How To Deal With A Heckler Occasionally, in your stand-up or spoken word career, you may have to contend with a difficult audience member. This need not spoil your set. Indeed, it may offer you an opportunity to develop as a performer. Just follow these simple rules*. 1. Remain Calm It’s easy to become flustered … Read more

Hello! Goodness me, I’ve been busy as a bee, moving cities back to Norwich, weathering minor psychic catastrophes and beavering away on the script for my FIRST EVER solo show. Yes. Like a grotesque bee-beaver hybrid, lying on its flank, its useless wings quivering, a rasp issuing from its misshapen, bucked-toothed maw… kill me… I … Read more

Apologies for the spotty updates so far this 2010 – I’m hella busy with lots of pseudo-exciting stuff that may or may not come to fruition, and some of that will involve my posting sporadically worthwhile things on this here blog for your perusal. I do enjoy having a meagre platform for my first drafts … Read more

So it’s nice to see my old chum and fellow Aisle16er Luke Wright has been back blogging after a long period of sporadic comms. In my continuing efforts to bore the tits off of all my readers equally (my video game posts have a consistent knack for making at least 50% of eyes glaze over) … Read more

This Thursday 17th December, I’ll be performing with all seven members of Aisle16 at The Monto Water Rats Theatre, on Grays Inn Road. It’s exceptionally rare that all of us are in the same place to do a gig, aside from the late night ‘Aisle16 and Friends’ sessions at Latitude festival. A good portion of … Read more

So yeah, those of you who came to the Local Boys Done Good edition of HOMEWORK will remember we did a show all about our hometowns. Well, guess what? If you missed it or just forgot it or loved it so much that you want to be locked in a cell with it projected onto … Read more

So this weekend I toddled north up to the Lake District for a little festival called Kendal Calling. I say toddled – I dozed in a van while Ventriloquist and the Tongue Fu band drove us the 6+ hours all the way up there on Saturday. I’d had to get up bright and early to … Read more

My word, I am pooped. This weekend just gone, I set off for four gigs over two days. My voice still hadn’t (and still hasn’t) recovered from Latitude, so I left little Tim Jr back in Cambridge and resolved to stick to spoken word. I was in fairly high spirits after my gig on Thursday, … Read more

So, after a day of sleeping and staggering groggily about the flat with Supernoodles dangling from my slack gob, I’ve officially recovered from Latitude festival 2009. My voice is still pretty buggered, so no arias for a week or so, but aside from that I’m compos mentis so woot. Despite intermittently shitty weather, this year … Read more

Apologies for the lack of updates recently. I know you must have been tearing at your hair and gnashing your teeth with sheer boredom, and for your fortnight of torment, I beg your forgiveness. A combination of tech problems, writerly busy-ness and lovely weather have left me with mere slivers of free time, and every … Read more

It’s appropriate that Glastonbury is organised by a farmer, because the ancient and fundamental principle of the yearly harvest also applies to the festival – if the weather’s shit, it’ll be shit. I hope that the weather isn’t shit at Glastonbury 2009, because firstly, have you seen the line up? WHAT. It’s actually mental. Blur, … Read more

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_pIbiZtKoE] Someone suggested I watch this video from back in 1998, of ‘poetry’s first pop group’, Atomic Lip. In the aftermath, I find myself uncharacteristically lost for words. Wow. Just wow. Actually spectacular. Anyone starting out in performance poetry could learn a huge amount from this video. Just study the choreography, their various delivery techniques, … Read more

Ahh. Finally, the new season of Homework is about to kick off. Homework is Aisle16’s London scratch night, a kind of loosely themed literary cabaret on the last Wednesday of every month. Each night has a main show, with support slots from the residents, and often a guest slot. Last year, despite drifting across three … Read more

So yes, here we are again. Another day, another performance poet interview. Goodness. That sounds a bit world-weary. I don’t really feel that bleak. I haven’t been updating with my usual high-fibre regularity for a couple of reasons, primarily because I’ve been busy writing actual proper articles that may wind up appearing in actual semi-esteemed … Read more

Last night I was guest poet at the London final of the Hammer and Tongue Slam. Anyone who knows me knows my official position on slams is I’m not fond of ’em. This may be because I rarely do well – I’m a bit of a waffler, and I like having time to jaw with … Read more

Oh my goodness. What a busy bee I am this week. And yet apparently making as much impact on my workload as an actual bee. They’re not even heavy enough to operate a keyboard. So, look. Why not read this week’s performance poet interview, with the very witty, very tartan Elvis McGonagall? How did you … Read more

After a week off due to me fannying about the UK feeling all whimsical and introspective, flipping off beggars then getting poorly, pray doff your hats for the triumphant return of The Performance Poet Interviews. At least it’s not me having opinions for once, thank whatever interventionist deity presides over blogging (probably some sort of … Read more

It’s that time of week again. While I lie, sleepless, in my sickbed, clutching at the thick air and phasing in and out of languid fever dreams, you get to enjoy the erudite opining of Ross Sutherland. How did you get into performance poetry? I’ve written poetry since I was five. My gran and I … Read more

Waaaah! I’ve spent the latter half of today shivering in bed, trying to ignore a rotten headache. This makes me sad, and also makes the prospect of late night stand-up slots and early morning train journeys from Manchester to Glasgow that little bit less appealing. But then, maybe that’s part of what this pilgrimage is … Read more

So, in case you don’t know, I’m kicking off a pilgrimage to open mic nights big and small all over the country (and a few beyond). I’ve got a tentative itinerary, although given that these events are mostly run by diligent amateurs, I’ve got to expect that I may turn up in a couple of … Read more

Since you asked, Cone O’ Tragedy‘s most popular feature is my weekly interviews with UK performance poets. We’ve heard from Dockers MC, Polarbear, Nathan Filer, Yanny Mac and Nathan Jones. This week, it’s the turn of Joel Stickley. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjBUymEywto] How did you get into performance poetry? I saw Luke Wright perform a few poems at … Read more

How did you get into performance poetry? There were some important men in my life early on. Mainly Ginsberg, then Gershwin lyrics, then the terrible Thomases (Dylan and R.S)… and Eliot! Where am I going with this? Through certain half deserted streets, probably. So anyway reading Eliot really gave me a kick up the arse … Read more

Previously, we’ve heard from Dockers MC, Polarbear and Nathan Filer. This week, I spoke to gravelly-voiced raconteur Yanny Mac. Yanny Mac has performed at Glastonbury, The Edinburgh Fringe, Latitude and the Port Eliot Lit Fest. He compered the Poetry Arena at Latitude in 2007, with his buddy Pikey Paddy, and until recently, they both hosted … Read more

In an act of either laudable pecuniary acumen or savage recklessness, the Arts Council have elected to underwrite the beginning of my forthcoming project. If you take a peek at my Myspace page, you’ll see I’ve already got a nice little run of gigs coming up in April and May. But most of them aren’t … Read more

Last week, I talked to Polarbear, the week before it was Dockers MC. Today, it’s the turn of Nathan Filer. http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2458754&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1GOTH vs EMO from nathan filer on Vimeo. How did you get into performance poetry? Ten years ago I was living in Greece and working as an hotel entertainer. I was utterly useless. One holidaymaker … Read more