There’s a lot to be said for frustration. Minor annoyance, damning the man: it’s all part of our daily grind. We pass on some “friendly advice” to a bus driver, call books names like ‘Boring’, and don a moustache on a politician. Of course, this all amounts to no more than unproductive whining. Only every now and then does a murmur of frustration call for real attention, producing powerfully real effects.

<i>Popshot</i> Cover

I first came across the magazine Popshotin an independent bookstore a year ago, and felt drawn to an elaborate illustration on the cover. It shone with a strange colour amongst the whites of the poetry shelf. Turning it over, I found what I thought to be a mission statement, and was intrigued to read the following words: ‘Gently intent on hoodwinking poetry back from the clammy hands of tweed jackets and school anthologies, Popshot looks to celebrate the poetry of today and tomorrow with the whimsical arms of illustration tightly wrapped around it’. As a literature student, this certainly felt like a challenge.

Twenty poems nestled inside the issue. Each poem took its own page, and was coupled with an illustration and a short explanation of the poet’s intent. In this new form, everything suddenly felt explained and open. I felt like the fabric of poetry had been laid bare; the poems appeared naked, the meaning trembling before me. I paid the six pounds, and hid the magazine in my room, returning to it each night with that same frustration. I even whined about it for a while… Then last week, I met the creator and editor, Jacob Denno, and put my challenges to him.

Jacob Denno started his poetic career a little bit miffed. I asked him how it all began- “the journey and process of Popshot so far”. He described himself “browsing the shelves of Borders”, feeling uninspired by the form of the poetry magazines on offer. Popshot is the product of that feeling, aiming to revive the enjoyable nature of poetry. Jacob puts it, “Children’s books are a massive influence. When you’re a kid, poetry is so much fun. And you really engage with it, and there’s so much rhythm in it. Then as you get older, it loses its rhythm, becomes much more complex, the illustrations disappear, and it suddenly becomes really, really difficult to engage with.”

So, school leads us away from the pure fun of poetry and teaches us to swallow words with a side-order of complexity. Should we agree? I always thought my first poetic encounters were Duffy, Armitage, Heaney, Bhatt’s ‘Search for My Tongue’, and Agard’s ‘Half-Caste’; a belief that totally disregarded the illustrated poetry I encountered at primary school. Why did I do this? Perhaps, schooled into interrogating the wordy techniques of poetry, I simply forgot how fun and useful the pictures had been. Discussing this ‘progression’ with Jacob, he said, “I think you should be exposed to poetry, not taught it.” And that’s the message of Popshot: exposing what a poem can mean through a picture and an explanation, so that you can immerse yourself in the meaning, rather than picking it apart.

Yet, I still feel like we should struggle for poetry. Shouldn’t there always be something inherently difficult about accessing this distilled form? Jacob continued, “it’s the idea of pulling something from the poem that you might not have otherwise thought of, by using the illustrator,” offering something more than “just 2D words on a page”. Popshot isn’t just poetry, it’s a whole spectrum of things. Writer-text-illustrator-image: each page is a poetic array of meaning for us to grapple with.

I asked, “How does the process work?” Jacob responded, “I’ll read the poem and I’ll think something about it, and I’ll then send it off to the illustrator and they’ll then come back with an illustration that opens up another part of the poem…” `he paused. “Opens it up for who?” I thought. Is the reader residing in that ellipsis? I suddenly knew why I had felt I had to own a copy of Popshot. As readers, we are obligated as the next step in the Popshot process, to validate Jacob’s vision of unending interpretation.

In a business sense, Jacob saw a “gap” and decided to fill it. I asked him about the work of finding this niche. He said, “I spent those three years when I would have been at university dabbling in photography, illustration, working out how Photoshop worked and Indesign. I would take idioms and illustrate them” and “used to make little zines and illustrate them myself. Popshot was the product of those three years, something that I could get out to people.”

As a reader, Jacob found a frustration. As an editor, he has crafted a new form that is fun, elaborate, beautiful, and endlessly accessible.

