Jem Rolls

I don't think anyone else ever read that piece.

Well, some of them do work on the page, and some of them don't.

And there's a variety of reasons why they do or they don't.

Some of the more poetic ones might.

And that last one, in a sense, is a comedy routine around the idea of a backslash poem.

There might be poetic elements, but really it's a comic.

It was almost a short story, a comic routine.

So some of these things...

Yeah, work and don't, but no, I think I prefer the, the world's just clad up with, you know, I'm sorry to say that we're in the Scottish Public Library now, and I've observed how many books there are.

There's quite a lot of books here.

The incredible amounts of theorising that there is about all this.

And again, most of the things of form or the terminology

I don't know and don't really need to know that people have told me numerous times that actually you know I've had poems which were basically I'm using exactly the same techniques as Welsh poets in the 10th century and you know just the tricks of assonance and alliteration and just you know what that does with rhythm yeah but you know you see that in quite a few performance plays I saw Sam Small have you seen Sam Small yeah he's probably the best of the Scottish youngsters he's great but anyway there were certain pieces of his where I was just listening to it

and one of them I had four times, and I just thought, I bet you somebody did something in this form around a fireplace 5,000 years ago, really, because, you know, there's this sort of, yeah, I mean, he kind of brings it up, and then he brings it down, and then he starts again, and, you know, and, you know, but probably it was more that back then it wasn't about getting stoned, it would be more about, you know, eviscerating somebody else's manhood or something, you know, which is what lots of poetry has been in various, you know, pre-literate cultures.

Right, well, it is terrifying and it's scary.

I mean, some pieces are easier than others, yeah?

But if you're in rhythm or neater, most of my stuff isn't, then if you're on rhythm, it's much easier.

If you're in rhyme...

Or you're telling a story, these things become miles easier.

Most of the time, because again, this year's show, I'm actually doing lots of stuff in cheap and cheesy rhymes.