What I Do That's New is a series of articles in which poets share their trade secrets with the rest of us i.e. they describe aspects of what they do that is either innovative or just plain clever.
If you would like to feature in a future article in this series then contact feature editor Dermot Glennon dermot@writeoutloud.net

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What goes around comes around, as they say. And the funny thing is that ‘what I do that’s new’ (or that has in the relatively recent past, say since 1981, been sporadically perceived to be and lauded as ‘new’) is in fact as old as the hills, older than the Caxton Press, as old as human language.  In historical terms I’m a strolling player,  a wandering minstrel. In today’s language I’m a punk rock poet who has earned his living from live performances (plus the odd BBC and freelance writer’s cheque) since 1982.  And even after 26 years (28 if you count from my first gig)  most people still don’t really believe me when I tell them it’s possible to earn a living as a poet.

My critics of this virtual parish would, I guess, say I’m not a poet, I’m a showman, an entertainer, some other life form unconnected with the Muse, whatever that is.  However, I detest the corporate entertainment industry, regularly turn down adverts and cheap mainstream media publicity and deliberately avoid anything to do with the dreaded ‘c’ word, ‘comedy’ (my slogan is ‘love humour, hate comedy’) I am totally uncompromising, culturally and politically.  I publish my own books and CDs, organise all my 100 or so gigs a year myself.  Because I want to, not because I have to.   And yes, I’m a poet. I love words. I love using words.  I guess it’s how I use them that earns me my living. So how does it happen?

My two favourite poets blazed a trail for me.  (Yes, I know the haughty sneers from some quarters which will follow the names. But take these words to heart, and if you’ve got talent and single minded determination you can kiss goodbye to the day job!)  My fellow Sussex real ale afficionado Hilaire Belloc declared that he intended his style to be as clear and simple as ’Mary had a little lamb’. And Adrian Mitchell once said ‘Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people’.

From day one I sought to combine both these elements in my work.  I wanted to reach out to people who wouldn’t perceive themselves as being interested in poetry, and I wanted to be easily  understood by the people I reached out to. Purely out of choice:  I’m sure I could have published many a slim volume lauded by nine people in the TLS  and have invented some spurious new ‘intellectual’ movement in poetry  if I’d decided to, and have an amusing canon of  Raine-esque ‘Martian’ pastiches to prove it.  (‘On the beach at Worthing/The lugworm casts/By the sewage outfall/Look like dirty shepherds’ pie’) But what’s the point of that?

If you’re going to write, write to be heard, and yes, write to be read, by your fellow human beings. Not a tiny group of self appointed critics or intellectuals, but anyone who happens to turn up at your performance or pick up your book.   That doesn’t mean heading for the lowest common denominator: it does mean avoiding being deliberately ‘difficult’ when there is no need to be.  And above all, it does mean expressing something worth saying, rather than simply ‘exploring the beauty of words’  ‘looking at a subject from another angle’ or other similar self indulgent nonsense!  (Bad ‘poetry workshops’ have a hell of a lot to answer for!)

As you start the creative process, imagine a bunch of your friends - not your poetry friends -  in a room listening to the finished result.  (If you have no  friends, or no friends except poetry friends, abandon the whole project as a point of urgency, get a life, then restart at a later date!) If you think that your friends would relate to what you are saying, and their friends, who maybe don’t know you, would also relate to what you are saying, you’re on the right track. On the right track to earn a living as a poet, that is. Perhaps not on the right track to getting a good review in Cherry Blossom magazine - unless the editor is an old skinhead who used to use it to polish his DMs......

It seems to me that some poets - and especially some poetry critics, who are invariably crap poets - seem to think there’s a choice to be made: be clever or be popular.  That’s rubbish. Be both. But don’t go on game shows, and don’t take commissions for NUTS magazine.  And may the indomitable spirit of centuries of (mostly oral) poetic tradition go with you.
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To find out more about Attila - click on the following link
http://www.writeoutloud.net/poets/attilathestockbroker