To Brum and back

Happy Halloween to you. It's been a busy week in the life of 'a pint for the ghost'. On Tuesday, Neil, Patrick and I dug out the pint glasses and fake whisky again and headed up the motorway to Birmingham to perform at a book festival in the central library. Birmingham is full of spectres. According to the local paranormal investigations team, there's a ghost in the Three Tuns pub that likes to stroke people's hair. So it was with trepidation that we set up our stuff in a darkened theatre and got ready to take to the stage again.

There was definitely some sly spirit at work: the stairs seemed intent to leg Patrick up, and I kept breaking glasses. Despite my clumsiness, we survived and made an executive decision to use real beer on stage instead of the evil concoction Super Malt (which has been giving me nightmares since June). It was very interesting to perform in a less intimate venue than the setting of the Hotbed festival, and we discovered theatres are possibly not the natural habitat for the landlord and his ghosts. Nonetheless, it was a great experience. And none of us got our hair stroked.

On Friday, the pamphlet was launched in style with readings from some fine poets (including a pub crawl with Michael McKimm and Tim Wells' encounter with a goth on the bus) and music courtsey of Gareth's ipod. Ta, Gareth! And if that weren't enough excitement for one week, you can now listen to the landlord's stories from 'A Pint...' online at Short Story Radio. The tales are read by Keith Drinkel, who played Liz McDonald's boyfriend in Coronation Street years ago, as well as appearing in the comedy series 'I Didn't Know You Cared'. Find a dark room, light some candles, pour yourself a dram, and click this link.

Freaky Friday

There's no rest for the wicked. Today, Neil, Patrick and I are off to Birmingham Book Festival to perform a scaled-down version of 'A Pint for the Ghost' in the West Midlands. Then, tomorrow, I'm making the long journey to Barnstaple to perform a few poems from the show, amongst other work, for Apples & Snakes. Luckily, I've got some good reading matter, having purchased a book with the intriguing title 'Michael Jackson's Beer Companion' in London on Sunday. I can't find any evidence that it's by the late pop star, but it makes for an interesting read...

The week finishes with the launch of my tall-lighthouse pamphlet 'a pint for the ghost' on Friday 30th (the night before Halloween) upstairs in the spooky Betsey Trotwood pub, Farringdon. Joining me on stage will be John McCullough whose fantastic tall-lighthouse pamphlet is appropriately named 'the lives of ghosts', Michael McKimm whose first collection 'Still This Need' is full of haunting poems, and Tim Wells, whose cracking poems need no introduction and often feature that fine institution, the pub. We'll be taking to the mic from about 8pm, so please come and join us at The Betsey.

If you can't make it for Friday's merriment, but you'd like a copy of the pamphlet, you can get one online here. But you can't get a pint online, or try one of the Betsey's famous whiskies, which make the perfect companion to ghost stories!

Whisky: a friend in need

I was performing in Soho last night, and I asked the crowd whether there were any whisky lovers in the audience. It hit me immediately that it’s hard to be a true ‘lover’ of whisky, because I’ve come to regard it as a long-standing, shit friend - the kind who legs you up in the street, steers you into embarrassing conversations and nicks twenty quid off you on a Saturday night. The sort of friend you stay mates with all the same, because no matter how much they abuse you, they’re always there when you want a good weep.

Over the course of our acquaintance, my fair-weather friend has encouraged me to spend an hour trying to get into my neighbour’s house instead of my own (“but I DO live here officer!”), pushed me headfirst over a garden wall and convinced me that The OffSpring’s ‘Pretty Fly For A White Guy’ is an excellent choice of karaoke song. But whisky was also there the night I sat by a pitch black canal with no company except a moon as bright as a lamp, and the time I stood on Birchover rocks in the snow, so I keep reminding myself that we’ve had a good innings.

And, in defence, whisky isn’t the kind of mate who rings you up the morning after the night before to give you an earful about what a twat you made of yourself (wine can’t resist popping round to shriek: “but you MUST remember dancing on the pool table…”). It preserves a blissful nonchalance, almost as if nothing happened at all.

It was my friend Alastair who introduced us, at a party. He’d known whisky for years, didn’t have a bad word to say. It was only later that I found out people had been slagging her off: I heard some bloke called Logan Pearsall Smith (erm, obviously, I know a lot of people with names like that) muttering that “whisky has killed more men than bullets.” Which is a bit harsh to be honest. And according to Ralph Emerson “as a cure for worrying, work is better than whisky.” Well, that depends very much where you work, doesn’t it Ralph? I used to sit at the reception desk of the Chesterfield nightclub Livingstones, and I was definitely calmer when I was up in the bar after closing time with a Famous Grouse than when I was downstairs in the cloakroom having to confiscate lollipop lady signs, large inflatable dolls and traffic cones.

And without whisky’s steady inspiration, I wouldn’t have written this poem from ‘a pint for the ghost’:

A dram for all the men I’ve never drunk with

Sigmund Freud refuses every neat Ardbeg
or soft Caol Ila swirled beneath his nose,

but Byron knocks them back in one, then winks
and taps his glass against the lacquered tabletop.

Beside me, Marx is dishing out full measures
of the sherry-finished, twelve-year old Ledaig

but Larkin’s nothing but a bitter man, he says,
he’ll have no truck with spirits.

