On Thursday evening, I did my final poetry gig of 2024, performing a headline set at Caffe Grande Slam, in Dudley. This is a monthly event – and a good one – powered by the dedication and passion of the organisers, and a vibrant evening of grassroots poetry. Given that we know the positive benefits which engagement with the arts brings (improvements in mental health and self-esteem, a drop in feelings of isolation) a poetry night like this in every town across the country would be A Very Good Thing, in my opinion. But that’s another topic for another day.
That gig in Dudley was my 29th gig of the year, and I was delighted to find – when I got home and totted up the book sales for the evening – that there are now more than 200 copies of snapshots out in the world. I know that’s not troubling the bestseller lists in any way, but it’s a nice milestone to have passed.
Looking back at the year, I feel that over the past twelve months I’ve really found my way into setting my poems in context for an audience and delivering the best set possible. We fit each other now. Comfortably. A 20-25 minute gig has been standard, but at Ledbury last week I did a 50-minute set, entirely from memory, and I really enjoyed the opportunity to spread my wings and perform a wider range of pieces. I know performing from memory isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and I’m not trying to say it’s a better way of delivering a set (when any poet is on stage, the space is theirs to use however they feel is best) I’m simply saying it’s what works for me.
Anyway, I digress.
One unexpected outcome of the Dudley gig was that it set me thinking about self-censorship in the arts world – specifically in poetry – and how insidious it can be. Over the past several months, I’ve made a conscious decision to include a poem about Palestine in my set whenever I can. We’ve been living through fourteen months of a live-streamed genocide, in which our government is criminally complicit, and I believe it’s important to speak out about what’s happening, and how our politicians and media are failing us all.
But in Dudley, with many of the audience wearing festive jumpers, and Xmas just six days away, I found myself wondering whether I should drop the poem I had planned, and replace it with something less… What? Controversial? Political? Serious? Potentially upsetting? No-one had asked me to keep things ‘light’, but I was worried about misjudging the room, lowering the pre-Xmas mood, marring the evening, being that person everyone chooses to avoid.
I read the poem. And afterwards, when chatting to folk, there were important conversations about the difficulty of looking at what’s going on in the world when we feel there’s so little we can do, and about the importance – in my view, certainly – of doing what we can when we can, and how on earth we find the balance between doing that and looking after our own selves. I think those conversations did all of us some good. But I could so easily have dropped the poem – simply for fear of doing the wrong thing – and let the opportunity for those conversations slip by.
The poem I read, by the way, is this one. I posted the link to the YouTube version on Twitter yesterday, and someone replied to my post to say when they clicked through they got a webpage saying the piece was no longer available. Sure enough, I couldn’t view it when clicking the link on Twitter. But I can access it (and hopefully so can you) via other platforms such as BlueSky. It looks as though Space Karen’s much-vaunted commitment to free speech is decidedly limited, which I’m sure comes as a complete shock to us all.
And finally…. Today is the winter solstice, after which light begins to return to our part of the world. Let’s hope that in 2025, that light returns in a figurative and political sense, too. We need to build a better, more sustainable way of looking after each other, the planet, and the life on it, for all our sakes. Wherever you’re reading this, I wish you and yours the very best for the future, and I hope to meet up with you at some point down the line, one where the need for that poem is history.