Ross Sutherland was born in Edinburgh in 1979. He was included in The Times’s list of Top Ten Literary Stars of 2008. His debut poetry collection, Things To Do Before You Leave Town, was published in January this year. Ross is also a member of the poetry collective Aisle16 with whom he runs Homework, an evening of literary miscellany in East London. His one-man poetry/comedy show, The Three Stigmata of Pacman, debuts at the Old Red Lion Theatre in Islington in January 2010.
Is it possible to write new fairytales? Or can we just rewrite old ones? I’m thinking here about Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale where he breaks down a group of Russian folk tales into a classification system of thirty one narrative functions.
For Little Red Riding Hood, it breaks down like this:
1. One of the members of a family absents himself/herself from home.
2. An interdiction [prohibition] is addressed to the hero.
3. The interdiction is violated.
4. The villain makes an attempt at reconnaissance.
5. The villain receives information about the victim.
6. The villain attempts to deceive the victim in order to take possession of the victim or their belongings.
7. The victim submits to deception and thereby unwittingly helps the villain.
8. The villain causes harm or injury to a member of the family.
The structure is incredibly familiar to us- we can recognise it from an indefinite number of stories – oral, written, enacted or filmed. Its so familiar that we can even follow it when all the nouns and verbs have been replaced with the corresponding word 23 places below the original in the dictionary.
When I was on tour in Germany in 2006, I participated in a lot of Poetry Slams. Slams are huge throughout Germany- almost every poetry reading is Slammed. Even though I was guest of honour, I was still expected to earn my set time by fighting off the local talent. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t, but I was always enthralled by having to compete in a battle of words across a incomprehensible language divide. I had no idea what the other poets were talking about, yet I could still recognise the different classifications of poem, the poetic techniques being deployed, etc, etc. The rhythm and the structure were so familiar, that I found myself laughing at jokes in language I couldn’t speak. It made me attune to body language and rhythm in a way I had never experienced before. I guess I wanted to try to recreate that feeling in this piece.
The technique was developed by the writing movement OULIPO. I write more about them here.
The footage is taken from an old stop-motion animation from the 70s, and the song is ‘The Nursery’, by the awesome Clint Mansell. It’s from the Moon OST.
Hello. I thought I would post up two poems today. Both of these were originally recorded for Cambridge 209 Radio last year.
Apparently 209 is going off-air at the end of this week. Tonight was meant to be the final fundraiser for the station, but I’m led to believe that closure is now unavoidable. If you’re in Cambridge tonight, I urge you to head down to The Maypole pub (Portugal Place) to vigorously support this completely impossible cause. 209 Radio has done some great stuff over the years and they deserve to go out with some sort of devastating explosion. Readings come from Lizzy Dening, Clare Crossman, Kerri French and Peter Hilken.
Both of these pieces also appear in my collection Things To Do Before You leave Town, available from the good people at Penned In The Margins. I say people. His name is Tom. He likes mustard.
The poem is taken from my children’s show, The Nine And A Half Commandments of Aisle16. The show also features work from Luke Wright, Chris Hicks and Joel ‘Joel’ Stickley. The whole thing was originally commissioned by The British Council for a one-off performance in Athens last year. Last week the show got its proper UK debut at the Southbank Centre, programmed as part of their Imagine Festival.
My face appeared in The Independent yesterday. I was teaching journalist Holly Williams how to be a performance poet. It was a lot of fun. Our photographer got held up because she’d just been shooting N-Dubz, and they insisted at looking at every photograph she took: “Let me see that one! That’s the shot! That’s the shot! OK, let me see that one, too!”
Note to self: be more like N-Dubz.
I think it would be good to expand this interview into a full-length blog-post, or the do’s and don’t of performance poetry. At the very least, it would be useful for me, as I often forget my own rules and relearn the hard way. I’ll try to get something down later this week. X
A while back I did an interview with arts collective Mercy, for a regular feature they run called My Geppetto. The idea was that I name a major influence and talk about how they inspired me. I chose Dr Who.
The thing went up on Mercy’s website this week- you can read the interview here.
In other news, Mercy have just announced the date for their next event at St Leonard’s Church in Shoreditch. April the 10th sees Wave Machines, Eugene McGuinness, Salena Godden, Nafe Jones and myself touching down for another evening of music/art/poetry/standing on pews/punching the air. The last event in December was probably the best gig I’v ever been part of, and this one promises to raise the bar again.
Here’s a teaser trailer, with footage taken from the December event. The last one sold out really fast, so get your ticket now or face the unspeakable consequences.
In this one-hour show, talented Ross Sutherland brings philosophy, physics and fun together to create a highly entertaining view of contemporary society, which transcends the obvious, scintillates with originality and packs a hard-hitting intellectual punch with the feather-light levity of a cotton-ball souflée aerated by a child’s laughter.
