From the Archive: Jem Rolls. January 2015
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What insights does Jem Rolls share about the page/stage debate?
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.
You're listening to a Scottish Poetry Library podcast.
Hello, this is Jennifer Williams, Programme Manager at the Scottish Poetry Library, and it is my pleasure to be sitting in the library with Jem Rolls. Jem Rolls is someone who I feel like has been a great teacher for me in many ways because he's one of the first poets and at the time and he still is he was very much also a poetry promoter and someone putting on poetry events when I first came to Edinburgh in 2001 and he was very encouraging and supportive to me and gave me some of the first platforms for reading my own poems in public and I feel like helped teach me a lot about how to put on poetry events and promote them and ran a wonderful festival years ago in Edinburgh. The Edinburgh Rush. And that involved all sorts of spoken word events that were on in Edinburgh at the time.
And Jem was also running first with Anita Govan and then with Jenny and Lindsay.
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.
Oh, I forgot about the Rob G bit. Yes. General's is also known as the godfather of, what is it, the godfather of spoken word?
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.
How does Jem Rolls make a living from performing poetry?
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 kind of appealing so that people um will want them really and um so yeah so i do make a living doing the hour show so it's a 60 minute show and i have to write a new one every year and i mean i think i have some quite some you know some big numbers knocking around the history i've done you know 2600 shows and i've promoted well over a thousand and i've had 35 five-star reviews and they've got 150 at least by miles four star reviews but the big number the big number is the number 10 i've written 10 poetry shows but i think at some point in the future i don't think that how on earth do they write that 10 years straight another poetry show and i like them all yeah i mean some of them are more keen on others you know my 2006 show i didn't know it was in my 2006 show you know all my records have gone
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What insights does Jem Rolls share about the page/stage debate?
0:03–2:01
2
How does Jem Rolls make a living from performing poetry?
2:01–5:17
3
What role does rhyme play in poetry according to Jem Rolls?
5:17–7:30
4
How does Jem describe the relationship between performance poetry and the audience?
7:30–9:30
5
What unique challenges does Jem face as a performance poet?
9:30–11:39
6
How does Jem approach the writing process for his poetry shows?
11:39–14:22
7
What advice does Jem offer for aspiring performance poets?
14:22–16:44
8
What are Jem's thoughts on the importance of live performance versus reading from a page?
16:44–53:07