We asked Cardiff-based performer Mab Jones to give us her view of the hectic poetry circuit. Here is her first despatch:

"I'm usually veering dizzily from gig to gaff to launch to lunch, and home again. My base is Cardiff but I get around a fair bit. First up this week, I was asked to judge a debating competition at my old high school in Cardiff. I grew up on a large council estate called Ely, (in)famous for the Ely riots of the early 1990s. Not exactly the plushest of places... But the school I managed to wangle into was private, prestigious, and pretty dem posh (a word I dislike, now, as I’ve been called the same, by people who come from richer backgrounds than me – but you know what I mean). It was weird being in the “great hall” again, that I remember being so impressed by. The stained glass windows and wall paintings showing scenes from Shakespeare were not as well done as I’d previously thought. I was also sad to find that the eight-verse school song (words by Rudyard Kipling) had been scrapped in my absence. I felt like singing a bit of it, but realised the dirge would probably cause the ageing windows in the hall to break, and was undoubtedly the reason they’d binned the thing in the first place.

Then it was off to Bournemouth, for a headline stint at Freeway Poets, held in the gorgeous Winchester pub. I’d not been to the town before, and was suitably impressed by the welcome I received from organiser Louise Keeley: “Hi Mab, how are you, and would you like an absinthe jelly shot?”. Alcohol, music, a very open open-mic, people painting penises onto wall tiles, and young girls writhing onstage – this was my kind of gig, and I highly recommend to anyone remotely near the area.

Another highlight for me this week was a second headline slot at the opening of the Off The Shelf Literature Festival in Sheffield. Organiser Joe Kriss is one of those young people who inspires a mix of jubilance and jealousy in a late-starter such as myself. A writer, a performer, an organiser, and he’s got a fair few years on me (I wouldn’t like to say how many, though!). Joe kindly gave up his room for me after the gig, staying instead at his girlfriend’s house, and the attic garret was furiously a-flutter with half-open Roger McGoughs, Caroline Birds, Derrick Brown, Nasty Litte Press, at al. 

Further gigs followed in the National Botanic Garden of Wales and the house Dylan Thomas grew up in, 5 Cwmdonkin Drive in Swansea. I am normally a writer of rude verse, but my poems, these days, extend into the less-lascivious and only slightly-scandalous. Only a few flowers fell from their stems in the great glasshouse upon hearing two new poems I’d written for the Celtic Women book being launched, although I’m sure Dylan’s spirit wouldn’t have minded a naughty nuance or two. Certainly, Dylan and Caitlin’s grandson, Huw Ellis, is one of the coolest and funniest perf poets I know, so if he’s anything to go by, then Dylan was probably chuckling and cheering along, too, from somewhere. There was also an endless river of red wine, which certainly made everyone’s boats float in the same sybariticdirection

And so ends a week in the life of a busy spoken wordster. Next up: wearing a giant latex head in a satirical masked drama; holding auditions for the performance poetry version of Troilus and Cressida I wrote for the RSC Open Stages competition; and many more gigs, in various places, in various states of drunkenness."

Photograph: Rhys Jones

www.mabjones.com

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