All this talk of frustration and questioning established forms: perhaps Ferlinghetti was right, and poetry is an insurgent art. “If you would be a poet, write living newspapers. Be a reporter from outer space, filling dispatches to some supreme editor who believes in full disclosure and has a low tolerance for bullshit.” Dispatch 1: harness a frustration. Dispatch 2: read Popshot.

Popshot is a bi-annual magazine, currently taking poetry submissions for Issue 7, and taking on-going submission of illustration portfolios. Find Popshot at www.popshotpopshot.com, and most independent bookstores.

Play speaks to Internationally renowned spoken word artist Polarbear about his new show, Old Me

This is Polarbear’s third full length performance piece – following RETURN- A Spoken Screenplay, and If I cover my nose you can’t see me, which closed the London Literature Festival. Old Me is an autobiographical work about the changes he went through in his life six years ago – going from working on a Birmingham building site, discovering spoken word, to pursuing his a career as an artist, and becoming a father.  Polarbear has a talent for poignancy, and the minimal setting with evocative music and lighting (Daniel Marcus Clark and Cis O’Boyle ) give his performance real meat. It’s a deluge of voices, of moments from various times in his life jostling, stream-of-consciousness-style, but all addressed to a ‘you’ that shifts from his son to his partner. He voices the kinds of discontent and elation a working-class guy would have to becoming an artist, anxieties about the concept of a ‘proper job’, etc. I spoke to Polarbear about Old Me, his reading, and some other things. On Old Me: “There’s alot in Old Me about parenting, about how nonsensical rules are. I get a bit off my chest in this piece, which I’ve never done directly.” On protests: “Kettle people in and they boil over.” On not marching: “I imagine I’d be in the middle of it, but not getting caught up in it, feeling slightly like I did when I used to watch football. Asking myself: ‘What is this really doing?’ But… I’m just old in my mentality.” On performance: “I like the ‘sink or swim’ element, I get up, and I deliver, and people aren’t expecting it. ‘Go on, say something meaningful, and let’s see if you can take me with you.’ That’s the excitement.” But he had more to say, and here’s the staccato’d interview:

 RK: Does your work have a central message, as a whole? A friend sees it as ‘find your passion, and stick to it, work on that’…

PB: I don’t really think about it like that, I don’t think about a message. If that’s there, great. But I don’t… I set out to connect with people, to show that others could be in my position. And vice versa. And I hope that people get to know me too, to know that what I’m thinking is not that different to what you’re thinking.

RK: I really like that couplet you have: “Why say in ten words what you can say in two / why say in two words what you can shut the fuck up and do.” What do you think about art and politics at the moment, poetry readings at Occupy London etc.?

PB: It’s tricky. I have quite strong opinions but I keep them to myself. Those readings at Occupy, I don’t like the persona that makes you. For me, that is. I don’t like the ppreaching to the choir thing. I don’t like standing up in front of a bunch of people, knowing what they think, re-affirming what they already think. But there is something to be said for saying things that the masses are thinking. I think it’s important. But I don’t like it. I dunno. It always seems like a wee in the sea. It’s all about the impact you’re having. And it seems that they think they have more of an impact than they do. Because… it’s important to voice these things. But they always seem to get voiced to people who already know. I mean, I was asked alot… alot, to write about the rioting that went on in North London and back home in Birmingham. But to what end? I don’t wanna sound like I’m defeatist or shooting anything down, but it just annoys me. There is a tokenistic feel to alot of it, I think. And there’s some amazing things written in the heat of the moment. Responses to stuff. And then its just gone. Where is it now? What happened three or four months ago, nobody’s talking about it now. The responses are gone. I don’t know. What impact does it have? Y’know?

RK:Yeah…

PB: It’s tricky I guess. And I don’t wanna sound pessimistic about it. It just always seems that it’s like a wasted opportunity.

