Niall O'Sullivan – Poet

I will be running a ten week course for intermediate level poets from January 2011 at the Poetry School. The course, entitled “The Next Step”, will focus on technical and practical aspects of writing poetry, from formal poetry to performance poetry. The course will also offer practical advice on other aspects of poetry, from reading in public and getting published to networking and using the internet as a way of promoting and publishing your work. You can find out more on the course by clicking on the link to the Poetry School’s website below.

http://www.poetryschool.com/courses-workshops/face-to-face/the-next-step.php

Punchy Poetry

Big plug first for a big gig in North Weezy. The poet that truly does what it says on the tin, The Bros Grim, is holding a benefit for the boxing gym where he works as a trainer tonight. There will be an all star poetry line up at, and in aid of, the All Stars boxing gym . The All Stars gym has a track record of taking wayward youth from the area and instilling focus and discipline with rigorous training, as well as giving them an outlet for their anger. The gym is constantly struggling to stay open and does so currently due to the hard work of its staff and the generosity of its supporters. Not to put too fine a point on it, if you close down all the worthwhile ventures like the All Stars, then this Summer’s riots are going to look like a tea party come next summer.

Anyway, tonight you will get to watch a top bill of top quality poets battling it out within a bona fire boxing ring for your sadistic entertainment. I will be one of the ringside judges, though my Saint persona will not be making an appearance, seeing as he woz ‘orrible. Hope to see you down there tonight.

Epic Poetry

I’ve not been hyping it to the high heavens, but my follow up to Sonnet Hack was made public earlier this week. The Mundane Comedy: A Year in Terza Rima is exactly what it says it is, a year of poems following the form of Dante’s Divine Comedy. I started way back at the beginning of September but only made it public for reasons that will become evident if you follow the link above and have a nose about. I can’t guarrantee a poem every day but I have managed it thus far, adding almost sixty new poems to my canon in as many days. Seeing as it’s probably a bit of a trawl for my average non stalker I will be blogging a best of page over here for each month, so keep your eyes peeled form a best off September post quickly followed by the October highlights.

Magic Poetry

If you don’t want to be in when the trick or treaters come knocking on Monday, I will be reading as part of the Poets in the Pub event at the North Nineteen pub in, you guessed it, N19. Floor spots will be available on the night and there will also be a magician, Joe Raine. The night will be hosted by poet Michael Clift, who will also be sharing his tip drawer poems.

If you read all of this, I’ll take a dive in the second for you.

Niall

It wasn’t me, it was The Saint!

First rule of judging a Slam: never believe the guy that tells you that it’s all a bit of fun and don’t take it too seriously. This is just an implicit statement that actually means that things are deadly serious but we must mutually pretend it is not for the sake of maintaining our appearances as ladies and gentlemen of culture. So, last night at the Page Match event at the Roundhouse, adopting my snobbish heel persona of Niall “The Saint” O’Sullivan, I decided that it would be really funny to give Robert Auton a score of 1.

How people would laugh, even Rob himself would shrug, turn to the crowd and smirk as if to say, Ooh, get that Niall, what a scamp! What a card!

Instead, I drew a chorus of of boos from the crowd, some cries of Nooo and the scorecard lady told me that she hated me with complete earnestness.

The promoter shouted “Is that really it?” across the room and Rob himself stared at me with a gaping mouth, his eyes were keyholes into a world of pain that only Job could have known.
Another one to add to my ram packed scrapbook of jokes that backfired then.

A round later, I relented and changed the score to an eight, which garnered accusations of fixing as the change in score decided the final winners for the evening. This may have been the motive for when some villain made off with the championship belt at the end of the night. Be it last night’s drama or the skirmishes at the Poetry Society, poetry is becoming a bit more like wrestling each day and that’s a good thing.

It was the Saint what said it

So another thing that my Saint persona said also probably made me a few enemies. When the ref/host Polar Bear asked me what I was looking for as a judge, my persona responded, “You’re twenty-one, you’ve just split from a three month relationship; no-one gives a fuck.” While there is obviously some truth in this, I wasn’t saying that young people shouldn’t write about these things, but rather that they shouldn’t assume that the strong feelings they have for their situation always automatically transfer to the poem. Same with poems about the problems of the world—it works when written well but often comes off as a tedious sermon. Like many ex Catholics, I don’t like being preached at. Hence why I marked down a few poems that started well but turned into sermons. Come on you spoken worders, you’re young talented and full of spunk, you can do better than that!

