A Found Poem

In which The Author digs out an old magazine

Back in September, I signed up for a Creative Writing course. Again …

It was a random sort of Monday, really. Chazz and I had been for lunch, and she'd commented that she needed a new dictionary. So we strolled over to The Works, because I knew they'd have the 'Back to school' offers in place. While we were in there, I bumped into David and Andrea from New Horizons. I'd met them shortly before, when I sat in on a taster session for Psychology and Criminology. Unfortunately I wasn't able to sign up for the full course because it took place at an inconvenient time (and venue). But they asked us if we'd be interested in the Creative Writing course, which was starting that very afternoon. I twisted Chazz's arm by telling her that she might get a song out of it (at least), and the two of us strolled around the block in time for the kick-off.

It turned out that I already knew Steve, the tutor. He used to teach a group in Aberdare Library, and also takes the guitar classes that happen there in the evenings. We'd chatted a couple of times, so it was nice to know I wasn't going in cold.

Anyway, I've put in a few pieces of work already, some of which I'm quite pleased with, and one is taking shape into a longer piece which might become an Actual Completed Project. (Don't stake your life on it, though.)

However, I don't like poetry.

I didn't enjoy studying poetry at school; I don't enjoy reading it, listening to it (with a very few contemporary exceptions such as Ian McMillan and Roger McGough), or writing it. My heart sinks whenever Steve says the word 'poetry'. So when he asked us a week last Monday to write a 'found poem', I realised I could do it without too much need for heavy lifting.

A 'found poem', in essence, relies on taking pieces of existing text and rearranging them into a new form. Now, I knew that with over two thousand books and many old magazines at home, I could probably find something interesting to work with. On Sunday, having finished a copy-edit and with Storm Ciara raging in the background, I pulled out an old copy of the London listings magazine Time Out and got to work.

This particular edition was dated 1–8 March 1995, so it's a whisker short of 25 years old. (If only we'd waited a couple of weeks, I could have taken it to class and we could have had some birthday cake.) I wasn't in London at the time, needless to say. I bought it purely because the cover photo was a head shot of the actress Jennifer Jason Leigh wearing a stunning studded collar.

If only I had been in London that week: Kevin Ayers was playing a rare gig that week; so were his fellow Soft Machine alumnus John Etheridge (a free Sunday lunchtime affair), Kevin's former musical collaborator Lol Coxhill, and a young sax player named Theo Travis, who (along with Mr Etheridge) is in the current Soft Machine line-up, when he's not moonlighting with Andy Tillison's band the Tangent.
I was in Aberdare when all this musical activity was going on. Go figure …

Anyway, I'd already decided to adopt the cut-up approach pioneered by William S. Burroungs and Brion Gysin – not literally, because I hate defacing books or magazines. Instead, I flicked through the pages and typed out the odd string of text that caught my eye. There was no structure to begin with; all I wanted were some interesting phrases or lines of text that could be stitched together in a new sequence. The more I read, the more I found. And, after a few hours messing around with the word processor, I came up with twenty stanzas.

In the spirit of 'found poetry', I need to acknowledge my sources, of course. All the text can be found in that particular edition of Time Out, so I won't credit all the people involved. (When I say 'all the text', some of it is so well hidden I couldn't find it again when I came to scan the sections in question on Sunday evening. But I swear to Goddess it was all there on Sunday afternoon.) There's a sidebar on page 3 of the print copy which lists all the contributors.

I've preserved much of the capitalisation and most of the punctuation from the original texts. I've added one or two line breaks and removed a few others. Some of the stanzas are more ridiculous than others; none of them make any real sense. But I think it's an amusing exercise, and it got a few chuckles when I read it out in class on Monday afternoon. Here goes …

'Plastic and TV are our natural world'

or

The next eight days in full

Until 5 March a spectacular full-scale replica of
Oscar Wilde's London
Situated in a herb garret in the roof of St Thomas' church.

So, the Brits finally hit
Men with animal skulls
'I mean, has she got a face?'
Ever been a perpetrator …?

Never mind politics
in this portrait of life in a north Wales village at the
Grace Theatre at the Latchmere pub
Roy Smiles' shoestring musical spoof,
rather than being political statements,
tempts you with a promise to make it all better.

Those who received a copy of
the first season of Danger Man
Wish I hadn't …

A famous de Kooning aphorism:
Why have so many people had a charisma bypass?

London't acute shortage of
A chic Italian restaurant
Serious without being earnest
Defies easy definition.

The thing about the best road movies
If in doubt, add a serial killer.
Preview tapes were unavailable.

Controversial, we know, but
Philosopher, wit, fearless experimentalist and oddball
Pierre Boulez has marked this century both with
This bawdy, modern-day version of 'Cinderella'
and with a taut, swinging delivery.

PARACHUTING, SKYDIVING, BUNGEE
JUMPING, FLYING, GLIDING, HELICOPTERS
Denotes activity or entertainment particularly
suitable for under-fives.

Are you violent? Do you want to stop
Entering the gallery, you'd be forgiven for
Photographing naked people in city streets;
'Flesh is the reason oil painting was invented.'

The Courtauld has a splendid permanant
collection of old masters such as Rubens and
Beveridge, Watson & Crick, and Hancock.

Pentangle founder-member Jansch, one of the finest
exponents of the ornate finger-picking style he
helped popularise in the 60s
When Starr Faithfull's body was
Pronounced a delight by our
Young Gay and Lesbian Writing Workshop

Excellent and always playful,
Two physically identical girls, living in Poland
In this rich, evocative feast of puppetry and
board-game action hosted by Steve, Figs and Mike
on the main floor. Or you can revive the black leather
girl traumatised by childhood rape.

The songs themselves proffer a mildly
affectionate and very funny odyssey through
Getting Away with Murder.

The German audience and critics were
absolutely clear about it: the only film
that deserved to win Berlin's top prize
– the Golden Bear – was Wayne Wang's
Starsky and Hutch

Waxworks of the famous and infamous, now with
Ming Ming, also Nile crocodiles, rare Asiatic lions
and cubs and a large aquarium with sharks and
former Italian leader with a
child's toy arrow attached by its sucker
to his nose

For dirty, fuck-faces and elemental punk,
Exceptionally adventurous female
Jennifer Jason Leigh's filmography reads like
The best of American modernist art.

Lovely, lithe female graduate, 40
years experience as a clairvoyant, proven
slighly scatty, into real ale and good living,
bit scruffy, veggie, lefty, daunted by new capital
surroundings, looking for woman with or without
ANY NATIONALITY for long-term friendship.

Following last night's orgy of marijuana.
In the best surrealist tradition, Buñuel
involves shifting disembodied brains from
a compendium of favourite elements
and the same two old stalwarts as before.

Beirut bombshell
Abbot still a Virgin
Game for a group blind date?
Bad sex
Love and Bullets
Wee-wee in the wind
Reefer Madness
All slap and no tickle
AIDS memoirs
Next Time I'll Kill You