Jem Rolls

In my backstage poem, which isn't really a poem, yes it is, no it's not, yes it is, no it's not, in my backstage poem, the author is going to have an old-fashioned, artsy-fancy fit of beat, join the writer's block, and go on strike.

Big word.

Big word, yes.

So first I ran it with Anita Govan, then I ran it briefly with Rob G and then I ran it with Jenny and Lindsay.

The godfather of Scottish performance poetry, according to the Scotsman, and they do know what they're talking about.

Well, in a sense, apart from that it's not true, but, you know, it is the Scotsman.

So, yes, that's their line, and, well, there was only so much going on in about 2001, and about 2001 I arrived, and I just had a really, really good time

going around running poetry shows and fighting acts and just being, really I went on a three-year pub crawl around the city, which is a fabulous place to go for a pub crawl, one of the best cities on earth for a pub crawl, and I went for a three-year one, ladies and gentlemen, and it was really not bad.

I didn't talk, I was totally on message.

I mean, I was dementedly monomaniac, didn't talk about anything apart from performance poetry.

It was kind of inevitable if you hung around in the same spot for very long sooner or later.

I would be performing a poem to and the upshot of this fun fun process was that at the end there were quite a good bunch of performance parts around in town.

I mean I had loads and loads of press and lots of fun was had by various people until I left in 2006 because I actually discovered a way of making a living.

as a performance poet.

So I don't actually make a living as a poet, I don't make a living as a, only through door sales.

So I don't sell anything, no one books me, no one hires me, no one's curated anything that they put me on, so I have no real truck with,

accomplishments or institutions or books or merchandise or anything whatsoever.

It's just human beings who come to the show and pay something like $10 and that's my entire living.

So it's a really nice situation to be in because I don't have to make any compromises whatsoever apart from the fact that the audience have to like what I do.

So I have to work on the ideas and frequently invert them, invert them and invert them again trying to find a way to make big ideas