If you read all of this, I’ll give you a ten.

Niall

Hello all, it’s been a while since the last entry. Looking back at my initial reaction to the riots during my last entry, I seem to have been prematurely jovial and offhand in my response. Despite the ability of Brixton rioters to inadvertently stick one to big business, the riots spread through the country and claimed small businesses, homes and lives. In response our government threw ridiculously disproportionate sentences at young people whose lives will also be irreparably damaged in order to appease the foaming mouthed “it’s not an excuse” brigade. You can read a poem I wrote on the subject, alongside the responses of many other poets and spoken worders, on the Riot Pieces blog set up by Joshua Idehen.

15 years of Poetry Unplugged

Spoon, O'Sullivan, Citizen, Dhiman

My second ever open mic reading was at Poetry Unplugged, just a few months after Jon Citizen kicked it off. So the 15th Birthday Bash this Tuesday holds a lot of significance for me. It’s amazing how much the night has changed since the frontier days of Citizen’s tenure. The early days of Unplugged were very much a part of the Performance Poetry years, with many poets belting out their greatest hits, sharpening their performance for any future gigs. Compare that with today’s crowd and you’ll find a group of poets that are mostly anxious not to repeat a poem and keep on churning out new work, through no intervention of my own, it should be added. We don’t attract as many eccentrics (and the incidents that accompanied them) as we once did. That makes my work a bit easier, but I can understand why many might miss that element of things.

It really fries my noodle that, circumstances willing, we’ll be celebrating 20 years in five years time. Will I still be the host then? Who knows? I’m already the longest running doctor host with over six years under my belt and I don’t feel weary yet. If the time comes in my life to make a change, or if the whole thing gets a little stale because of me, then I’ll be sure to make the exit quick and painless. But for now, I still having the time of my life every Tuesday.

You can help celebrate the birthday of Unplugged by coming down to the Poetry Cafe this Tuesday 6th September. Citizen and Dhiman will be down to host a segment each and there will be cake! Remember to sign up between 6-7pm and due to anticipated demand, the show may start at 7pm rather than the usual time of 7.30pm.

Speaking of Anniversaries

Today marks a year since I started on the Sonnet Hack project. I’m still quite proud of the poems looking back, writing regularly from  a formal perspective helped me to develop my ear and improve as a poet. If things have seemed pretty quiet since then I can assure you that many projects are currently bubbling under and will become more visible in the months and years to come. In fact, I started on a project today that is probably more grueling and ambitious than the Sonnet Hack project, but it’s going to be kept under wraps for the next few months before the big reveal. I will say no more about it until then.

If you read this, I’ll let you read in the first half.

Niall

Sometimes you hurt the ones you love the most…

So, after a few weeks of negligence, of course I’m going to come up with something about the current unrest in and around London. I won’t harp on about Tottenham, as I don’t live there and only know what I’ve seen on the web (the standard news media are just looking more and more inept and irrelevant). All I can say is that what happened in North London was the product of a real and sudden anger and should not be judged as if it was some rational, predetermined and strategised strike against injustice.

However, I took a walk down to Brixton town today to check out the fallout of the looting that happened last night. Foot Locker went down in flames after being cleared out, and the boutique chain stores and takeaways along the high street succumbed to a similar fate. From the tweets and updates of my friends, it seemed as if Brixton was a ghost town this morning.

So you can imagine how surprised I was to get there and find the place buzzing. There was almost a carnival atmosphere, with teenagers congregating around the TV cameras. One girl exclaimed “I’ve been tryin’ to get famous all day!” All the footfall was diverted away from the sectioned off high street and into the back streets and market. I have a feeling that today was pretty good for the majority of small and independent businesses around Brixton. How ironic indeed that a group of hooded, masked teenagers hooked on consumerism hit a bigger blow against corporate, multi national capitalism than the erudite students of the anti cuts movement.

