Chuck Perkins: Master Storyteller and Performer

23rd October

This event was held at Zion Arts Centre – a vibrant youth and arts centre just outside of the city centre. The theatre space had been set up with cabaret style seating, creating the feel of a jazz bar rather than a straight performance space.

Young Identity poetry collective kicked off proceedings. This group of poets and performers was founded in 2006 in Moss Side, and has since gone from strength to strength. The performers were confident and engaging: young, honest voices offering poetry and spoken word that was brutal, moving and hilarious. I wasn't sure what to expect from the group, but I’ll definitely be checking them out in the future.

Chuck Perkins took to the stage accompanied by his 'Manchester band': Aid (percussion), Rich (drums), Andy (double bass), and Lawrence (piano). We were treated to two sets with an interval, the first set described by Perkins as “all the pissed off political poems!”. He started with a poem inspired by The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, examining the human impact of economic turmoil: "What's the mark-up on a soldiers casket?". The poem, about the unfair distribution of wealth, was accompanied by the frightening statistic that CEOs in the U.S currently earn 821 times more than the lowest paid workers in the company!

Perkins is a master storyteller and performer; his poetry is relevant and beautiful, and has at its heart the people and places he knows well. He grew up in New Orleans and returned there after years of moving around with jobs; its spirit and rich musical history has clearly influenced his work a great deal.

As a performer, Perkins is passionate, entertaining and, well, pretty damn amazing. He also has a natty line in wild and wonderful anecdotes, such as a story about ending up in a crack den after befriending a homeless guy: “I don’t smoke crack and I’m an atheist but hey, it was 6am and there I was reading the bible to them. Don’t try that at home!”.

The jazz-fusion and blues music is part of the poetry, rather than an accompaniment, and the music inspires a new appreciation of the rhythms in the spoken word. Jazz and blues influences, social history in America from the Civil Rights Movement to current economic issues, and the personal history of friends and family all feature in Perkins’ work – you get the impression that he was born to tell these stories.

After the interval, Perkins returned to the stage celebrating the diversity of New Orleans, a city that “had no choice but to be different” – Spanish, French, Haitian, Cuban, African and then American people settled there, creating a truly unique city rich in culture and diverse in terms of its festivities. A poem accompanied by traditional Native American music was about the Mardi Gras custom of African Americans masking themselves as Native Americans. Perkins summed up this beauty and diversity: “African-Americans masked as Native Americans on an Italian-American holiday!”

He went on to tell us about ‘Jazz Funerals’, where the mood starts somber with hymns and slow marching, but develops into celebrations of the person who has passed – “From soft and sad to wild, happy and a little mad”, a true expression of feeling through music and movement. One poet and four musicians painting a picture of the noise, dancing and outpouring of emotion of hundreds.

At one point, a challenge was issued: Perkins said that despite being past the age where you can legitimately rap, he wrote one anyway. In the ‘80s, rap artists like NWA and Public Enemy were political, brave and important, but now rap music is derivative and materialistic. To this, and to new generations, Perkins says: “Tell me something I don’t know!” Members of Young Identity Collective were still in the audience, and it’s safe to say it’s a challenge they rose to.

Chuck Perkins told the audience that if any of us is ever in New Orleans, we should drop him a line as he’d be the best tour guide ever. I don’t doubt that for a second.

by Alex Herod

Alex is Deputy Editor of For Books’ Sake. She has just finished her MA (Performance Works, Leeds Met) and is keen to meet writers, makers and do-ers through her Collaborate Here project.

“How dare she have the cheek to understand me!”

19th October

The Prehistoric Gallery at Manchester Museum might not be the most likely venue for a poetry reading (at least poetry that isn’t about dinosaur digs), but as mentioned in the introduction, we were in fact travelling back in time with Fleur Adcock. And the museum really does create a unique atmosphere – I never expected to be at a poetry reading whilst staring Stan the T Rex right in the face.

Adcock’s father was born in Manchester, and returned to the UK from New Zealand just before World War 2 in order to complete a PhD. Throughout the war, both her parents worked for the ambulance and first aid services, before returning to New Zealand in 1947. Memories, family and childhood are key themes in Adcock’s writing, and she treated us to a reading of 18 poems, from her new collection Dragon Talk and other volumes of work.

‘My father’ is about her father (Adcock admitted, “I’m terrible at titles”), and the moments she spent tracing the streets of Manchester on hearing that he had passed away. She examines the importance of geography and location – a more recent poem explores the technological bridging of a gap when she speaks to her youngest grand-daughter on Skype – and the way in which we process emotional memories. In ‘Direct Hit’, she presents 3 versions of the same story during the war when her father had swapped a shift, to later find that the team he was meant to be working with had been bombed. Drawing information from her father’s letters, her own memory and local newspaper archives, she shows how the documentation of events affects our memories of them; it is also a touching tribute – she noted that there are no official war memorials to the civil defence workers, so this was her own. The poems are full of beautiful detail, and even those dealing with dark subject matter – war, death, loss, grief – are spirited and uplifting.

There is warmth and humour in Fleur Adcock’s poetry; she is sharp but not scathing, and particularly in poems such as ‘Strangers on a Tram’, she is able to capture the indignation and naivety of childhood - in the poem her mother gets on a tram when she’s with her friends. Embarrassed, the young Fleur ignores her mum but is mortified to find that her mum is ignoring her too, sharing only a knowing wink, “how dare she have the cheek to understand me!”

In the Q&A following the reading, the humour in the poems was discussed. Adcock acknowledged that whilst she never wants to be too knowing in her writing, particularly when remembering how she felt as a child, it is inevitable to an extent because as you get older, your memories and view of the world becomes shaped by more and more experience. She also referred to ‘Blitz humour’, and the importance of having a sense of the ridiculous if you are to survive this world. There is also a relief in joking having come out the other side of a turbulent period in your life.

As the readings went on, we caught glimpses of modern technology, the births of new generations and the mind of a woman who is getting older. Adcock explained that as you get older and words begin to escape you, there is more urgency in making connections, in understanding your memories lest the words to describe them be lost. She has a no-nonsense approach to mortality, describing a point at which you must think you’ve simply had enough.

She told us about an aunt who is 100 years old, and doesn’t want to be here anymore, not through a morbid desire to die, but because her friends are no longer around her and she is losing touch with the person she once was. Adcock ended with a frank, funny poem about death, and about the boatman who ferries people across the river Styx into the Underworld: “Where is Dr Shipman when we need him? / Shipman, boatman, ferryman”

Adcock hails from a family of writers, poets and novelists, and she was asked to comment on the ‘Poem Vs Novel’ debate. She had spoken earlier about pinching an idea from a novelist relative who then asked why she had written the poem – her response was that the story was put to better use in a poem, it being only one page rather than reams and reams of paper. She told us that she loves facts, so when she writes prose, it tends to be factual family history; with poems, she doesn’t feel that you need facts and feels more freedom in exploring memories and stories creatively. To differentiate between poems and novels, she simply said, “a poem is a thing with white space around it...selections, picking things out. It’s what photographers and artists do.”

Fleur Adcock is a wonderful reader and storyteller, animated and entertaining, speaking to the audience rather than at them. Time to revisit some of her poems and hope they sound just as good in my head.

by Alex Herod

Alex is Deputy Editor of For Books’ Sake. She has just finished her MA (Performance Works, Leeds Met) and is keen to meet writers, makers and do-ers through her Collaborate Here project.