RK: Like what Žižek said at Occupy Wall Street, don’t go home and say what a great time it was…

PB: Yeah… The enjoyment, it’s selfish. But these people are intelligent enough to look at it all for what it is. And it feels great. Not to rebel, but to say something and be part of something that’s against something that is wrong. That everybody knows is wrong. But you’re gonna go home, yeah? Maybe wearing nike, maybe have some Kellogg’s or Nestle cereal. ‘Oh, it’s just a bowl.’… But that’s a lazy pessimistic way of lookin at it too. At least they’re doing something. What I like about the Occupy movement is the strangely passive nature of it. It’s not throwing a brick. It’s considered. There’s a maturity to it. 

RK: Before you did your first spoken word gig in 2005, you were rapping, right?

PB: I was rapping before that for a long time, and still do. But it’s for me, and my mates. There are people in Birmingham now listening to tracks by me and my mate, but it never travels anywhere, if you know what I mean. There’s no time to dedicate to it. Creating something that was worthy of mastering.

RK: What do you look for in writing, spoken-word-work, etc.?

PB: It comes down to choice. What is it you’re trying to say? Does it rhyme? Ok, well don’t make it rhyme. Don’t constrain yourself. I dunno, it feels like a step backwards.

RK: What about literary influences?

PB: My girlfriend was a massive influence on me, just getting me to read. I was reading Bukowski in my late teens and loving it, y’know, the antihero stuff. But, yeah, I think it’s more about an openness, not being closed to certain kinds of form. There woulda bin a time when I woulda dismissed poetry and stuff before I even read it. My tastes haven’t changed much. My father-in-law is giving me a classical education in music, literature, and stuff. Joyce’s Ulysses, I loved it. I think it might be the best… well, I don’t wanna say that. There’s so much out there. The other day I got sent a collection of poetry, from a group of recovering or recovered addicts. I worked with them a bit before in Bournemouth. It’s amazing. There’s a real rawness to it. The bluntness and the beauty… unbelievable. I dunno… ‘Why do you like it’, ‘I dunno, I can’t tell you mate, why I liked it or didn’t like it, its just what I got.’ Thats how I’ve bin all my life.

RK: What’s your writing process?

PB: For the shorter ones, they’re all formed in the mouth. I get 3 minutes of stuff, and only then do I write it down.  But with longer ones it’s very much writing. With Return, it was like 23 A4 pages when it was done, but I wrote about 190. With this one I write about the same again, over 60 drafts and I got 30 pages. I’m a bit obsessive.

RK: You’re used to being on stage now with these spoken-word/theatre pieces. Ever done any acting classes?

PB: No. I work with directors.  I don’t want anyone to think I’m someone else, or not fully there. My cousin tells the best stories, and its coz he’s in em. If he’s telling you about seeing someone get stabbed, he’s there. It seems a bit childish, but I love it. Anyway, I’m not an actor, I don’t wanna be an actor. But I want to be able to embody something.

RK: So Old Me is the final part of a trilogy, a kind of autobiographical trilogy. What are you up to next?

PB: I’m writing something for kinds about lying and storytelling, for next Spring. For ten year olds. Then there’s an epic multiperson story-project, and pending funding… I hope we get it…  it’ll be a year-and-a-half project… Anyway, I’m looking forward to the kids gig. But I wouldn’t want nippers seeing Old Me. But anyway, there will be less me in what I do next.

RK: You mentioned some friends, back home, don’t see what you do as a ‘proper job’. Do you feel that yourself?

PB: … I no longer feel unjustified. For awhile it just felt weird to get paid for what I was doing anyway. It’s proper though, I fill out tax returns. I’m proper.

Polarbear’s new show is running at the Roundhouse from 21^st Nov – 3^rd Dec. Tickets are £12.50. He blogs at http://www.homeofpolar.com/

Their meetings are a mix of music, poetry, theory and politics. Through this mix, through not respecting boundaries, they hope to foster broad and exciting discussion. They are pro-Occupy, pro-Iancu Dumitrescu, James Joyce, Theodor Adorno, etc. They are anti-kettling, and Anti-Kant (hence Unkant),  i.e. anti his divisions between subject and object.