These kids could have looted some far more profitable places, but the ones they struck pimped the very products that are shoved down their throats, from billboards, pop up ads, touted by sportsmen and hip hop artists. Real objects of desire, status symbols. Reminders of what they don’t have. Sweatshop spun trophies of little practical value but of toxic symbolic relevance. Every ad and namecheck from up high reinforces this. Every mugging and snatch/grab below reinforces this.

Meanwhile, as a peaceful vigil is planned in Tottenham, the BBC news are streaming live footage of what looks like the beginning of skirmishes in Hackney (filmed from a helicopter!). I wonder if they realise that they are creating a beacon that shouts “Get the f*** down to Hackney, it’s all kicking off!” ? When it kicked off in Brixton last night, there wasn’t a peep on the news channels. It amused me to hear from many residents about how they hardly noticed the looting, but the helicopters kept them awake all night.

Book Slam!

I will be a part of the South London cultural vanguard next Monday 15th of August when I host Book Slam at the Clapham Grand. The show kicks off at 7.30 and features Hari Kunzru, Joe Dunthorne and Ross Raisin will be featuring and I’ll even get to peddle my poetical wares for ten minutes. Masterminded by Patrick Neate, Book Slam is one of London’s biggest literary nights and I’m very excited to be a part of it.

If you read all of this, I’ll grab you a widescreen.

Niall

Another late blog, we have slowly shifted from Sundays to Tuesdays, I hope noone out there is setting their clock by me.

Ringing True

I am currently in the office of most on London’s artistic and literary community, the South Bank Centre, tapping this out on my fancy new tablet (no, it aint Apple). I have a big smug look on my face only rivalled by someone that’s just wrote a sestina and used the word “sestina” in the title. I have also been taking part in one of my favourite passtimes, which is talking about poetry with Nii Ayikwei Parkes. We were putting the final touches to our Urban Arvon course Poetry that Rings True. The course starts on Friday and there are still a few places available, go on, pull a sicky in the name of culture. Actually, in my gardener days I once entered “ennui” as the reason for not attending work on the absence form, and noone got back to ask if I was taking the micheal.

Anyway, myself and mister Parkes will be investigating how reading a poem aloud can help us to edit and shape a poem, how the voice of a poet lends authenticity to the poem, and work on aspects of poetry that involves rhythm and repetition but aren’t necessarily formal. You see that Urban Arvon tab to the right of this page? You should click it, go on, click it.

When do we want it?

And while smugly tapping a swiping away at my non-Apple tablet device, I caught sight of a headline in one of my blog feed applications. It was entitled “In Praise of Protest Poetry” and I jabbed it enthusiastically with my finger, expecting to find something about how poets in the UK are weilding their pens (and fancy, gorgeous, gleaming new tablet devices that you want to lick when noone’s looking) against the current ideologically motivated cuts to public services. Instead, I followed through to a Grauniad editorial about some Arabic poets coming to London to recite poetry about the Arab Spring. Now, I am obviously right behind the people taking back the power in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria and elsewhere, but what I like most about it is that they couldn’t give a hoot as to whether my tablet touting arse approves it or not. I’m also sure that the title of the article was more down to copy desk aliterative tendencies rather than the actual author. But it does point out the gaping absence of class issues and protest within contemporary mainstream poetry complemented by a love of protests happening on the other side of the world. Again, before anyone accuses me of being parochial, my point is that the events of the Arab Spring don’t really depend on the approval of urbane British liberals, they’re doing it for themselves.

The only place where the exploration of domestic issues, be it inner city knife crime or anti cuts sentiment, is visible is the performance poetry scene. It may not be the most free of cliche or predictable rhymes, but this is where large groups of people will conmect on these issues. The only visible dissent from the unpopular cuts from the poetical mainstream has been from the Poetry Cuts movement, which has shown poets up in arms about the Arts Council cuts to some poetry organisations ( and dare I say their life lines) but not following the line to how the cuts effect public service workers, students and those on benefits.

