With
performance poetry gaining more and more popular ground and taking up more and
more of a prominent role in my life, I will be dedicating a few blogs in the
upcoming months to interviewing and profiling some stand out performers. This
time, punk rock poet and local legend Laura Taylor. Laura has been fighting the good fight through poetry and performance since 2010 and, in her own words, 'speaks of love and politics, injustice and hypocrisy, of barking dogs and making space; equality for all'. There is nothing I can
add to this interview to make it any better, so here it is.
When
did you first get in to poetry?
In 2010. Unlike many other poets I know, I
haven’t been writing poetry since I was a child. I’d read a bit of Paradise Lost about 20 years
ago but nothing else. In mid-2010, I
went to a mate’s gig, and one of the support acts was a poet. She recited some of her poems and I became
emotionally overwhelmed by her words, sat in the darkness, choking up. I’d never seen anyone do this before, and I
left the gig thinking “Wow. I’ve got things to say, too”, so I started writing.
Took a while before I grew to appreciate anyone else’s poetry.
Who would you say your biggest influence is?
Me. Seriously. I haven’t got a poetic
influence. I didn’t think I liked it before that gig! I’d enjoyed the little
bit of Paradise Lost, but it wasn’t influential at all. I thought poetry was
elitist and ‘not for the likes of me’. If I have any influences at all, they’re
musical or biblical. I write very
naturally in rhythmic patterns, so much that it drives me mad sometimes. I
read the bible for the first time a few years ago, after being raised as an
atheist, and was knocked out by it. I’ve ransacked it quite a lot since then.
What
connects performance poetry and politics?
First of all, I have to say that not all
performance poets are political, but a lot are, and most are of a left-wing
persuasion. Right-wing performance poets
are thin on the ground, and usually unaware that they actually hold right-wing
attitudes!
I firmly believe that poets are as
important, if not more important, than historians. We analyse and document the
times we live in. We read between lines,
look further and deeper than the surface ‘reality’ that is presented to us by
Authority; by schools, the media and government. We get up on stages to deliver
the alternative news, and usually find a very receptive crowd of ears, with the
odd delightful Tory self-combusting in the front row. That’s always a lot of fun haha!
What
is the best feeling you have when performing?
It’s great getting a big laugh, breaking
the ice right at the beginning of a set, but my absolute favourite feeling is
getting the whole room engrossed in a poem, to really feel the words and
emotions, especially in a pub or bar where there’s always noise. When I feel
them getting there, I lower my volume even further. Take it to the point where
everyone stops breathing almost, hanging on each word, each nuance, each
pregnant pause. You look around and the room is all big eyes, and you’re
big-eyes back at them, and it’s incredibly intimate and hugely powerful. And
then at the end, the room erupting. It’s almost orgasmic in its intensity.
Do you
prefer reading poetry or watching poetry being performed?
I like both equally. I don’t feel any division or hierarchy in the
creation or the reception of either. That being said, I’d sit through a
performance for longer than I would sit and read poetry.
Do
you think enough poetry is taught to our children?
Hmm – quite a problematic question for me,
that is! I have no idea how much poetry is actually being taught in today’s
schools, and I don’t remember much from when I was there. I’m not sure what you mean by ‘taught’,
either. Do you mean how to write to form? Or being exposed to? Study? Analyse?
I’m probably the last person to ask because I hated school, and think the way
they’re run is really very blunt and brutal. I dropped out of O Level English
Literature, despite having a natural ability for literary analysis, because of
my intense opposition to being force-fed the Western literary canon. The kids
in the so-called ‘remedial class’ got to read Kes, which was an amazing book,
chockfull of the kind of culture and class that I lived in. We had to read
Shakespeare off the page, and because this was the 80s under Thatcher, and my
family were skint, I couldn’t attend the plays which might have brought it all
alive to me.
How
has your upbringing influenced your poetry?
In every way possible. Poets mostly write
about their own lives, and bring excruciating honesty and their own truths to
their writing. That’s why it connects, that’s how other people identify with
it. Other people don’t, won’t or can’t say it to themselves, but when we say it
for/to them, they know they’re not alone.
I had a difficult childhood in many ways,
and tend to explore the world from the perspective of the underdog. I’ve spent
my life challenging arbitrary forms of authority, and will continue to question
inequalities and bigotry until the day I die.
Should
John Cooper Clark be a knight of the realm?
No – I
don’t believe in monarchy or any of its honorary titles. They mean nothing to
me, apart from conferring undeserved, unearned, and un-elected status on a
person. He might quite like it though. You’d best ask him. He’d probably run
with it eh, just to take the piss!
He knows
what he’s done for us, for working class poets – given us a voice, a place at
the table. If I was him, I’d be bloody overjoyed with that knowledge alone.
That, to me, is real status.
Brilliant.
If you need further convincing, you can catch Laura at Hartley’s Bar in Wigan
on the 22nd November or click here for her Write Out Loud profile.
Yours Fist Pumpingly
Stuart Buck
@stuartmbuck
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