Sweden was wonderful, a fantastically beautiful country of little wooden house dotting tree covered landscapes formed by glaciers and also the most friendly and welcoming places I have ever visited, it was just a shame their beer was awful. They have strict laws about the sale of alcohol which mean that most shops are not allowed to sell drinks over 3.5% alc. except a few specialist off-licences. I could live with this if it weren’t that the beer was mostly imported Carlsberg and I hate Carlsberg which I suspect the Danes might have pissed in to let it down to the right alcohol content.

The Deviant Art Festival the The Pump House in Trollhatten was great. The art was very deviant, the gallery was full of outrageous statements, work made from old junk and depiction of death, nudity, and disgusting bodily fluids. Work in such bad taste is has been common in most major city for years, but the twist the curators gave was to set up camp with these artists in a quaint little Swedish town during tourist season.

The show also had a knowing awareness that you need to go to rural Sweden if you want to find people who can still be shocked by art. Much of the work makes jokes about the sensation art moments of the 1990s.

The show was perhaps best summed up by a performance by the Dribble Factory which was a guy from Newcastle who strapped himself to the ceiling and then dribbled on to the floor. The work was confrontational but maintained a playful knowing irony, punk rock spirit and a student sense of humour. As you can imagine it was just my bag and my performance went very down well.

I had intended to write some poetry in Swedish for the show. However my Swedish wasn’t very good and most Swedes were very happy to speak in English and much of the audience were artist over from London for the festival anyway. I did try to translate some lyrics but my pronunciation was a bit wrong and just scared and confused people. In the end I did a selection of favourites from recent show and a couple of new poems I’d written in English over the previous week, including Rose Tyler and Postcard the Campaign for Real Ale.


I was paired with Johan Lindeblom for the show who is a Swedish poet with some books and a CD to his name. Johan translated some of his poems into English for the show and also read in Swedish. Johan was a great guy and I would like to work with him again. His style was very different from mine, but we came from similar back ground as he had started writing lyrics with a band and we had similar tastes in music. Johan's poetry was subtle and gothic than my own and based on rhythm rather than silly rhymes.

Sweden was a great success and I was sad to leave, but there was talk about going back next year…



POETRY CAFÉ

Landed back in Stanstead on Monday afternoon and then raced across to Covent Garden for a show at The Poetry Café with John Hegley. It was the first performance at a proper poetry reading and John Hegley is quite well know. Nervous, exhausted from travelling and sweating like a pig in the current UK heat wave, my show was a little shaky but it seemed to go ok. Just did 5 minutes of favourites. One of the ladies in the audience described my show as an ‘onslaught ‘ which I was quite please with. My avoidance of such venues in the past had led me to develop a style that was perhaps different to what they were used to. I’m not sure what I did was entirely suitable for the venue but I was pleased I raised a few questions about what I should be doing.

FORTHCOMING

Rag and Bone closes this weekend and there will be some performances and the draw of Sam’s Art Lotto from 4pm. There will be a few drinks and a bit of a party. Was hoping that The Rust Buckets might perform but they are having some problem so it might just be Sam and me unless some else step up. There are now some picture from the show on the Rag and Bone Website www.ragaandbone.info


The word on the lanes of East Anglia is that there might be something called DITCHLICKER happening in Blo’ Norton on August 26th . Details are not confirmed, but rumour has it that Victor Mount, Skrewworm and The Blo Boys might be on the line up plus Alys in Wonderland and Opposite The Hotel are planning exclusive comeback shows.