The only conslusion I can come to is the class divide: that more working class and minority members, the people most affected by the cuts, find performance poetry more inclusive than the more academic literary scene. I can only also conclude that the people that consume mainstream and academic poetry feel more connected to the issues concerning oppressed people many miles away but have little time for those that people the estates and tower blocks that they live in the shadow of. This is normally the point when I take a pop at the Poetry Review, but it at least featured an excellent article by Ian Duhig in its latest issue about locality and politics. Here’s hoping it’s the beginning of a trickle of ideas between our worlds.

I you read this, I’ll chain myself to something in protest at the world not saying you’re great often enough.

Niall

Yesterday, I caught up with a few poets at a little Apples and Snakes shindig to celebrate their National Portfolio funding. Among all the how-do-you-do’s and me-me-me’s, I ended up waffling on about the perennial topic of the poetry/spoken word scene and television. Since then, I’ve been grinding my caffeinated gears about the subject, and I’m sure you’ll be surprised to hear that I have a few opinions about it…

I’ve actually been part of a few poetry TV show pilots in the past, filmed at different venues from the Poetry Cafe to the Imperial Gardens nightclub in Camberwell. None of these were ever picked up, despite the best efforts and boundless enthusiasm of those involved. Rather than gloat on how amateurish these were, of how embarrassingly the about turns of the most earnest poets can be when catching a scent of national exposure, and the resulting adulation from the populace; I’d like to offer a few pointers on the mistakes people keep on making and the angles people should make with regard to getting it right.

Firstly, many artists see Def Poetry Jam as a kind of pinnacle that we in the UK should work towards replicating. My first reason for not feeling the same is that I think that DPJ is bloody awful. It reeks of an earnestness mined from Oprah’s book club and a suffocating sense of its own importance. It has a famous rapper that introduces the acts with zero enthusiasm and little in the way of inciteful preamble. The audience are very obviously drilled in how to react, overplaying the laughter and applause. Perhaps this kind of thing works in America,  but I don’t think so. You can find live recording of the poets reciting the same poems on youtube and the whole thing comes across as a lot more genuine, authentic and energised than what happens with lots of interference from floor managers, producers and a few tonnes of light rigging.

That pretty much sums up what I think people should do, get out there and record the live poetry scene as it happens. What caught the magic of musicians like Hendrix? The reels of live documentary footage or his appearance at a sound stage for the Lulu show? The scene is already there, it just needs to be caught at its natural best. Allow the sound of traffic to leak in from outside, don’t let the audience know they’re being filmed (most producers do fine by just posting a notice on the door that hardly anyone pays attention to). Let the heckles come and let the poets deal with them. You can still be selective with the editing while sculpting it for TV. Hell, you can even do that little cut to black and white camera trick if you think the ADHD TV audience would otherwise choke on their midnight snacks (let’s have no illusion as to when they’ll put us on…), but let’s avoid topical little inserts or reconstructions of what happened to the poet because they really are shit.

Another good thing is that a show about the live scene would send a little message that it’s the scene itself that people should aspire to being a part of, rather than wanting to be on the telly. Audiences would get a sense of poetry as something out there in the world, rather than another rivulet of contact between the hermetically sealed sanctums of living room and sound stage.

I have previously looked a proper tit reciting my poetry on Henman Hill before the Murray match, which is as good a fifteen minutes as being on Come Dine With Me. I’m most happy performing, reading, writing, and listening to poets and try, with little success, to keep my attention whore tendencies out of it. So I’m not expressing my interest in being a TV poet, just offering some advice to those that want to try that path. And now, over to Tom for the weather.

That was the week that was…

Thank you to anyone that showed up at SWOON, Shadows in the City in Richmond and The Fling in Chelmsford last week. I had a great time at both. For my second set in Richmond, I took the opportunity to read my Werewolf of London sequence in its entirety, which I was able to catch for posterity on my antiquated, but ever reliant digital recorder. I’ll put the mp3 file up soon, so you can have an opportunity to listen to me wax pseudo-philosophical about men with carpet stuck to their face and men that spend a lot of time in sheds.

