Wondermentalist

I’ve been remiss and not sent up the audience poem from the wonderful night at the Phoenix. They opted to investigate the aubergine, and were pretty pleased with what they came up with - quite rightly, I think. Aubergines what are you like?

Aubergines – an egg’s ugly cousin

Purple and sexy you make me smile

Saviour of my cheap night in

Aubergines,

Oversized liquorice jellybeans

Lick-able like me

The purple shiny skin of a sweaty bald patch

Plummy, roundy, purple bumbly

Green pokey stalk

Aubergines have feelings too

A personified bruise

An English pear with a suntan

Aubergines, broken dreams, silent screams

Aubergines are fancier than Under-gines

Rakish squishy pulpy thing

The big but small fruit of life

It’s like a giant tomato but purple and slimy

My love is like an Aubergine: big hearted, shiny and delicious barbequed

Aubergines you’re fat and thin, you’re purple like a lucid dream

In America they’re called Eggplants, either way they’re beautiful

Aubergines would make good weapons of mass destruction, if they weren’t soft

Black dummies for big babies

Dressed up marrows

Aubergines are a culinary challenge

A Greek holiday with Germans

The colour of our bathroom suite, the colour of my wedding suit

Goodbye Aubergines…

Aubergines are difficult to shove up your arse.

By the people of Exeter and put together by Beryl the Feral The audience liked it all, but especially the last line…

I know it’s not directly related to Wondermentalist - although it will be if I choose to read my shed poem tomorrow night at Ways With Words, which I might - but I was so chuffed that my Guardian Work Section Desktop Poetry offering on the subject of sheds, Where Earwigs Dare,  was picked up on by the wonderful blog Shedworking, produced by Alex Johnson, that I wanted to link to it from here and post a copy of the poem. In fact it’s very wondermentally related, as I was told of the shedworking blog and given a link to it by a thgouhtful woman called Annie who I’m sure has been to Wondermentalist as she also sent links to youtube performances that might inspire wondermental happenings…Anyway, here’s the poem:

Where Earwigs Dare

A silver trail across the monitor;

Fresh mouse-droppings beneath the swivel-chair;

The view obscured by rogue japonica.

Released into the wild, where earwigs dare -

You first went freelance - and then gently feral.

You worked from home - then wandered out again,

Roughed it with spider, ant, shrew, blackbird, squirrel

In your own realm, your micro-vatican.

No name conveys exactly what it is -

Chalet?  Gazebo? You were not misled

By studios, snugs, garden offices,

Workshops or outhouses. A shed’s a shed -

And proud of it. You wouldn’t want to hide it -

Wifi-enabled rain-proof wooden box.

A box to sit in while you think outside it -

Self-rattling cage, den, poop-deck, paradox,

Hutch with home-rule, cramped cubicle of freedom,

Laboratory, thought-palace, bodger’s bower,

Plot both to sow seeds and to go to seed in,

Cobwebbed, Cuprinol-scented, Seat of Power.

I’ve had chronic computer trouble and I’m writing this from the Apple store in Exeter’s Princesshay while a Genius (sic) does an erase and install on my iBook. That’s why I’m slow off the mark writing up our night at the Phoenix. But Liv Torc just phoned and told me that the Express and Echo have beaten me to it and given us a cracking review. When you read it you’ll see why she was happy about it…

I’ll cut and paste it below for those who are, quite rightly, suspicious of embedded links. While I’m at it I’ll chip in, for the record, that Beryl the Feral, Bill Greenwell and Nomad Shuffle were brilliant too.

INSPIRATIONAL PHOENIX NIGHT

11:40 - 09 July 2008

“I have enough, I do enough, I am enough,” were the stark words of Exeter performance poet Liv Torc giving the two fingers to modern life at the humorous cabaret Wondermentalist.Her set was one of the highlights of the poetry, comedy and music night hosted by Devon-based Radio 4 poet Matt Harvey in conjunction with Exeter College.Torc’s ‘Living TV’ celebrates the lives of the enviable ‘have-enoughs’, such as size-14 Beverly who unapologetically eats saturated fat and caravan owner George who prefers buying Frank Zappa albums to a proper house. They were just two of the evening’s funniest and most endearing characters created and brought to life by some of the county’s brightest poetic talent.Making a hilarious appearance was Harvey’s famous superhero alter ego ‘Empath Man’ who “took part in a drugs trial that went horribly wrong - it was for an anti-pessimism drug, called Optiagra, for middle-aged men who find it difficult to get their hopes up.”

Harvey could have been describing one of the evening’s funniest performers, Jerri Hart, who is “single by choice, but not his choice”. Probably better-known to Exeter residents as a jazz busker in Princesshay, Hart had the audience laughing incredulously at his weird but hilarious jazz knitting and just plain silly origami scat.

Exeter College lecturers passionately championed their favourite writers in the Dead Poets Slam, cheered on encouragingly by English literature students in the crowd. Finally the audience participation poem pushed the people of Exeter to reach deep into their creative vegetable juices - each writing a line to describe their feelings on aubergines. A hilarious, moving, inspiring night.

Hello folks! Jackie Juno here. I compered a night over the weekend, in a raucous club in Torquay- I have to say, a whole lotta fun was had - but it made me appreciate how nice it is to BE HEARD when one is delivering poetry - (like one is at the Wondermentalist Cabaret….). it may not have the sex n drugs n rock n roll in such prolific proportions, but it does have attentive respectful audiences a poet craves!!!!Remember folks - POETRY - its the NEW sex n drugs n rock n roll - AND you can be in bed at a decent time, and wake up the next morning refreshed and inspired…