Swimming with words and beats in your head

22nd October

MLF in association with Young Identity, Contact, Speakeasy and Commonword present Saul Williams, one of the outstanding Slam poets of his generation – a poet, writer, actor and musician known for his blend of poetry and alternative hip hop.

Winner of the 1996 Nuyorican Poets Cafe’s Grand Slam Championship, he has featured in the documentary film SlamNation and star of the 1998 feature film Slam. He has performed with The Fugees and Erykah Badu, as well as with the poets Allen Ginsberg and Sonia Sanchez. He is a self confessed dodger of all the labels that are ascribed to himself, his classification being that of a free artist.

Band on the Wall is full, hot and host to an amazing carpet. Everything is running late and yet the crowd don’t seem in the slightest bit bothered. One guy is doing press-ups and telling his friend how he eats a pound of turkey or chicken - this is sure to be an interesting night.

Before the acts start, the man on camera, aka Winston, tells me that the support act Speakeasy is about “Expression of the mind,” this philosophy stays with me through the entire experience, anticipation and all…The artist we are all waiting for appears 2 hours later than scheduled, and the crowd shuts up to the still of his immediate start into Untimely Meditations from the 1998 film, Slam Nation:

I lack the attention span to meditate

My attention spans galaxies here and now are immense

seconds are secular

moments are mine

The crowd is swept under by the rhythm as Williams hypnotises us:

No man is an island but I often feel alone

So I find peace through OM

OM

OM

He moves seamlessly onto Rise and Shine:

a quiet mind

is labelled sound

and coloured purple

my little boy

has not yet learned

to colour within the lines

The words flow effortlessly as he embraces the language of us all. As the man himself explains, “In music I think of myself as an explorer participating in the construction of the soundscape of the new world that is being hatched out of our dreams, hope and visions, peace and harmony... that don’t necessarily mean my shit is soft though."

It is far from soft – his lyrics and tempo cut through any wanderings of the mind to jolt you back into the here and now. The name – The Saul Williams Experience – is self-explanatory. It is a journey with the word, we move into Coded Language. Williams describes every person as beings of sound, as the rhythm gets into the underbelly of us all the mood is transported beyond that of Manchester. You can hear him read for yourself here.

As the evening draws into the early club night hours, Williams speaks about how he didn’t like himself when he was younger because he wasn’t white, opening us all up to thinking about the phases in our own personal growth.

Ending on the song Black Stacey, he explains it’s titled so because Stacey is his middle name. The lyrics speak for themselves, as he vocalises the song he originally wrote at high school:

Black Stacey.
 They called me Black Stacey.
 I never got to be myself 'cause to myself I always was Black Stacey, in polka dots
 and paisley, a double goose and bally shoes, you thought it wouldn't phase me. 
I was Black Stacey. The preacher's son from Haiti who 
rhymed a lot and always got the dance steps at the party. 
I was Black Stacey. 
You thought it wouldn't phase me, but it did 'cause I was just a kid

Williams says that poetry and music make sense of all that he has been through, he works harder on himself to become a better artist and no-one could argue that he hasn’t crafted the skill of performance art to an exceptional standard. From crafting a name for himself on the New York poetry scene at the infamous Nuyorican Poets Café, Williams has rocketed into multiple genres.

“It's not that I balance [those arts] out, all the different arts balance me out. There is a certain type of emotion that is more easily accessible through music than poetry. Some things are meant to be written, some are meant to be sung, some things are meant to be hummed, some things are made to be yelled, and so that's just how life works".

An artist of such calibre was a great addition to the Manchester Literature Festival. I had been especially excited about this event after seeing Saul Williams, donned with a feather head piece, perform at ATP festival back in 2008. He leaves you swimming with words and beats in your head, bringing out the natural highs a good gig leaves you feeling. If you haven’t checked him out before you really should embrace this dude, I’m certainly going to be exploring more and am especially looking forward to watching Slam.

by Rebecca Guest

Rebecca is a freelance writer and workshop host, she welcomes any collaborative projects. You can find her on twitter @babamonchichi

Giggle-inducing concoctions

21st October

“If I were a poet,” I decided whilst on the way to the MLF’s Comedy Poetry Slam last night, “today I would be an Angry Poet.”