The Fling at Chelmsford Central Park was also a humdinger. Jody Porter had brought together a fine selection of bards and I muchly enjoyed the sets of Tim Wells, Nathan Penlington, Ana Lee, Amy Acre, Peter Hayhoe, Dan Cockrill, Wayne Smith, Rob Auton, Abbie Palmer and many others. I’ve been a bit slow over the years in working out the strategy for those highly transient festival crowds, but in my humble opinion, I think I nailed it on Saturday. I sneakily suspect that drinking a small amount of beer may have been a category, I’m always an intense performer when sober and a sloppy performer when sloshed. Mildly merry seems to fit in with the festie crowd quite comfortably.

Seconds out…

I might have caught a few more acts in Chelmsford if I didn’t have to bomb it home in order to catch the Haye v Klitschko fight with Mrs O’Sullivan (the perfect partner for watching violent stuff). The fight attracted a lot of fly by night boxing fans and patriotic nobheads. I’ve been a big fan of Haye since the day I touched fists with him as he jogged across Vauxhall Bridge a few weeks before the Valuev fight. I mouthed something like “Go on David!” and he replied with “Nice one mate!” and off he went. I remember feeling boyishly eager to share this until I realised that I was on my way to a symposium about The Sublime in Crisis at the Tate Britain.

Haye didn’t pull off the shock, and it was always going to be a shock, and I was also pulled into the hype. However, I won’t be dragged into the cretinous admonishments that ignoramuses like to indulge in after the loss. Haye finished the fight on his feet, despite slipping over in the wet conditions with a far larger man leaning on him. He caught Klitschko with some sweet shots and had the big man rattled in the final round. Klitschko has perfected an effective, though not entirely exciting, technique with the help of Emanuel Steward, who led Lennox Lewis to world domination with a similar strategy. After all is said and done, both men finished the fight in good health and that is always a good thing. These men, and many faceless other men and women, put their life and health on the line each time they step through the ropes, be it for our entertainment or their own hopes for the future. They all deserve our respect, and anyone that calls them boring or a bum without having ever done the same is simply a worthless blowhard, be they an ESPN  hack or a bar room opinionist.

Don’t go asking me about the toe thing, I’m trying not to think about the toe thing…

A quick plug

For the past few weekends I’ve been mentoring some fantastically talented writers and poets for the Apples and Snakes “The Word’s a Stage Gig”.  Cath Drake, Farhad Mirza, Bleue Granada and Alex Gwyther have been tweaking a truly diverse and exciting 15 minute sets and you would be a knave and a villain if you did not head over to the Albany, Deptford this Thursday the 7th to catch them!

Red Wheelbarrow

I have refrained from commenting on the drama at the Poetry Society for the past month. All kinds of things have appeared in print following a series of high profile resignations, rumours and recriminations abound. However, Kate Clanchy has collected signatures from over 10% percent of the Poetry Societies members, demanding an Extraordinary General Meeting, in place of the offered General Meeting, demanding an explanation from the board of trustees of what has really been happening. The demand will make its way from the Cross Keys pub to the door of Betterton Street headquarters in a red wheelbarrow, a nod to William Carlos Williams. This will happen on Tuesday, a few hours before I set up the basement for Poetry Unplugged. I know and like some people on the board, as I know and like the employees of the Poetry Society and my name will be on that piece of paper. I am concerned as a member of the PS and also as the emcee of Unplugged. The happenings in the Ivory Tower may seem a long way from the rumbles in the basement, but we are ultimately in Betterton Street at the behest of the Poetry Society, something brought home to me when a former director described the night as one of the worst evenings she had in her entire life when writing for the Independent. This is the same woman who said “What is this, hug a hoody?” when a mutual friend gave me a hug after a few bevvies and a nice chat at a Poetry Society reception. Class prejudice in the arts? Never! This wasn’t the director who recently left, or the one before her, it was the one before them two. Yeah, her.

If you read all this, you have my vote of confidence.

