Bilston Bloopers and Fluffypunk

'They' say practice, practice practice until it becomes embedded in your brain. So I did. Reciting all three poems I planned to read today over the last three weeks in the bath, in bed while nodding off to sleep or waking in the small hours, on the field or along the river while walking the dog - who was my best critic and indicator of when I'd gone on too long! I even took to writing the words out (and included little illustrations) in a new specially selected notebook in an endeavour to rely on the visual layout to remember the sequence of sounds. I was ready. I knew my lines, even Flynn the dog knew my lines but still I doubted my memory and so practised again using the notebook as reference.

And so it came to pass that I stood in front of a warm encouraging audience of fellow poets of varied experience and their supporters in Bilston Library at 1.40pm today to be the first to show how hard I'd worked at all the things we had been discussing over three sessions of performance workshops. The sessions had been organised by 'Poetry on Loan' and kindly organised by Jane Seabourne with workshop leaders Brenda Read-Brown, Steve Pottinger and the wonderful Jonny Fluffypunk sharing their phenomenal experience and skills. I read Jon's two books while on holiday in Brighton and in one of those random co-incidences of life, I mentioned this to him a few weeks ago only to discover he knew Brighton well having lived there for some time. Makes me wonder if Brighton has a creative gravitational pull? Pity it is now becoming impossible for the very people who make the city what it is to live there through the London spillover, but that's another rant for another time...

Which brings me back to the moment Jon finally read my intro line out..."Dawn Jutton, who comes from a world where ranting along the river is acceptable behaviour". Audience claps as promised and I feel remarkably more in control than I'd thought I would be walking into position and then reading this 'out there' poem for the first time, and to a mixed audience...

Pride (but no prejudice)

Here it comes!

A carnival of camp

drumming flamboyance,

freedom and golden muscled skin

through smiling streets

high on expectation, rainbows and pride,

(but no prejudice)

See those banners!

A riot of colour

marching diversity, defiance

and solidarity

between staccato waves

of throbbing anthems.

Oppression, hatred and fears

whistled away through tears of pride,

(but no prejudice)

There they go!

A wake of dreams

littering memories, lost loves

and corporate lies

onto hate-stained streets

filled with fight and macho pride

(but no prejudice)

Drop your flag!

Silence the whistles.

Return to reality, revolving closets

and eyes wide open.

Hope yet for carefree acceptance

and playground pride

(but no prejudice)


All the practice had definitely made a difference to how confident I was in the reading but I referred to my notes for security. A pause...and into 'The Treat'. This one is a little ditty I wrote years ago and I have used it before to preface a rant about fast food and litter. It went down well last time I read it out and even my eldest granddaughter has written it down and learnt it so no need to put my thumb in the right page then...oops! First mistake! For some reason the nerves got to me just at that moment of full engagement with the smiling audience and the words went out of my head. Second mistake...not noticing earlier that I had failed to write the complete poem out in my notebook! The pregnant pause felt like the full nine months, but if you missed it, here is the full poem.

The Treat

She dragged me screaming into McDonalds
Where for years I'd refused to eat
She made me order a burger
stuffed into a soggy bun
And then called it a treat.

It fell apart while I was eating
The lettuce sagged back to earth
And when the coleslaw
fell into my lap she could
barely hide her mirth.

I returned to the security of the typed pages stuck in my notebook to finish my turn with a recent minor re-edit of  'River Rage' and sure enough my minimum confidence returned to end on a positive note.

River rage

Was your fast food so finger-licking good

you had to share the rest with me?

Did you post about pizzas, Maccy ds, Kentucky cs

then twitter about your litter

-and how I soaked it up

Were you half cut when your trolley landed,

stranded, like an upturned animal

fresh frozen in Asda green algae,

or were you re-uniting crisscrossed lovers

-across a concrete divide

Could you not meet those sad orange eyes,

beacons of hope, stretched white necks

searching for sight of light in those who walk past,

run past, cycle past, ignoring their past,

-timing their future not yours

It’s game over too for the floating balls

you kicked out to score own goals,

swollen with infla­ted pride, to fall

in a defensive wall of reed, passed from side to side

-until full time scores a full tide.

I was followed over the next hour by an inspirational set of poets with themes ranging from the difficulty of cycling to lovely descriptive anecdotes of interactions with questionable neighbours and haikus with puns! A welcome soft end to the event over tea and chocolate biscuits gave everyone the opportunity to share our experience and me the chance to spend more time getting to know the sustainable nihilist.

Well done everyone and here's to a future of performing with more confidence...or maybe deciding that writing for the page is safer!

What has happened to our Pride?
Washed away with innumerable litres of alcohol?
Pissed away along hedges posing as al fresco latrines?
Vomited up on pavements by people no longer sickened by the shame,
But maybe still with a desire to numb their lives?

Pride (but no prejudice) paraded with the expected flamboyance and camp.
Cheers for those who strip to golden muscled skins or sing our adopted anthems.
Cheers for the uniforms, real and not, more subdued applause for the quiet
March of those who tirelessly work for our individual health and well-being.
Are their messages lost in the text of their simple banners?

What message does Pride (but no prejudice) carry?
We celebrate our visibility for ourselves, and the thousands who are unaware we exist.
We shed emotional tears of Pride for ourselves; for those of us who have swum against the tide to reach safe water, and encourage those who have yet to leap from the safety nets to be brave.
We shed tears for those who cannot share our pride and feel what we feel.

But what do the newly aware now believe?
That the children waving their rainbow flags today will no longer return to school
And call somebody in the playground gay when they do not fit in?
That the thousands of gay and straight people at Pride (but no prejudice)
will love each other when they are sober, and not choose to piss on them from the pier?

Will Pride (but no prejudice) have given all of us the courage
to challenge years of oppression and fear?
Will we have been enriched by the cultural diversity within the gay community?
Or will we have simply shown that, like our straight peers, we lack the courage
To celebrate diversity and difference, to stand out from the crowd.

Are we proud of our ability to throw the biggest alcohol and drug fuelled party?
Are we happy that the only real beneficiaries of many Prides are the pubs and clubs?
Or is the reality that we simply go along with it because that is what is on offer?
Our chance to be in the majority, to be visible, to have protection in number,
And that really we do not want to be different. We just want to forget?

I want to celebrate. I want to be proud.
I want to recognise myself within a diverse gay community.
The emotion on the faces around me at the start of the parade suggests
That others feel as I feel, each of us with our own story and expectation of Pride.
The ability to ‘be’ with pride and without prejudice, and to share that emotion
and togetherness for at least one day is what keeps many of us coming year after year.

But the prejudice exists. From within.
When gay friends feel uncomfortable holding hands,
When there is no space left to sit and enjoy the atmosphere without being heavily fallen on by incapable drunks, or stepped on because there is no room left to pass.
When all afternoon is spent queuing for a toilet only to find it is out of order from overuse.
When you try to stave off the panic of being fenced in like cattle with little hope of escape.
When the press suggest that the clean up bill is unacceptable for a ‘gay’ event that is not gay,
Is it time to call time on Pride (but no prejudice) and re-evaluate?
Shouldn’t we celebrate diversity by offering diversity?

One of my lasting memories will be time spent in a small park on Sunday when we became
the audience in a spontaneous concert by a snazzily dressed singer and watched children
dance around a monument which currently has little significance for them.