At 12:58 (timings in Poetry&Words are very precise) on the Saturday of the festival, two minutes before Rizzle Kicks take to the Other Stage, I take my place for the annual Poetry&Words Open Mic. Hosted this year by Tyrone Lewis, the Open Mic provides the opportunity for the more poetic amongst this year’s festival-goers to make their Glastonbury Festival debut.
Anyone can sign up and entrants were required to add their name to the performers list from 11am on Friday. The only other requirements are to show up and have a poem ready to perform. As compère, Lewis rightly adds an additional note that though poems can be on any topic, he will quickly cut off anyone who verges into anything racist, homophobic or otherwise offensive – Poetry&Words is a welcoming place.
Sign-ups are first-come, first-served, and the demand for places is so high that there is a reserve list of poets ready to step in should a performer have gone too hard the night before and failed to show up.
What I found interesting was the way in which the Open Mic showed off the variety of people who come to Glastonbury. There are people of all ages and genders from a variety of backgrounds here with poems about everything and anything.
We open with Scott, who gives us a poem about the felling of the Sycamore Gap Tree, before Chantelle performs an ode to cycling.
Recurring themes begin to appear. There are personal poems about identity: Fran’s ‘I come from the North’ contemplates his Northernness as someone now living in the South, Feefs considers their identity in a postcolonial context, and Jessica explores motherhood and how it defines her now that her children need her less – ‘you’ll lose them at eight,’ she says.
There is whimsy, too, though undercut with seriousness. Ayana compares the job market to a bad date, Alex performs a poem about a Sports Direct mug, and Lucy compares writing poetry with orgasms – which is more satisfying? – and there’s a syllabic poem about a phone passcode.
Priya says she tries to answer questions with her poetry, and her poem ponders where Glastonbury goes for 11 months of the year when it’s not either taking place, being set up or taken down. Clearly, with such a variety of people passing across the Poetry&Words stage to tell their stories, there are little pieces of it everywhere.