Fuelled by the flames of a passionate rage, I’d rant and rave about the injustice, trauma and downright betrayal of my evil nemesis... namely, the 111 bus, which had been a no-show for 45 minutes, thus ensuring my late arrival at tonight’s event. Thankfully, my post-bus five-minute dash in high heels proved to be worth its crippling effect, as I leapt into the main bar of The Northern on Tib Street just as Manchester-based comedian and compère for the night, Julian Daniel, reached for the microphone.

The Northern is one of those pubs that you’ll often find participating in local festivals and events, whether it’s a meeting of digital media professionals or a performance by some up-and-coming musical talent. It’s a lovely venue, too, and Mancunian at its heart and soul, from the northern-centric playlist, to the giant portrait of Mark E. Smith on the wall of the exterior smoking area. This evening, the pub had a warm and bustling atmosphere, with a sell-out audience responding enthusiastically from the offset to Julian’s friendly banter.

Never having been to a poetry slam before, I had no idea what to expect. Thankfully, our crowd-pleasing compère Julian laid out the rules from the start. Nine budding poets had signed up to compete against each other by standing up to the mic in turn and reciting their personally penned, witty verses in an attempt to take home the booty of a small cash prize, a bottle of bubbly generously donated by The Northern, a festival T-shirt and – perhaps most importantly of all – comedic kudos for the night.

Three volunteers from the audience – or groups of volunteers, as it turned out –were handed score sheets by Julian and appointed the heady task of judging the evening’s talent on behalf of us all. Our ability to applaud and volume of laughter were conscientiously tested by Julian before contestant number one was welcomed up to the mic.

As it turned out, a well-penned tirade against the 111 bus might not have felt out of place amongst the myriad of topics chosen to be immortalised in verse by our local bards, which ranged from the soul-crippling employee regulations of call centres, to the remarkably chewy nature of suppositories.

I have to pause here to apologise in advance for the inaccuracy of any of the poets’ names, but they all deserve a mention, even a misspelt one, for their heroic and wholly entertaining participation on the night.

There was Mark Edmondson’s tragicomic tale of morbidly obese Denise and her mobility scooter; Dave Till’s hymn of praise to the exotic, amniotic delights of a well-drawn bath; Alex Keelan’s sweetly delivered satire on modern life and ‘Foetus Factor’; an enduring image from Misha Britna (on his first ever poetry slam attempt) of farting a pigeon out into the dire straits of a gale force wind; Jack Reagan’s rhythmic warnings of the perils of reading the small print in a packet of medication; Sophie Hall’s disdainful diatribe against the dastardly Davina McCall; Ben William’s dramatic despair at his discovery that the object of his affection was none other than the second female pope; Ed Kengai’s sometimes bewildering, often giggle-inducing concoction covering everything from orgies to bankers; and the winner of the night, Tony Walsh, and his confident, risqué depiction of the alcohol-fuelled decay of an office Christmas do from hell.

Julian’s banter and occasional contribution of his own poetry kept the momentum going at pace all night, while a guest performance of the superbly talented Marvin Cheeseman kept everyone in stitches during a half-time interval. If you’ve never come across his work before, I advise you to browse his website and look out for such gems as he performed on the evening as ‘Primark: the rumble in the jungle’, ‘The wholesomeness of Coldplay and their fans’ – and, of course, the short but sweet ditty that no born and bred Mancunian could resist:

We all have our dreams, and they sometimes come true:

Liverpool 1, Blackpool 2.

The mixture of structures, styles, experience and deliveries by the participating poets all added to the depth of the evening’s experience – as did some good-humoured, but heartfelt, booing at the harshness of the judges – and I left with a light-hearted (if still somewhat crippled) step, some unforgettable rhymes ringing in my head and (courtesy of Tony Walsh’s final poem on the triple evils of sex, the internet and confectionary) a vision of the possible uses of Monster Munch that I never want to sully my imagination with again *shudders*.

Rowena Forbes is a freelance copywriter, editor and journalist who dabbles in short stories and might even consider penning a poem or two in the future, once she gets over her foolish fuss about the 111 bus.