Ah, the life of a jobbing poet!
Yesterday was spent sitting on a sofa in the autumn sunshine at BlackBerry Fair in Whitchurch in Shropshire, as myself and fellow pandemonialist Emma Purshouse offered Poetry on Demand to anyone who fancied a bespoke poem – written for them on any subject they wished, completed and read to them within fifteen minutes. With a neatly handwritten copy to take away with them, natch.
Now, Poetry on Demand isn’t every poet’s cup of tea. I know extremely talented poets who find it way less appealing than the prospect of sitting in a dentist’s chair with an approaching drill filling their vision, and that’s fine. Horses for courses, and all that. Personally, I love not knowing who I’m going to be chatting to, what they’re going to tell me, what I’m going to be asked to write about, and the pressure of that ticking clock. It keeps me on my poetic toes, and – for me – that’s no bad thing. Yesterday, among others and in no particular order, I wrote poems for…
a pirate on a mobility scooter
a woman who’d lost her son
a lad who wanted a poem about a bloodthirsty tiger
a girl who wanted to live on a tropical beach
a woman who’d just moved to Whitchurch
a bovine reproductive technician
a couple of teenagers in their 60s
a fan of armadillos
a choir of boatmen
Variety. It’s the spice of poetry life. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.