My Talk on Courage At Spark True Story Telling Friday 27th April 2018

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Friday just gone was the date of the latest monthly Spark true story telling show at Preston's awesome Ham & Jam Cafe in the city centre. I was away for the Easter show at the end of March so it was great to see everyone again. The theme was Courage and I used my five minutes to talk appropriately about talking and giving readings / performances in public. It is something I have never found frightening. I have spoken in front of a handful of people and occasionally to hundreds. Generally spoken word event audiences are very welcoming, as they certainly are at Spark events. THe audience is more attentive than a crowd at a stand up comedy event where getting few laughs can get you heckled or booed or gonged off quickly. Many of my presentations are at poetry events, and I only ever really had one negative experience. It was in Manchester about five or six years ago. I saw a library flyer promoting a theatre 'poetry and music' open mic event. I thought it would be like many I had been to already, where poets perform, and there are also a few singers simply taking their turn one by one. I arrived, and another poet I knew also went, so we sat together, and put our names on the list of those taking part. The audience was huge compared to what I'd normally expect at such an event, and quite restless but the hosts seemed pleasant enough. I already knew my playlist, and my friend was shuffling through his poetry folders at the table picking out the pieces he was considering reading out. As it happens I was the first performer chosen to get up. The compere stood aside but the onstage DJ stayed put behind me. As I started my first poem he cranked up the music, loud, with lots of deliberate scratching and shifting around. I stopped and spiun round to give him a fierce glare as if to say 'do you mind? It's my turn now. Because I'd stopped so did he, but as I started speaking / reading again, so did he. That's when I realized that this wasn't poetry followed by music, but that 'poetry and music' were combined. I had actually unwittingly entered a freestyle rap contest, as seen in the Eminem movie 8-Mile. I decided to crash on with my pre-written material, though I could see my friend folding his chosen poem up and packing them away. I just yelled my lines over the music without trying to adjust to its deliberately intimidating changes in pace at all. The audience were not sure what to make of it at al, but actually applauded me for having the nerve to see it through. The way such contests work is to use the music to distract he performer until the performer loses the thread of rhymes and bails out. It's a bit like bronco-rodeo, seeing how long you can stay on. I crashed through by utterly ignoring the rules but nothing in the literature said what the event was. Most of the audience and performers had been before so they knew from previous shows. My friend and I finished our beers off and left soon after I got off the stage. Maybe I won a prize but I doubt it somehow. Fortunately, Spark audiences are much more welcoming. Thanks to everyone there. Youtube Eminem - Lose Yourself - theme from 8 Mile