it, I have wanted to blog about it, but have been unable to think how to truly say about the poem what I feel needed to be said. Luckily for me, you can now see what Dean himself says about it, and that is the best way.

I'm biased because I am a poet, and I have loved words for a long time, but for other people it is easy not to take the same approach to them as me. I don't mean this in a high-culture, pretentious way, I mean it that everyone has a passion, a love; for some it might be books, a beautifully formulated equation, a perfect chord sequence, the delicate stroke of a fine horse-hair brush, the perfect cross into the box, the optimum combination of hops and barley. Everyone loves something.

However, for all of those people and all of those thousand different loves, it is not often that people take particular note of something outside of their target zone. This week reminded me of what poetry can do to people who don't love 'poetry'. Watching Dean's poem spread, and flourish, and be re-mixed and shared, watching him reach out and speak, watching the way it affected people, it was beautiful to see. It reminded me of what poetry can do and how wide it can reach.

A few days ago Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet Laureate, published a poem on The Guardian website in response to the trial and prosecution of Stephen Lawrence's killers, 18 years after the murder. Admittedly it isn't her finest work, and has rightfully been questioned somewhat, but it isn't the standard of writing that I object to. If watching the respect and appreciation pour into Dean Atta for his poem isn't enough to see that Carol Ann Duffy shouldn't have done this, I don't know what is.

The signs of the best poets are those who say as much in their words as they do in their silences. Dean Atta's words say so much and rang true with so many that he rightfully received a great deal of acclaim; Carol Ann Duffy has received none of that because she should have stayed silent. This was not her place. This tragic incident that has been drawn out for nearly two decades never asked for 'proper' poetry, it never needed it, it needed someone who was going to step up and speak the truth and hit a nerve. Dean Atta hit that nerve, Carol Ann Duffy wasn't even trying to strike.

But this isn't a critique of the Poet Laureate - whom I do admire - all I'm trying to say is that sometimes poetry reminds you why it is such a powerful art form, and why so many poets write; this week I was reminded. And I can do nothing but take my hat off to Dean Atta for speaking out, saying what he believed, and doing it so effectively and powerfully that countless people heard it who would never normally have done so. Poetry is a powerful tool, and 'I am Nobody's Nigger' is a perfect example of when that tool shows its full strength.

Poetry and Music: Re-United at Last

2011-12-15T10:58:57-05:00

Poetry and music have long gone hand-in-hand. Without wanting to dig out my Literature degree notes, it's been going on for millennia. And it isn't difficult to understand why given the poetic nature of music and musicality of words. There are a whole host of quotations one might be able to use to back up the relationship between words and music, but I shall choose these from two finest Dylans to have ever lived.

Dylan Thomas wrote of words: "The first thing was to feel and know their sound and substance; what I was going to do with those words, what use I was going to make of them, what I was going to say through them"; for him, words made sounds like notes that he could shape into symphonies of sound that he called a poem.

Bob Dylan once said: "Anything I can sing, I call a song. Anything I can't sing, I call a poem." For Dylan, lyrics were poetry, that was just how music worked; putting a musical backing to a poem was no different to writing a song. And between these two great writers I think it isn't so hard to see how strong the link between the mediums of poetry and song are.

But, in the last few decades there has been a slow and steady separation of these two media. I'm not old enough to be able to tell you when or how or why, but I can see it in the lack of any great lyrical geniuses of the last 20 years. That's not to say there aren't any, there just aren't as many as, say, the 60s or 70s.

The good news is things are changing. People are beginning to question lyrics now, pay more attention to them, appreciate well-crafted poetry in songs. And it was only a matter of time before poetry became music in itself.

How many of us remember the first time we heard The Streets? I remember it vividly because I thought: who is this guy that just talks over music but has you wrapped around his little finger so his drug-fuelled adventures seem beautiful? Then I heard of Buddy Wakefield and Sage Francis teaming up over in America for Sage's Human the Death Dance record. And gradually this kind of collaboration became more widespread.

For me, two acts epitomise the rise of the poet/musician collaboration. UK Poetry Slam Champion and rapper Dizraeli, whose band Dizraeli and the Small Gods regularly pack out venues and festival tents up and down the country, and Kate Tempest's band Sound of Rum, who have just completed a nationwide tour supporting Billy Bragg. Poetry and music are in a relationship again in a way that some of us may have forgotten could be done after the deluge of Popstars and Pop Idols.

The latest incarnation of this wonderful surge is the announcement that the lovely Jodi Ann Bickley is going to team up with dub-step artist Skream on a new track. Jodi has worked in the past with people like Ed Sheeran and Jamie Woon, and this is one more step on that roller-coaster ride of fame she has found in the last 18 months.

When asked about the rise in these sort of collaborations, she told me: "The reason people like Adele and Ed Sheeran are so popular is not only their unbelievable voice, it's the narrative within each song and how we can relate it all to our own lives. The same with The Streets; Mike Skinner stands on stage basically talking to a soundtrack - where the music paints the picture, the words add the narrative, and together it makes something real beautiful that even "MALIA LADZ ON TOUR 2011" sort of guys finds themselves loving. I guess we are slowly conning people into poetry, not because they wouldn't like it if they heard it on T4 or Radio 1, but because we just haven't got that recognition yet. Artists such as Ghostpoet, LV and Josh Idehen, Sound of Rum, Greeds and the Remedies, Dizareli and the Small Gods are battling to change things this year and with some Big names on side it looks like a battle we could win.'

So there it is, straight from the front line. The 'battle' that Jodi speaks of is slowly taking shape and it looks like the poets are going to rise again. It won't be the poetry of Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen, but it will be different and just as strong. The musical landscape is changing and the poets are gearing up to take their place and play as big a part in that as they used to. I, for one, can't wait!