At the moment the Unkant catalogue is a blend of history, poetry, and critical writing, a deliberate eschewal of boundaries between these things. “The idea is, people come to the meetings for the poetry maybe, but they should equally read Ray Challinor (a Trotskyist) on WWII, that’s just as important…” Insofar as the AMM have a plan, it is to keep releasing titles which perpetuate this mixing.

Ray Challinor’s The Struggle for Hearts and Minds is a collection of essays which polemicizes against the way the ruling-classes sold WWII to the working classes. The war, he contends, was not simply one of democracy vs. tyranny. This may provoke certain knee-jerk reactions, but he is undoubtedly right. The collection also contains some insightful and sometimes entertaining cartoons which liven it up.

Another book from Unkant is Sean Bonney’s Happiness: Poems After Rimbaud, previously reviewed in our pages. Another is Ben Watson’s Adorno for Revolutionaries, a collection of his polemical and insightful mixtures of musicology, critical theory, and politics. It’s a great collection for it’s mix of music, Plato, Zappa, and Adorno: juxtapositions which surprise and stimulate me, though, as Watson says, seeing these juxtapositions as unusual is precisely the problem. The whole is rounded off with a playful Joycean coda.

The AMM is a four-headed embodiment of dialectics with imposing knowledge of Marxism (duh), Music, Poetry, History, and some other capitalised subjects, subjects they seek to de-capitalise. I met the AMM for a quick discussion, and, oracle-like, it spoke thus:

AMM: Anyway, Jack Wright. He’s this free improvising saxophonist. To play good improv you’ve got to be yourself. To be yourself and play is a fantasy to the postmodernist – Wright proves the postmodernists wrong.

[Riots and kettling are discussed]

AMM: The avant-garde has a whole history of being interested in boredom. And with kettling, you realise the police are using it against us. Boredom has become a weapon. Same with S&M and Abu Ghraib.

[Readings that the AMM did at Occupy London are discussed.]

AMM: I feel a tension between the aimlessness of the ruling class, and the way these cops are riled up for what will go on tomorrow at the demonstration. Things will get out of hand. They always do. We’ve been at marches before with no camera-phones, no footage, and the impunity of police in those situations….

[A stall with beer and kids is discussed Seventh beer passes.]

AMM: Not being published by Cambridge people – it needs to go through another draft – it was fuzzy. Fuzzy? What do you mean fuzzy? I’ll eat my beerglass if it was fuzzy. Where’s this critique you’ve written? I fucking emailed it to you? [...]

The AMM are available to speak at any student occupations, and urge such occupiers to contact them.

If you’re looking for a stimulating night out on 15th December, check out the AMM’s next meeting at The Blue Posts, to hear trombonist Alan Tomlinson (who has recently played John Cage with Stewart Lee) and Lol Coxhill, plus speakers Sean Bonney, Keith Fisher, Andy Wilson, Ben Watson and more. Keep an eye on the Unkant blog for more info on upcoming events and books.

For my second interview at the London university I had to book a 12 minute time slot for my interview, and was told to prepare a 2 minute presentation. I had no idea who was interviewing me, so it came as quite a shock when I entered the room to see seven faces staring back at me. It was essentially a quick fire interview, with each panellist asking me a question related to some random part of my C.V. It was hard work but as it turns out it was worth it, as I was offered the PhD.

For both my interviews I did preparation by; reading up on the current research being done there, preparing the presentation, and looking into the proposed subject of my PhD. However, sometimes things come up that you are not prepared for – a friend of mine had her potential professor take her out for lunch, ask her polite questions about her hobbies and family, and then after luring her into a false sense of security started saying her grades were “quite frankly not good enough”. This rapid personality shift left her disorientated, and then she did something she never thought she would do in an interview situation…..cry! Despite being incredibly embarrassed and convinced she would never hear from him again, she got an offer and accepted!

So what this really proves is that you can never really know how well, or badly, an interview has gone, although I would suggest that crying is not a common interview technique.