Love of the Day: Spoken Word Poets

I used to have major misgivings about poetry as an art form. It always seemed either insipid or painfully cringe-worthy. As I've got older I've started to appreciate it more, but until recently I still had resistance to the idea of it being read aloud, especially from a stage and to an audience *shudder*. I'm really not sure why, when I love live music performance with lyrics so much. But anyway, all that has changed with the entrance of spoken word poetry into my life.

I wish I could say that it was a live show that changed my mind, but in fact it was just happening to watch a video of Cecilia Knapp performing this on iPlayer one day:

(I can't find the BBC video anywhere but this also has a TED talk and then a second poem that made me cry on it, so it's even better)

It made a big impression on me. Cecilia Knapp is amazing specifically, but there's something about spoken word in general that has the ability to be incredibly moving. Whether it's the rhythm, or the emotional intensity that comes from someone laying themselves bare to say these kind of things in person, not hiding behind ink on paper. Ooooh I could never do it. Imagine making yourself that vulnerable! 

But there's another reason that I'm currently enjoying spoken word poetry so much and that is the fact that there are so many people who are evidently 'working-class' or from a minority group of various kinds (queer, POC, disabled) getting up on stage and just blazing out their point of view in an amazingly creative, intelligent and beautiful way. So many people being bold and inspiring and just destroying the kind of stereotypes my over-privileged-straight-white-boarding-school-posh-boy university contemporaries most definitely held about the other ends of the British spectrum. One really great example is Deanna Rodger:

I'm a class mongrel. Economically I was raised a member of the 'underclass', those who scrape along the UK poverty line - I grew up in a house where there was never any money, a house that was owned by the council, full of grotty threadbare carpets, mismatched furniture held together by parcel tape and walls that collected moisture. We didn’t have a washing machine, a toaster, a microwave, a car, a phone, or a colour TV and my clothes came from charity shops way before this became an acceptable way to dress.

Socio-culturally, though, I am pretty sure we were middle class (despite my parents' adamant assertion of being some kind of separate bohemian artisan class, sorry guys). My council house was also full of classical music, art and books. My parents encouraged knowledge acquisition and engagement with High Culture. My mum spent the tiny bits of money that she had on music lessons and healthy food - the things she felt were important and something I will always be grateful for, however much it frustrated me at the time. I don't have a regional accent. I do yoga and go to art galleries and use long words with no embarrassment. I'm called Felicity for god's sake. If you met me you would never in a million years guess I grew up qualifying for free school dinners, buying my uniform with a grant and only dreaming of one day owning name-brand anything. 

As a kid my class mongrelity felt hard. I got picked on twice over; on the one hand for sounding posh and getting good grades, and on the other for having shit clothes and no car (because kids have no sense of irony). My academic performance and appreciation for creative cultural things didn't stop me having to live through the dragging, dreary greyness of being poor and never having what I wanted, never being able to do the things other people did. Years and years of life-drizzle, with no swimming lessons or trips to the cinema to brighten things up. I carried around the feeling of being inherently not as good as other people, of never being good enough, an underlying sense of shame.

But as an adult I am able to appreciate what it's given me - some understanding of what it's like to be 'othered', to be on the fringes, to struggle, to fight against a stereotype. It's helped me understand what absence of privilege means and appreciate what privileges I have. White privilege for instance. The advantages my non-regional accent and air of being middle-class give me. I try never  to judge anyone before getting to know them and although I give off every impression of being middle-class, my sympathies lie very firmly on the working and under-class side of the divide - on the subaltern side of any divide. So all these spoken word poets out there waging this dazzling war on stereotypes? I blimmin love them. I might not be capable of this kind of thing myself, but I'm so glad that someone is. THIS IS WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS.

Bug of the Day: Locking Myself Out

Having posted two Loves in a row, I've been racking my brains this week for a Bug to balance things out a bit (never let it be said that I have a positivity bias). While I'm obviously constantly pissed off about something or other, they're not always suitable subjects for a blog post. But then today, locking myself out suddenly became a clear candidate for the Bug category... SIGH.

Despite my best efforts to be a mature and responsible grown-up, there is one aspect (probably more than one, but humour me) of an organised adult life that persistently eludes me: managing to have my keys in my possession at all required times.

Arriving gratefully at your beloved home, only to realise that you have no way of getting into it, has to be near the top of the 'most frustrating experiences in life' list. Suddenly the most basic, taken for granted thing becomes unachievable and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it except stand there seething with disbelief, watching your plans for the next bit of time dribble away into nothing. Plus you have no-one but yourself to blame! At the very best it's extremely annoying. In the last three months, for example, I have had to wait for hours in the park with my weekly shop for a flatmate to return from a day trip, had to go round to a friends house to frantically email the same flatmate to let me in because I had left both my keys and my phone at home, and then today - I went out with my new flatmates to get some farmers' market food, headed sensibly home early to get some Sunday tasks done and was rewarded for my diligence with the sight of my locked front door and an empty pocket. In the meantime they had gone on to a faraway pub, meaning I had to walk miles back on myself to borrow keys from them, in rather uncomfortable boots, weeping metaphorical tears of rage and stupidity.

But the out-and-out worst case of this imbecility has to be the time I was house-sitting in Taiwan. Part of the deal was looking after these two tiny, overexcited dogs with very small bladders who had to be carried up and down many flights of stairs three times a day so they could pee/run manically around outside. It was very humidly hot and I was very not good at getting up early enough to do the first walk of the day. About the fourth day in, I stumbled blearily out of bed, trying to avoid tripping over the tiny yappers whilst grabbing leads, poo bags etc. and, you guessed it, locked myself out with no phone, passport, money or keys. I didn't know anyone in Taiwan. 

I massively freaked out and essentially took on the behaviour of the frantic little dogs, running manically up and down the stairs sweating profusely and making tiny yelping noises. After a bit I calmed down enough to knock on all the other apartment doors, but no-one was home except a teenage girl getting ready for school who was clearly nearly as freaked out as me by my stuttering Mandarin. I think I basically said 'Neighbour. No key. Please help!!!!'  At first she actually replied 'I can't help you, sorry' and closed the door in my face, resulting in me sitting down in the horrible dirty concrete doorway and being maybe a little more hysterical than I would like anyone to ever witness.

Anyway, the long and short of it was that most Taiwanese residential complexes have a security guard who sits in a little guard box near the front entrance and in the end the girl got our one to come and confirm that he had indeed seen me around walking the dogs, and sort out a locksmith to come and open the door. He was very nice and after that we waved and said hello to each other every time the tiny dogs dragged me past. THANK GOD FOR TAIWANESE COMMUNITY-NESS. 

But really, you'd think I would have learned my lesson after that wouldn't you? Apparently not though. Pffff.