First Birthday of Oliver's Poetry / The Pi House

Tomorrow is the first birthday of Oliver's Poetry Garret - and what a strange 12 months it has been!

Looking back, it is hard for me to get my head around some of the things that have happened. Also, at times, I have to confess it's not easy for me to see why I created this blog.

My interest in poetry started back in December 2004 when, under not entirely happy circumstances, I was leaving a job in London.

I won't go into the details of what happened then, apart from to say that for the first time in my life I turned to poetry.

During my last week in that job, I attended a poetry night in a bar in Brighton. The following day I wrote a poem about my situation at work and my feeling about the previous two-and-half-years working there. From that point I have not stopped writing poetry.

In the meantime, I had moved to a new day-job out in the countryside, and was initially living during the week in a converted woodshed in Cotesbach, Leicestershire (see flashback below). Eventually, I moved to Warwick and then Leamington.

The blog I instantly found addictive. Long before it was even launched, I was 'blogging' every day on a computer I had installed in my bedroom in Leamington.

The idea dawned on me of the blog moving forward and backward in time simultaneously. With regular blogs and flashbacks to my past (called backblogs). It all coincided with strange things happening in my personal life in Leamington, making the blogging all the more compulsive.

And, of course, there was the poetry. I had to write enough poems to put on the site and also to encourage other poets to submit their best work.

It was all most exciting for me. The problem was I soon found myself spending more time blogging, taking images for the site and doing technical stuff, like HTML, than actually writing poetry! This is an issue I have never truly resolved.

However, an anniversary is always a good opportunity to reflect. And for this first one, I decided to return my  focus to poetry - and have re-read and revised all of my poems.

I was amazed to find that I had written 110 poems, although in a way this alarmed me. A poet needs only write a few great poems in a lifetime, and this high production of mediocrity in the first 30 months - while working full-time and doing numerous other tasks - struck me as excessive.

I have also written 48 blogs and, therefore, 48 flashbacks or backblogs and taken many of the images on Oliver's Poetry Garret. (I have picked out some of my favourite photographs from the first year to illustrate this anniversary blog.)

The blogs and flashbacks started out on the same day, of course - 2 June 2006 - but are now some 20 months apart. Writing the backblogs or flashbacks has become more difficult because now I am relying on memory or what few notes I have of my mis-spent history.

The past year has been an interesting ride for Oliver's Poetry Garret which to a large degree reflects my personal journey.







What happens to me in life is my main inspiration for all the poetic writing I have done for this site and elsewhere.



And it has been through promoting the site that I have come to realise the link between the live comedy world, in which I was active for more than a decade performing and running a comedy club, and the burgeoning performance poetry scene.

Indeed I even ended up reading some of my poems at Leamington's uniquely brilliant comedy club, The Reckless Moment, in one of the gigs I have enjoyed most this year.







Sitting here in the Leamington Garret, overlooking the Pump Room Gardens, as the sun sets, I can see what a strange year it has been. In Leamington and Lewes, so many memorable things have happened.

The remarkable boycott of one of my favourite pubs, the Lewes Arms, in Lewes, by its customers - because the brewery removed their favourite ale - was subject of one of my blogs.

After running the famous public house virtually without a clientele for several months, Greene King realised they were never going to win and caved in.

Also in Lewes, being approached at random by a woman who asked me to be Father Christmas at a school fair was another strange occurrence.

Up in the Midlands, the death of my old friend Sam Towers, in Cotesbach, Leicestershire, was profoundly sad.

After the funeral I wrote a poem and blog and thought nothing more of it.

I was surprised to find Sam's relatives from around the world visiting the site to read them, and, touchingly, emailing to thank me.

I even received a missive from a youngster also called Sam Towers who said he was unrelated to the Sam Towers I had written about but 'was proud to share this gentleman's name'.

Also in Cotesbach, the estate dog Bruno died. He had been a great friend during the years I lived there (from 1999-2002 and 2005). Whenever I visit, it seems sadly strange not to have his great hairy, loving bulk jumping up at me, trying to lick my face!