The premise of the show is a chronological journey through key stages in Sutherland’s life – his career as a journalist at Metro, and his professional and personal relations with his open-plan-office colleagues at the Daily Mail; his budding career as a performance poet; his forced return to his family home in Coggeshill, Essex and his ‘bed no bigger than a cake tin’ after cutbacks render him jobless, and his eventual return North, bringing things full circle, ending where he started in terms of space, but having moved forward in time, as a changed person – not least because of a time capsule he’d picked up at Whitechapel market.
This living metaphor is a prop he uses artfully and disingenuously to try to build a better world. He uses it to actively symbolise the power people have to throw away the dysfunctional and build a better future, should they choose to use it. On the way, he manages to entertain, challenge, and more importantly, perhaps, engage his audience emotionally. Sutherland is well aware of the rhetorical power he has, but he never abuses it, something which is greatly to his credit. After a couple of virtuosic displays of the force of his rhetorical arsenal power had hit the audience, they burst out into spontaneous appreciative applause despite themselves, almost caught unawares by his brilliance. His comedy comes at you from outside the field of play, from where you’re least expecting it. His associative play on words and images which compared the Trojan war, consumerist branding and Blairite warmongery is astute and sophisticated, the power subtly disguised through the use of wit and humour. The same can be said for his masterful literary manoeuvres around the whole ethos of totalitarian regimes.
The theme of time travel inevitably touches on the theory of relativity, but Sutherland takes relativity one level further, debating relative moral values in a stroke of literary and performance genius which sees the traditional tale of Red Riding Hood masterfully reworked to provide one of the most entertaining pieces of one-man-showmanship I have ever witnessed. Another highlight is his protracted virtuosic retelling of a shopping expedition into the heart of Coggeshill.
His shabby appearance and unique idiolect which makes certain terms come out of his mouth strangely – with laissez-faire sounding very like something to do with a cross between a film featuring a loveable sheepdog and Eddie Izzard, or his pronunciation of interlocutor conjuring up images of liquor stores, are endearing rather than annoying. The digital backdrops of images, diagrams and video footage which come in at particular points to accompany his monologue are sophisticated and work well, as do the simple musical backing tracks he uses under some of his performance poetry, both providing variety and colour which underscores and amplifies the points Sutherland makes without ever appearing amateurish or distracting. The yellow-jawed pixel-munching video game character referenced in the title makes several appearances on screen towards the end of the show in a poetic visual montage which is as effective as the script. The religious references are less obvious – something I missed completely, it must be said.
‘Oh, we are future’s fools’, he rants, and then disarms the audience with a smile, admitting that for all his wisdom and his way with words, he is just as foolish as any of us, winning his audience over with his considerable stage presence. Catch this show if you can – it’s worth making the effort. I could say you’d be foolish not to see him, but then, I’m tempted to adopt a Sutherland smile and add, you’ll never know either way unless you do. (*****)
That’s probably the most generous review I’ve ever had. Thanks guys. I’m celebrating by listening to ‘The Clearing’ by Arab Strap and pretending to play the drums. X
ROSS SUTHERLAND’S JOB IS TO PREDICT THE FUTURE. As a journalist for an influential and notoriously histrionic newspaper, Ross spends his days scribbling predictions about the impending apocalypse. When a run-in with a fishing magazine reveals the devastating power of self-fulfilling prophecy, Ross pledges to repair the damage he has done to the timeline.
Buying a time capsule from Whitechapel market, Ross sets off across the UK, trawling cabaret clubs and mic-spots in search of stories, poems and songs to send to the next-but-one generation, encouraging audiences to predict their own futures. Things go so well that he even starts to write a one-man show about it. But when the recession hits and Ross finds himself unable to pay the rent, Ross begins to abuse his new-found power and retreat into his own reality.
January 12th to January 30th 2010 (not Sun/Mon). 9.00pm (60mins).
THE OLD RED LION THEATRE, 418 St John St, London EC1V 4NJ.
Tickets £10 for all performances – available from Ticketweb (http://bit.ly/oldredlion) or from the ORL Box Office (020 7837 7816).
Special Offer: Save £4 by booking to see my show and the excellent The Petty Concerns of Luke Wright (7.30pm show) on the same night for only £16.
Exclusive Limited Website Offer: Save £7 by booking to see my show The Petty Concerns of Luke Wright on the same night between Wed 13th and Sat 16th for only £14. Simply quote promo code ‘Poetry Party’ when booking for both shows. This is a strictly limited offer so book as soon as possible.
The other week I took a trip to Cardiff to record a segment for Radio 4’s poetry show, Bespoken Word. We recorded in front of a live audience in a lecture hall at Cardiff Uni. The whole thing was a lot of fun- great performances from everyone on the bill (Laura Dockrill, Disraeli, Nathan Penlington).
