“I knock on the door … I count to 45 in my head. I tell them I’m doing an art project, being a bit liberal with the truth. And then I do a poem to introduce myself.” Thus spoke Rowan McCabe, aka the Door to Door Poet, by way of introducing himself to a packed audience at Newcastle’s Lit & Phil on Tuesday evening. Described by his interlocutor, the north-east writer Harry Pearson, as “a cross between Lord Byron and the Avon Lady”, Rowan recounted how, after trying out the idea in his home city of Newcastle, he travelled around England, visiting some challenging places, knocking on doors, and offering to write a bespoke poem to anyone who answered.

His doorstep introductory poem included these words, aimed at reassurance: “I’m here to make poetry exciting, / like bungee jumping, but less frightening.” Although the general response was intrigue but a polite No, some people were “so open … I could knock on the door, and within minutes they would be telling us the most serious, tragic stuff.”

Why did he do it? “I was thinking about the purpose of poetry. I was the first person in the McCabe family to have a career in the arts. I didn’t really know my neighbours [in Heaton, Newcastle] after three or four years. I don’t think that’s particularly unusual. Perhaps you can use poetry to question that.”

Rowan grew up on a council estate, and told his Lit & Phil audience that background may have helped him when selecting the areas he chose to visit. He had already been a spoken word performer in the north-east for a number of years. After trying out his technique at Newcastle’s famous Byker Wall, he was awarded an Arts Council grant to travel round the country. Inspired by the comment, “Geordies are exceptionally kind … I’d like to see you try it down south”, he chose places like Moss Side in Manchester, Boston in Lincolnshire, and Jaywick in Essex to offer freely his poetic wares, until Covid and lockdown abruptly cut short his wanderings.

Going to Moss Side, “friends were somewhat concerned about my safety. I was bricking it when I got there.” The first door he knocked on, he encountered a person who referred to himself as “the specialist”. While this might sound somewhat alarming, after listening,‘the specialist’ surprised Rowan by telling him: “When you first knocked on the door, I thought you were an 18th century time traveller.” The Door to Door Poet needed no second bidding to return two weeks later to the same door with a poem that began: “I was in the house the other day, / just hoovering the floor, / when this 18th century time traveller / came knocking at the door.” It has a dramatic and very entertaining conclusion.

In Boston, “a town described in the media as the most divided in Britain”, and represented in Parliament by the deputy leader of Reform UK, he met on the doorstep a banger-racing enthusiast. Since he’d never heard of such a thing - it involves beat-up cars often crashing into each other - he went to an event (“Four people were hospitalised in the hour I was there.”)

He visited a hospice in Leeds and spoke to Sharon, who pressed upon him the importance of keeping in touch with family: “Take it from me, Rowan, don’t leave it too late.” He returned with a poem, “And when I got the news, I thought of you’, to find her slipping in and out of consciousness.

His book, The Door to Door Poet, published last year, catalogues his travels much more comprehensively than this review can, including Stockton, Grantchester, Lundy, Limerick, Birmingham, London, and Folkestone. His final stop was Jaywick, before Covid sent him home (“I went there because it was named as the most deprived place in the UK.”)

Rowan went on: “It is just a bit weird … it was once used in a political campaign by Donald Trump ... it consists entirely of bungalows … one chap opened the door completely naked. I said, ‘You look like you might be busy.’ He didn’t say anything, but slowly closed the door.” Although the Door to Door poet did find his fair share of eccentrics in Jaywick, he also met Sarah, who extolled the beauty of the local beach, and the excellence of the local fish and chips. Rowan’s poetic response, ‘On visiting Jaywick’, concludes with these lines:

 

     Because I know you have your problems, Jaywick.

     But people here are welcoming and kind.

     And Ozzy’s does the perfect fish and chips,

     next to a pub that’s called Never Say Die.

 

     But that won’t make the front page, nor the sea

     as it glitters here above your coastal shelf,

     when papers only deal in misery,

     I’m pleased I found the truth out for myself.

 

Over the years since his spell as the Door to Door Poet, Rowan McCabe has built up a certain amount of public attention and affection, writing for Channel 4 and BBC Radio 3’s The Verb, and featuring in the Guardian and on BBC Breakfast. That affection was evident in the size of the audience at the Lit & Phil, and when he invited requests in the second half of the event, delivering in response a poem, ‘First date at Greggs,’ that he wrote after door-knocking at the Byker Wall; a poem commissioned when he was poet in residence at Wordsworth’s childhood home; and one about a choir that a couple sitting next to me asked for, after hearing it “on Radio 4”.

He is a warm, engaging figure, who confided to his audience what he had learned from his doorstep poetry, that “it’s so important not to make assumptions … this is the story of when I tried really hard not to do that.”

 

Rowan McCabe, The Door to Door Poet, Eye Books, £14.99

 

Harry Pearson talking with Rowan McCabe at Newcastle Lit & Phil