Wondermentalist

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.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘we need suggestions for the audience poem. Open your mouths. Be free.’ (I didn’t say this last bit. I might have done). A voice from the back pipes up playfully, ‘Giraffe Café’. There is a low groan, with an element of ‘tch!’ to it. In case you didn’t know, and why should you, the respondent was referring to the café in nearby Exeter that was, last week, the scene of an attempted terrorist attack, bringing home the dark realities of contemporary extremism to us sheltered south-westerly breeze-blocks. Not the kind of start you’re looking for in my position as ‘theme-find focuser’. ‘You’re steering us toward a dark place,’ I acknowledge, ‘but we don’t seem to want to go there.’

Others begin to chip in. ‘Toffee apple’ is offered from near the front, I can hear that everyone’s relieved. We’re not into being edgy tonight it seems. Someone else suggests ‘good taste’, which I reject on the grounds that it’s a bit abstract and they were just making a point. A muffled voice from the middle of the room shouts ‘putty’. Or was it puppy? It’s unclear. I ask for clarification, but there are too many contending voices. Someone woofs, helpfully. But can I trust them? I decide to go with putty, it’s more interesting, less expected. Offered the choice of ‘giraffe café,’ ‘toffee apple’ and ‘putty’, the audience also opts for putty.

Liv Torc put the poem together, and it goes like this…

Putty

Pick it lick it roll it flick it

You are the smooth edge to all my panes

Push and press it feel it smooth and oily

Friendly bendy all-purpose squishiness

I modelled you on my own image and was unhappy

Like playing with my balls – with oil

Oh the pain of your thumbprint as the putty pushed and pored…

Pretty shitty smelly smutty putty

You’re so slutty

And oh, in my dreams, you will be putty in my hot, hot hands!

Oily chalk beneath my nails

I glue you, join you, fill you, bond you,

Aren’t you glad that I belong to you

Putty come quick, putty come slow,

Give me your stick and I will start to glow

Putty sticks things together, in this poem

It oozes out of the Mastic Gun

Can be all things to all men

Picks up the imprint of the morning news,

Expanding and stretching obscenely under thumb.

Putty potty, potty putty, pity putty

In your hands

Without putty, life would be paneless   (geddit?)

Use that putty to fill the holes of life

Putty is now obsolete, it isn’t what it used to be…