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Variety is the spice of life

Review: Petersfield Write Angle, Upstairs @ The Square Brewery

In spite of the cold and nasty weather, the room was full, and the audience enthusiastic to see guest poet Ash Dickinson and share talents at the open mic.
Ash is a confident comic who couldn’t hide his talent if he tried. Warm and sensitive, he has good rapport with an audience. His third time back with Write Angle and his words, ‘I’m just going to ramble on’, might have sounded off-putting, but Ash’s vivid imagination and variety of poetry made it work.
He likes ‘returning to a place he’s been before’. It challenges him to do new work whereas touring the UK always meant ‘doing the same set over and over’. He loves trying new poetry, and does it with energy and freshness, that shows in his ‘wicked’ smile and eyes. As far as this reviewer is concerned, he could have gone on forever! In fact, he was called back for encores, twice!
Starting with Haikus, ‘Gave you a shoulder. Provided you with an ear. Now I look quite odd’, - and ’An ugly duckling. Four months to be a goose. He is now transgander’.
Then, the story of the ‘Glass Coffin Coffee Table Wife’, ‘Stiff under magazines in the after-life. When death claimed her, he framed her, laid her down, took off her glasses, preserved her with gases, till death us do part… a dead woman in a glass coffin, scoops the Turner prize for the best objet d’art!’
Ash’s mind works endlessly, keeping you guessing what’ll come next. He’s sad that 60’s punk and rock have disappeared; The Mamas and the Papas.
For Mama Cass, he laments, ‘Drugs, parties over. Cass dead. Time to go vegetarian’. Then, ‘the original Star Wars’ in a three-minute slam.
He spoke of how method acting gave him the idea to be a method poet; However, both wives (one and two), were not too pleased with a husband who ‘became’ each of his poems! Ash did, ‘Chiller Queen’, ‘My fridge is in love with me…it uses magnetic fridge poetry to attract my attention…dressing itself in tiny tiles, it articulates its desires through striking haikus and short romantic quatrains….’
Then a poem about the moon being invited to a party: ‘You might meet a nice little planet’. Ash, as most of our guest poets, does a lot of work in schools to supplement his income and said most of his poems are written there. Going to one area of high deprivation, he said the taxi driver was hysterical, laughing, saying ‘no one learns or even goes there!’.
Ash has a wonderfully creative mind that can pick a poem from anything and his way of telling it shows an amazing ability to handle words so they appear effortless.
You never know what’s coming next.
On the subject of ‘men’s fashion and how rubbish it is’… He wears the same tee-shirts, summer and winter, but went to a charity shop and fell in love with a jumper. It ‘made him drool’. There was a problem. The sleeves were twice as long as the legs and could only have been made for a gibbon. ‘Sure enough, a gibbon walked into the shop’. Called ‘The Gibbon Yarn’, it ended with the gibbon walking out, ‘laughing’. The audience was hysterical.
Ash also read several ‘clerihews’ - funny four-lined poems - started by a bored clergy man about members of the church. ‘James Bond, on his arm, another blonde. Can she be trusted. Is she a spy. Sooner or later, she’ll probably die’.
A really cool and loveable guest, making it a warm and cosy evening!
At the open mic, Dave Allen mentioned he’s doing a charity tour, called ‘No Limits for Young People’, starting end of February in Southampton.
Ten gigs/ten days/ten cities, by bike. 80 miles per day. Each gig for a different local charity. He then did ‘A jerk, then a jolt..train stuck… some poor bastard leapt from a bridge onto the track….one woman saying, ‘How could people be so selfish.’
His second, about losing hair on his head, now growing on his back. He doesn’t care (much). Has a dream, will wake up with an afro, ‘the greatest hairdo they ever saw, turned them all a little bit gay!’
Pete Cresswell read three poems written in Toronto: ‘Observations of Bars’, as it goes from dawn to dusk! Also ‘Dating a fashion model begs the question ‘why’. Jezz, long time missing, then followed with his emotional lilting voice, great guitar and song - ‘There’s reason to believe this year will be better than the last’, and ‘it’s a big city. If you’re lonely, why’d you say you’re not lonely’.
Audi Maserati followed with his ukulele. A song of a ‘three-legged hog, three-legged chicken and three-legged snake’, followed by ‘Metaphorical mountains’ based on Appalachian mountains, written to commemorate a young American going off to fight.
Brian Lawrence told of returning to his Canadian University for a homecoming after 50 years. Missing his flight gave him the chance to flirt with a 20-year-old, who had no interest in an old man. But he was gonna ‘show her’!
Chris Sangster, in a similar mood to Jezz, played ukulele with ‘Some days so bad but then he sees the sun in the sky smiling upon him, and he realises why’.
He then reminisced ‘Dreams of the Past’ - living in Scotland with 40 acres and sheep and a sheep dog. ‘Some days I long for the country. Living in a dream. Then move on’.
Jake, compère, did two poems about Sabra, his vibrant, special ‘little girl’, who passed away at 23. Lovely poems. Nothing could keep her back!
Phyllida Carr had everyone singing as she played her harmonica, especially ‘When the Saints come marching home’. She also won the raffle for a free meal for two at La Piazzetta!
Bruce Parry did ‘Seascape’, painting a wonderful picture of ‘seaside sand castles dissolving with melted ice cream’.
This reviewer read about Jezz switching places with King William - ‘Guardian of the Market Square’, ‘Adopting a dog’ and ‘Getting old with Grace’. All in all, a really successful evening.
The next Write Angle meeting takes place on Tuesday 17 February with Lucy English, comedienne/poet/author.

Petersfield Write Angle, petersfieldwriteangle.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

   
   

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