Open Mic Poetry

Last Thursday I went to the Poetry Open Mic event at Barrow Underground Music Society. It was organised by my good friend, Caleb, to raise money for Mind-in-Furness. My last visit had been for a fundraiser for Gaza. This time was different. I was going to go on stage and read my poetry in public. I had read in public before at an event organised by Manchester Museum. But this was my first open mic night.

Many people were reading from their phones or ipads and a couple of old hands had memorised their set. The rest of us, with our handwritten notebooks or computer printouts soon discovered that the stage lighting was less than adequate! But FirQ, a queer activist and poet, came to the rescue and became a one man lighting engineer with the aid of a table lamp that was part of the stage set.

I was pleasantly surprised by the range of talent in the room. We had ranting poets that reminded me of the punk era, political satire, explorations of love and relationships, observational poetry of daily life that reminded me of a poem we had discussed in Maggies Creatives the week before.

Instructions for Living a Life

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

by Mary Oliver

We had published poets and people who came with notebooks of verse, written at home and never shared before. I was somewhere in the middle, a published author but not for my poetry, apart from the odd contribution to the Maggies Creatives pamphlets that are published to raise money for Maggie’s Centre in Manchester. I attend the Maggies Creatives writing group via zoom every Thursday. Most people attend in person and we are an eclectic mix of ‘in the room’ and ‘on the Zoom’ led by the wonderful Clare Stuart.

But on Thursday night I was on my own. There were three sessions in between the beer breaks and Caleb asked me to open the second session. I was well received, but so was everybody. It was a generous crowd. I had just finished when my partner, Dee arrived. Luckily, another friend, Alex Taylor had been filming the whole event so now she can watch me over and over again. OK I will settle for once!

These are the three poems I read.

Some People

Some people know how it feels
To be poor
To be dressed in someone else’s clothes
To play with second hand toys at Christmas and
To be told “That’s my bike,” by the kid next door.

Some people know how it feels to play at explorers under a tented table with your mum 
where you keep quiet, so the outlaws don’t find you
(when it was the rent man, tallyman, milkman coming for their money, tapping on the window and fooled by a net curtain cloak)

Some people know how it feels
To lose the letter for the school trip because 
“We couldn’t afford it, Mum,” and
To be clouted for her shame
To be raised so that you cried when you found a penny and couldn’t find its owner
To know that holidays were for other people and not to mind.
 
And some people will never know how it feels
To be so loved that I never knew I was so poor.

Father and Son

My uncle was a communist.
He joined the YCL
My father never joined them
Yet he knew how to rebel

My dad remembered his dad,
A commie to the core.
Last man to be hired 
First pushed out the door.

My dad he was a fighter.
He used to scrap and brawl.
I was a disappointment.
I could not fight at all. 

Then I passed eleven plus 
To go to grammar school.
“My lad won’t be a docker
Like his dad. He is no fool.”

I tried to be a rebel,
Fought my battles with my pen.
Forgot to write my essays.
“Don’t come back to school again.”
When I became a docker
Like my uncle and my dad,
Work was harder than the bookshop
Though the wages weren’t as bad. 

The union was powerful.
I was a Trotskyite.
Old commies did not like that.
Still, they let me join the fight.

Now my pen was powerful
Writing for the cause.
Victory to the miners!
We’re not bound by union laws!

The reading and the writing
Had opened up my mind.
I was proud to be a docker
But the grind began to bind. 

Then at last I went to uni
I came out with a degree.
The dockers weren’t so lucky
Under Thatcher’s tyranny. 

When I became a teacher.
Oh! It made my father proud.
And I expressed my pride in him
Before his funeral crowd. 

The next one requires some explanation. The Sun did a series on broken Britain in 2022 and featured Barrow-in-Furness. They produced a lying article about ‘feral gangs’ taking over our public park and people no longer feeling safe to go there. I penned an angry response. A couple of years later I wrote a more humerous take, based on The Teddy Bears Picnic.

Picnic in the Park

If you go down in the park today
you’re sure of a big surprise.
If you go down in the park today
you better go in disguise.
For feral gangs with hoodies and knives,
who gather there to terrorise
the rest of us, are going to have a picnic!

Every Gangster whose been wild 
will take time out to play.
In truth they all are someone’s child
and not so bad as they say.
There’s ducks to feed and fish to catch
an unofficial football match -
Lots of fun for everyone at the picnic!

Picnic time for Feral Gangs, who bare their fangs 
to scare us all away.
Or is it just a friendly smile? 
Let’s join them on their holiday.
See them sitting in a ring. They like to talk and sing, and laughing all the while.
And when it’s time to go they’ll gather up
empty packets and cans
and put them all in a tidy pile.

If you go down in the park today, you don’t have to be alone.
It's lovely down in the park today, better than staying at home. 
Teenage kids will welcome you there.
Just don’t forget your Teddy Bear.
Today's the day the wild things have their picnic!