All in all, the past 12 months have been rich in events and experience. I have greatly enjoyed my poetry slots at the tremendous PureandGoodandRight club in Leamington, and my other performances at Six of the Best in Birmingham, Word in Leicester and on the Warwick Words pub tour.


Yet what I am struggling to get my head around is what I really want to do with poetry. Reviewing comedy shows up at the Edinburgh Fringe last summer, I gave it a lot of thought. I saw the buzz around the Pleasance Courtyard of an evening and thought that I wanted to be part of it, but as a poet.

When I see my friends and mates branching out creatively - as comedians, musicians, poets, artists or whatever - I wonder what I am doing artistically.


Even when I get hooked into an art form, I feel myself hopelessly waylayed into a geeky backwater such as web design, digital photography or blogging!





I often wonder why it is I have written 110 poems in 30 poems but only committed three or four of them to memory.

Or why I am currently terrified of standing in front of an audience without a piece of paper in my hand.









The Pi House (Flashback to Saturday, 15 October 2005)

This is my last night in the Pi House - so-called because one of its windows is hewn in the shape of a Greek letter Pi - after almost 10 months. I am sad to be leaving but, with winter round the corner, it is definitely the right time to go.

I have loved living in this converted woodshed from Spring onwards (despite its lack of bathing or showering amenities).

It is a remarkable, ingenious building, with the shelter afforded by the indoors but the feel of the Great Outdoors.

In the winter, however, it is too tough for me. I have never known such cold as I experienced in this sweet little abode in January, February and March this year!

I recall awaking one morning thinking I had been frost-bitten, the ice forming on the inside of the windows.

Tonight I am going to the Sickle & Stick for a valedictory drink and traditional game of Staghorn. I know I shall miss my friends here as I prepare to move to Warwick and who knows what.

I am rather proud to have lived in the Pi House.

My First Poetry Gigs / Loo Love

My First Poetry Gigs

Lewes Garret. My poetry friend Sean Kelly (pictured left) offered me my first poetry gig, at his excellent club, PureAndGoodAndRight, at the TOYK bar in Leamington. I had just started to prepare for it, deciding which of my far-from-perfect repertoire of poems I should try out on a live audience.

Meanwhile Sean suggested we go to watch a big poetry show in Birmingham. I met him at Birmingham New Street station for a beer, and we walked on to the Library Theatre where the last of a series of poetry gigs called 'Six of the Best' was to be staged.

Even though the performance was just about to start, he introduced me to the compere, Birmingham's Poet Laureate Richard Grant, aka Dreadlockalien. I was amazed when Richard asked me if I wanted to do a poem or two. I heard myself saying, 'Yes, great' and watched him typing my name onto his laptop.

I regretted my rashness. I like to plan and prepare. This is not the way I do things. The following minutes were frantic. I knew none of my poems by heart, so while the gig was kicking off I desperately rifled through my rucksack in a hunt for rhyme. Thankfully, I found a tatty, dog-eared old notebook - I possess many - with scribbled poems in it. They were early versions, and I could hardly read my own handwriting. I had certainly never read them aloud.

So I rapidly rewrote, attempting to make them scan and changing words and entire lines. All the while I was aware of being in a 300-seater venue in front of an intimidatingly large stage onto which I could at any moment be called to read my poetry.

I had just finished redrafting the second poem when the time came. While a live musical jingle was being played by resident band Fat Controller, Richard Grant - who had been making up rhyming intros for all acts - rushed over to me and, in a stage whisper, said: 'I can't think of a rhyme for Oliver. What's your surname?' I don't use my second name, so I said, 'Try rhyming with Ollie.' He concocted an intro with a brilliant rhyme and a quip about my distinctly Shakespearean shirt.

I was on - and as nervous as hell. I felt the stage would swallow me up. I read, as calmly and slowly as I could, Probably Not, which won a laugh, and Ed Cases, which was rewarded with some applause. I was pleasantly surprised. I left the stage with a vast sense of relief, feeling I had been flying by the seat of my pants.