Niall

Just a quick heads up for two shows in the outer zones this week. First up, I’ll be reading with Tom Bland, Amy Acer and Betty Davies tonight at the Old Ship pub in Richmond at 7pm tonight. Here’s a link to the facebook events page : https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=115238171897828

I’ll also be reading among many poetical luminaries at The Fling festival in Chelmsford this Saturday, I’ll be hitting the stage of the Wordsmith’s Tent around 7.15pm.

https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=178763472180653

The New, New Rock’n'Roll

Spoken Word has been visible this week, through a double page spread in the Metro during the week and an article about Spoken Word made with respect to some throwaway comments made by John Fuller while promoting his new book. I shared a few thoughts for the article, and won’t repeat them here, but I might elaborate on a few comments made by some poets on facebook when links to the article were posted. Perhaps one of the more interesting points brought up was that we either hear the likes of Fuller making ignorant comments about live poetry or we have an article telling people how great the whole scene is and how people should check it out. What’s missing though, is a genuine insider’s critical perspective on Spoken Word. At this point, anyone that does this is quickly branded as bitter or a hater, as others talk about SW as something that needs to be raised up and fired into the mainstream.

Old fart that I am, I still think of Henry Rolins, Jello Biafra and Lydia Lunch when I hear the term “Spoken Word” and not the US Slam inspired poetry that the label evokes to a younger generation. It does seem that some exponents want to drop the term “poetry”, either because they don’t see themselves as poets or think that the term will put audiences off. I’m quite happy to call myself a poet and have never called myself a Spoken Word artist. There are things that I like about SW and things that I don’t, but I don’t think that I’m the one needed to provide a critical perspective. To me, it isn’t really that different to the Performance Poetry of the nineties and is no more underground than any other collection of enthusiasts in a cramped bar or function room across the country in the last few decades. Most of the exponents will vanish over the next few years and the deserving and undeserving elite will hang around to associate themselves with the next “poetry boom.”

My glass remains raised to all those that are dedicated to their craft, work their arses off to get where they’re going and recognise how far they still have to go; not in the sense of the climb to fame and recognition, but rather their recognition of the challenge of the craft itself.

The Old, Old Rock’n'Roll

The BBC are back to their old ways with respect to telling the story of human evolution, a few years ago we had to watch many montages of Alice Roberts heading up rivers and walking across deserts to show that she was “on a journey”. Occasionally, we would be treated to a bit of science, related by Roberts herself, with the confusion of her talking about “my Out of Africa theory…”

While I would love to inform you that with The Planet of the Apemen ,the BBC were revisiting the brilliance of Bronowski’s seminal, but dated, Ascent of Man, they are instead back to their other old trick, getting members of H. sapiens to wear rubber prosthetics on their faces and run around grunting. The one bonus is that the reconstructions of the the clashes between modern humans and Homo erectus, we get some vox pops with the brilliant Chris Stringer, someone who really did play a part in the recent African origin theory.

What really attracted me to look into our origins is the fact that other species looked radically different to us, if you compare the skull of another species of human you can see that we are different in a way that no latex make up can replicate. When motion capture technology comes within reach of the BBC Science department’s means, we may indeed see some breathtaking reconstructions, but the current ones cannot touch the wonder of the real science coupled with our own imaginations. For instance, it was this quote by Alan Walker on Homo erectus that really fired my imagination many years ago and led top the poem on this site about this species of human travelling on the Northern line.

“In his eyes was not the expectant reserve of a stranger but that deadly unknowing I have seen in a lion’s blank yellow eyes.”

I can happily admit that I missed the BBC show (well, I did catch it on iplayer…) because I attended Stringer’s latest talk at the Royal Institute, all about how far we’ve come in our understanding of human evolution and, as is the beauty of science, how when we come to know more, we also realise how little we know. New discoveries raise new questions, such as the Denisovan genome, the Neanderthal DNA found in most modern humans (native Austraian, European and East Asian) apart from modern Africans, and the tantalising chance that the population of modern humans that stayed in Africa may have also swapped genes with an undiscovered species of archaic human. Chris Stringer’s new book deals with these, and is thoroughly recommended, but as he stated in the lecture, it could be dated within a year, or, to paraphrase what Stringer said on the night, “By the time the American edition comes out, some idiot might have succeeded in cloning a Neanderthal”.

If you read all of this, I’ll name a new species of human after you.

Niall