Pride Comes Before a Fall

One minute you're riding high, the next...

The last time that I wrote, I was anticipating my talk at Bawtry Library as part of the Bawtry Festival. I promised to tell you how I got on. What I hadn’t anticipated was doing the writing from a chair at the side of my hospital bed. Ohh cruel fate. One minute you are a successful poet, dropping pearls of wisdom, regaling audiences with tales of your brilliance and experiences in the literary world, the next you are staring death in the face. Well, not exactly. I don’t think that kidney stones come with a high mortality rate, and with a bit of luck I shall be discharged in a day or two¹. But they bloody well hurt when they are doing their thing in the dark domain of your kidneys. And when the agony is upon you, thoughts of the sweet release offered by the grim reaper are of some comfort. Then again, the release offered by hospital strength pain relief is even sweeter.

Anyway, if I do perish through this current affiliation, at least I will have gone out on a high. I don’t want to blow my own trumpet too loudly, but my Bawtry appearance was a resounding success. Actually, I don’t think that the trumpet sounds outrageously loudly when the resounding success happens to be speaking to an audience of just over twenty in a small branch library in the outskirts of Doncaster. Particularly when a proportion of them were from my own family. But what the hell? I can be anything that I want to be and the majority of the audience were not family, and I had not even met many of them previously. Nobody walked out in disgust, nobody fell asleep, and the response was very favourable. I am a literary giant of the local library scene… In Bawtry.

I never plan anything in depth until the day it happens. I might be chewing it over in my mind in the days or even weeks before, but I’m almost compulsive about avoiding any detailed preparation until the last minute. So I spent much of the afternoon before the performance sifting through my complete works, and trying to hone it down to a suitable selection.

The event was scheduled to run for a couple of hours, with a break in the middle. I reckon that 40 minutes is about the maximum that anyone can comfortably sit still and listen to one person. So I opted for two 40 minute sets. There’s no way anyone could tolerate listening to a solid wall of poetry for any longer than that. I certainly couldn’t imagine doing it without my mind wandering off. I also reckoned that my approach would have to be relaxed and conversational. Two forty minutes sets, allowing four minutes per poem including chatter and conversation surrounding it would mean 20 poems. That seemed like a lot. I also had to self edit. I couldn’t perform my rudest and sweariest poems. I couldn’t go for anything which might be regarded as heavy or which demanded any specialist knowledge. Twenty light hearted poems. I printed them out, and put them in a folder and added a few notes about what I might say to introduce them.

When I told Judy, my wife, that I had chosen twenty, her first reaction was not encouraging. Twenty??? I stuck to my guns, figuring that I could always drop some if it wasn’t going well. In fact in the hours between selecting the twenty and the start of the gig, I flitted between panicking that twenty was far too many and panicking that I would run out of material inside the first half hour.

In the end, I delivered two 40 minute sets almost to the second. And all was well. I was a little bit technical, explaining the joys of writing in iambic pentameter, but that seemed well enough received. I even read a few stanzas of The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe, so that my version The Budgie could be delivered in context. Again, well received. I ranted about Meadowhall, Ikea and Tescos in a section on shopping, I talked about what my dad has been up to since he died in a section on my dad, which I intersected with a section on death. People listened, laughed where appropriate, and applauded. I even managed to sell a few books at the end. There is honestly no other way to describe the evening than as a resounding success.

So now I have the bug. I dream of performing similar feats in front of bigger audiences, containing different people. Maybe at community arts centres, independent bookshops, and errm… slightly larger libraries. The sky’s the limit. Maybe this time next year I will be boasting about the Filey Literature Festival! If only my health holds out. Lord! Give me a few more years that I may indulge my literary pretensions just a little more.

And, dear reader. If you have any opportunities for me to come and entertain you, please getting touch. I’m not proud. Knit and Natter Groups, Church Fêtes, Sportsman’s dinners, Women’s institutes, I’ll have a go at anything. It’s all adventure as far as I’m concerned. Seriously, get in touch.

Sorry if this is a little briefer and less well thought out than usual. Blame those pain killers!

See you in a couple of weeks.

1. I was discharged after two nights, and apart from being a little woozy (probably those pain killers wearing off) I felt in pretty good shape. Dear reader, look after your kidneys; drink plenty of fluids and take regular exercise!