The rest of the gig was absolutely tremendous. Sean Kelly did a funny poem timed to last precisely one minute, and Richard Grant is clearly very talented. Although a performance poet, his written poetry on his upbringing with numerous foster parents was outstanding and moving.

I also really enjoyed the piece of hip-hop theatre, and the brilliant headliner, Elvis McGonagall, a very funny poet and impressionist and the current 'World Slam Poetry Champion'. It was a great gig. More than anything, I was struck by the high level of moral support that the poets gave each other. Six of the Best has clearly been a brilliant concept, superbly executed.

My other 'first poetry gig' was at Sean's club PureAndGoodandRight, at TOYK, in Leamington. I was far more nervous for this one, although it was in a much more intimate venue (packed to the gills). I have always suffered from stage nerves, which drove me into the jaws of the demon drink when I chanced my arm as a stand-up comedian between 1995 and 2000. I was determined not to make the same mistake again.

I had turned up early in my poet's shirt and chatted to a very pleasant Birmingham poet called Spoz whom I had met at the other gig. I collared Sean Kelly and asked to go on first. I was really nervous as I read my first poem, The Liger - a whimsical number.

I knew it by heart, having recited it all week while cycling to work, but glanced down at my notes all the same. I made more eye contact with the audience than in Birmingham, but still did not feel entirely at home. I was conscious of gripping the mic stand like a fiend!

The next one I did was my tribute to Pope John Paul II, which I guess rather surprised the audience. A serious poem, about a Pontiff. However when, afterwards, I mentioned his successor's recent global PR gaffe, I was rewarded with a hearty laugh from the audience.

Next I performed the First Canto of my long, narrative poem Jack Dove. This I did not do well. Suddenly flushed with nerves I blew loads of lines of the 12 eight-line verses, and felt awful for it. I was shaking but I did not completely lose my nerve.

After that, it was a wonderful night. I enjoyed Sean Kelly's compering. He is a natural MC. Spoz also had great stage presence and some tremendously funny poems, particularly the ones about meeting Jesus. The headliner was Rachel Pantechnicon about whom I had heard much while, apparently, learning little. After a couple of lines of her set, I whispered to Dani Carbery: 'She's a bloke!' We fell about laughing at my admission of ignorance. It had not occurred to me for one second that Rachel Pantechnicon would be a poetic cross-dresser.

Rachel Pantechnicon (pictured left) was excellent; I could make imagine her making a great living on the stand-up comedy circuit I used to inhabit, rather than limiting herself to the 'Warwickshire spoken word cabaret circuit' as she described it afterwards. I particularly liked the ridiculous children's storybooks that she produced between poems. It was a fitting end to a very fine evening indeed!

Loo Love (Flashback to Thursday, 4 May 2006)

London Victoria – Brighton train. 7.49pm. I am sitting opposite the in-lurve couple from hell. They sat down, moved my case, and immediately starting virtually making love, French-kissing until their tonsils were sore. Then they had a loud conversation about his toilet habits. Now they are both watching an episode of The Simpsons on their laptop on guffawing like the buffoons they truly are.

How would you describe these morons? Well, she has black hair, gappy teeth, and small, exposed breasts; and is in her late twenties, with nice eyes, but far too much make-up. He is in his late thirties or early forties, with a receding hairline, curly, or, God forbid, permed hair, and a pretentious T-shirt. His teeth are bad, although not as bad as hers.

Now she has started to chew gum, and he is telling her about the difference between what he describes as boys' and girls' toilets. They are truly scatalogical in their relationship. Rarely has a couple irritated me as much. Now they have started pet-hitting each other; now they are French-kissing again; now she is jacking up her crop-top to reveal her tubby tub and nasty navel. Chunder! Vom! Chuck! Puke!

All the other bloody seats are taken, or I would move to escape this. Could it get any worse? Yes, he has just farted, a loud and smelly one. She has responded by getting out her lippy, and redoing her tarty face. Excuse me while I throw up!