Exhibition Of The Teenager Poetry Commission

Following my open mic participation in the regular Fire River Poets meeting at The Brewhouse Theatre in Taunton back in Nov I was approached by the Brewhouse's arts apprentice Kelly Smith. Kelly was in the process of putting together her first exhibition which was to include an opening night performance event featuring a series of local bands who would each play a teenage anthem from either the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s. She asked me whether I would be interested in acting as compere for the evening and more importantly writing a poem to preface each song on the night plus a final poem to round things off, so a total of seven poems.

I jumped at the opportunity and accepted immediately. At the time of writing I have 6 out of the seven down, in need of a polish maybe but more or less there. One more to go.

The brief from Kelly was to examine the changing experience of being a teenager in each decade.

I have approached the poems in a number of ways. Each is quite different as I attempt to reflect the era of each decade. The 50s poem is the most formal in structure, the 60s borrows a manifesto format from Adrian Henri , The 70s is a three chord blast, the 80s a cut up featuring 100 1980s song titles, the 90s a fluid performance piece, the 00s well that one is still taking shape... As for the content of each poem, well come along on the night and find out!

I will be reading all the poems at The Teenage Anthem Gig at The Brewhouse on Thursday 17th February from 6.30pm. Entry is FREE.

Content warning: some poems include swearing and scenes of a sexual nature - so as good a reason as any for coming along!