I’ve brought them to my local, in the snug
armpit of Sheffield, where the landlord

doesn’t bat an eyelid if my wise companions
sometimes slip their guard;

pass fingers through their glasses, take a shortcut
through a wall to reach the loos. It’s Sat’dy neet

he says, there’s stranger folk in here than these.
And, after all, he’s seen the likes of me before as well,

he gently lifts them out of corner seats
past closing time; the women who arrive alone,

who murmur toasts into the air, who raise a glass
to men who’ve never answered them.

* * *

And, just for a laff, here’s my whisky top 5. Arguments, additions, free samples from distilleries all welcome…

5. Bushmills summat-or-other – I had it once and it was nice but I don’t know much more than that.
4. Bruichladdich – unpronounceable and brilliant.
3. Macallan – what a winter walk in the park would taste like.
2. Caol Ila 1996– stinks of cigarettes. As many of my best mates do.
1. 10 year old Ardbeg – the real deal.

Definitely not making the list is a bottle of whisky I once drank in Chesterfield, which was to Bells what Blue Shark is to Red Bull, and was possibly called something like Rings…

Deepest darkest London Bridge

Before I went to London Bridge to start the Shunt residency last week, a page from 'ghostweb' had already had me in stitches. 'Spirit energy', or the powers of photoshop? You decide...

Nonetheless, walking through Shunt lounge (pictured above!), the first sounds you hear are screams of terror from the London Dungeons. By night, the place is a gloomy maze of dark archways, eerie corners and green lights. Worse still, if you'd stumbled into the Vaults last week, you might have been ambushed by a terrifying group of apparitions: haggard, sun-starved, muttering. Yes, that's right, the most unearthly of species - poets in a bar.

The theme of our residency at Shunt was 'when no-one's listening', which strikes me as a ghostly topic in itself. The other performers all put me to shame with their inventiveness: poems featured an onslaught of paper aeroplanes, the voice of a drinker's liver, the subconscious mind of Dave and even the voice of God. My piece was about the things objects in the bar might say to each other when there's no-one around, and it's posted below, just for a laff...

While you weren’t listening...

I heard the glass
say to the tabletop:
I like the way you hold me.

I heard the table
answer back:
I like the way you feel.

The barstools
thanked the floor
for all the nights it propped them up

And though
I didn’t catch the floor’s reply
it sounded delicate

and I wondered
what the wind says to the trees outside
to make them swoon like that

and what it tells
the grass
to set it shivering,

or what it is
that’s spoken when you
press that bottle to your lips,

what passes there
between you
in that silent and repeated kiss

that seems to say
I’m here,
I’m listening.

What the devil am I up to?

October's a busy month as well as a haunted one. If the launch of 'a pint for the ghost' on October 30th wasn't enough to be getting on with, I'm currently in the middle of a residency at the strange and spooky Shunt lounge, below London Bridge.

The residency is connected with Apples & Snakes and explores the idea of listening, involving three performances in the busy main bar at Shunt. I'm working with a ridiculously talented group of writers and performers including Byron Vincent, Molly Naylor, Joe Hakim and Joshua Idehen. You can read more about the residency here and, even better, you can come and see us perform tonight and tomorrow from 8pm.

Throughout October, you can hear me reading extracts from 'a pint for the ghost' amongst other work, at loads of different places. Including:

Sheffield's fantastic 'Off The Shelf' festival on October 17th
Soho Theatre on October 21st
...and in deepest Devon on October 28th

Watch this space for more reading dates.

'Course, today is National Poetry Day, so in the spirit of that, here's a favourite recent poem of mind, taken from Don Paterson's book 'Rain' which won the Forward Prize last night:

Rain

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one long thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from the play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a rain-dark gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign,
and I’d read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood—
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.

A long overdue update

Apologies for the recent, deathly silence that has fallen on the blog. I wish I had an appropriate excuse (out battling the fenland ghouls, or out sampling the fenland pubs) but it's work rather than spirits that are to blame.

I may have been quiet of late, but there's no rest for the pub ghosts of England. The lovely Catherine Smith sent me an article last week about a troubled pub in Southsea:

A pub landlady is hoping to enlist the help of an exorcist in order to banish a ghost that insists on topping up customers' glasses.

Janice McCormack, of the Apsley House in Southsea has become increasing vexed at the ghost's machinations.

"It happens when customers pop to the loo or put their pint down for a second," she explained. "When they look back there's an extra inch of beer. It must come from my pumps."

This peculiar spirit with a penchant for spirits first made his presence felt nine months ago. Regulars have nicknamed him Reedy, in honour of the famously thirsty actor Oliver Reed.

"My regulars love it but it is costing me," Mrs McCormack added.

"People are drinking less as their pints are being filled up all the time. My stocktaking figures are all out. We get more customers through the door but it seems to be people expecting a cheap, never-ending pint."

Ms McCormack believes she will need to adopt to a suitably supernatural strategy to rid her premises of the generous ghoul. If a séance doesn't work, she intends to enlist the services of an exorcist.

I can't promise that there'll be such mysterious refills at The Betsey Trotwood, Farringdon on October 30th, but I can promise you that if you come to London that night, you'll find a host of poets reading at the pamphlet launch of 'a pint for the ghost'. I'm launching my tall-lighthouse pamphlet from 8pm in the Betsey, with guest readings from John Mccullough, Tim Wells and Michael McKimm. Since it's the night before Halloween, ghostly costumes are encouraged... If you're in London on the 30th, please do come to the launch, it should be a great night.