I did an abridged version of my poem Trips to Spar. The piece is my vague attempt at a Raymond Queneau-esque ‘iterative narrative’ (non wanky translation: “like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day”). The idea being that I tell the story of the time I was ID’d in my local grocers, then retell the same story over and over again, pushing it into increasingly ludicrous genres (19th century novelist, Satanist’s Handbook, Ragga, drunk sci-fi, etc). The only problem was, because it was the BBC, I wasn’t allowed to say “Spar”, as it counted as advertising (or slander, I can’t remember which). So, instead of reading a poem about “Spar” I had to read a poem about “Schmar”. (See how this starts to get complicated…)
Despite the awkward footnotes, the thing went OK, and ended up getting repeated on the Pick of the Week program the following Sunday. So far, no word of complaint from Schmar, so it looks like I’ve got away with it. Although I was in there earlier today buying a box of Flake Cakes and the woman was rather terse.
Yesterday saw the annual all-day poetry extravaganza at the Betsey Trotwood in Clerkenwell. Which means today sees the annual all-day nausea extravaganza at the spinning couch in my piercingly bright house. From what I can remember of it, I had a pretty good time. In the afternoon, there was the launch for the new Fuselit publication Coin Opera. The whole collection is inspired by video games and features work by Simon Barraclough and David Floyd, among others. My contribution is a couple of sonnets about Street Fighter 2.
Late on, I participated in a project where myself and 24 other poets all read a poem inspired by the Christmas No.1 from the year we were born. Here’s the poem I wrote for 1979: Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall.
How To Be Another Brick in the Wall: A Survival Guide
Synchronise your watch with the school bell. At registration, amuse classmates by suddenly opening your mouth, wide as you can, so that when the bell rings, it sounds as if the school is lodged somewhere in your throat.
Classroom resources are scarce and must be bartered for. Your class alone has over two hundred pupils, many of whom are without chairs or first names. Milk monitors Hutherington and Legett can sell you black-market fountain pens, protractors, etc. Always face the front. There is a jar of frogspawn on the window-ledge for no reason. Somewhere behind the blackboard, you can hear the hum of a generator turning old PE kits into muzzles for guard-dogs.
At nine-fifteen, Mr Trehane will arrive and begin to indiscriminately whip the class. You have a copy of The Beezer permanently taped to your rump in anticipation of these beatings. So far, Trehane has torn his way through to The Banana Bunch strip on page 10. Look up. Trehane will be towering over you like a really hard sum. In your own time, turn over and begin. Do not cry out, as this contravenes one of the school’s golden rules: no laughing, no running, no dissent, no talking, no black crayons (only purple crayons masquerading as black crayons), no screaming, no lock-picking your shackle, no eye contact with dinnerladies, and no going home, the surrounding badlands filled with nothing but dry ice and spider patrols.
During handwriting practice, Johnson will ask to borrow the eraser that is shaped like a panda. Do not give it to him. In the slit in the panda’s back, you keep your prize possession: a suicide pill. Many have tried to bargain with you over the years, but today is not the day. Johnson already owes you seven ink cartridges, a Hardy Boys mystery and a Twix. He is too valuable to you for you to let him die.
Mr Trehane asks you to take the class register back to the office. Note that the register appears to be written in Trehane’s own blood.
The dim corridors will clank with the sound of prefects. It is a matter of minutes till they corner you in the assembly hall, wearing papier-mâché masks of your face, each one fixed into a different expression: you quizzical, you laughing hysterically, you thinking about sex, you in a private moment of bewilderment.
Try to remember that this is not a school, but a memory of a school. One that goes thirty years underground, single file classrooms, desks loaded onto a conveyor belt that snakes through the syllabus like the Pirates of the Caribbean. It is a ride, designed for the amusement of people who will never ride it.
You pass a painting of Mr G. Hopkins, your illustrious head-teacher. Know secretly that if there is a head hidden somewhere deep inside this building, he is long dead. The History unit has been firebombed out of recognistion, Woodwork does nothing but shave statues of saints to dust, and poems are handled like Hellraiser cubes. Finding one in your satchel means you have until sunrise to solve it, less it grow spikes and burrow into your chest.
At lunchtime, secretly watch your friends gathering at the peripheries of the playground, quietly singing songs of resistance and snogging their fists in defiance. From the high streaky windows of the science lab, they look like, well, like children. Miss Gatlock kisses your neck and slips her arms through yours.
“If only I wasn’t your teacher,” she says, “If only I was something else.” And you will want to turn and slap her and scream HERMENEUTIC POLYVARIANCE IS PROHIBITED! But Miss Gatlock will already be stiffening in your embrace, her mouth open, pointing towards the mass of infants squinting up at you both. Their baggy trousers, rippling in the wind like pirate flags.
