O: PETTYCASH is a new live literature and visual arts collective who plan to showcase the best established spoken word talent in Dublin while providing a platform for new artists. It launched on December 12th at 8pm with “PETTYCASH presents DOLE QUEUE” and the next one is on January 23rd with ‘PETTYCASH presents THIS IS NOT THE RARE AUL TIMES’ at The Little Green, High Street, Dublin 8.
Where is Spoken World in Dublin going, is it gaining ground?
V: It’s definitely gaining momentum. We’ve noted that our audiences are growing. There are more nights to perform. The faces in the audiences are diverse. With the state of the nation right now, more and more people are looking for a platform to get up and speak, not pontificate but just a way to air their views so I think not only are we going to see more events like CRWM but I can see a lot more performers emerging also.
How did you get into Spoken Word?
O: I’ve written poetry since I was really young, but the art forms I’ve always consumed far more than any other are hip-hop and pop music, so that really sparked my interest in performance. I didn’t know anything about spoken word until I was 19 and there was this American girl doing a semester at my college. She wrote these absolutely amazing performance poems, which were totally unlike any art anyone I knew was making, and I just really wanted to make poems like hers’.
V: I got into when I was in college. There was a poetry group that used to meet once a month. I would attend those, writing and sharing work that I had done. That fizzled out but I continued to write and do some short plays but let my poetry side go a bit. I was going out with this American girl a while ago and she was really into slam poetry, which reignited my love of it. Around then I wrote a short slam poem play with her called Blind Mating and from then on it was like a moss gathering stone, people kept asking me to do pieces for events and now I have CRWM as my own platform and place where I can invite people to share their words too.
What you are trying to achieve with your work
V: I’m just trying to open people’s ears to the words that are around them every day and make them listen to voices that they’ve never heard. I’m trying to get people to use their voices too. We forget so often, especially in a 140 character era, that our most important weapon is our voice. It’s so important to use it and vocalize what’s inside.
O: I like to be able to articulate myself as fully and as accurately as possible. I get anxious and frustrated in life when I don’t feel I’m communicating my feelings and thoughts as fully and as concisely as I need to be, because it makes it difficult to feel fully close to people. I think most things I do, including writing and performing, are to try to remedy this. So I guess I write and perform because sometimes it seems to be the most appropriate way of communicating experiences that I want to communicate, and that hopefully other people will reciprocate and connect with.
Some of your work is very personal, how do you go about writing it?
O: Rarely will I get any intense sense of inspiration that’ll carry the whole writing process. Usually it’s a small, vague concept, and then lots of work, fleshing out ideas, working out problems in the pacing, meter, rhyme and narrative. I always find it important to start performing and reciting as soon as you have a little bit of text, because it’s hard to really get to know the piece when you’re still just looking at it on paper.
How do you feel reading it?
O: That’s the best bit. Writing is loads of work and I don’t usually even enjoy most of the process, but when performing a piece that you’re really confident with and know really well, and the audience is into it, it’s the absolute best feeling.
How would you feel about someone else reading your work?
O: It’s not something that’s really happened before for me. My work is pretty personal, so I don’t know if I’d be fully comfortable with it, but maybe if it seemed appropriate to a particular project.
What are you doing at the moment and what will you do next?
O: I’m writing and soon to start rehearsing a piece of spoken word theatre called Writer/Performer/Salesman (A New Play About Retail) that’s going to be on in the Project Arts Centre in January as part of THEATREclub’s The Theatre Machine Turns You On, Vol. 3 festival. I’m also launching a new performance poetry and visual arts collective called PETTYCASH on December 12th at The Little Green (formerly U), which is a night specifically designed to encourage a younger spoken word scene and to encourage meaningful collaboration between spoken word artists and artists of other disciplines.
How do you feel Spoken Word should be delivered?
V: I think no matter if the speaker wrote a piece or handed it over to someone else to be spoken it can be performed. Over at CRWM towers, we are currently working on recording and using visuals in tandem with our spoken pieces. Optimizing the platforms that it can be delivered is important. It gives it another audience entirely. But at the same time matching themes and tones of pieces with visuals and things is pretty hard but that’s the best thing about that, the challenge of it.
O: I think it’s great if people introduce visuals to their work, it’s always good to see spoken word artists employing other mediums to enhance what they do. The main thing I think though about the performance of spoken word is to never try to speak with too much authority about anything. I think there’s a tendency for spoken word performers to adopt a preachy stance and behave as if they’re translating complex cultural and social discourse for the audience who could never possibly understand it otherwise. This is not the case. The only person’s experience you can understand and try to communicate is your own, and that’s all you have authority to talk about. I always think it’s a big problem when a spoken word artist tries to adopt the voice of an entire group of people that they have absolutely no right to claim. The only voice they can and should have rightful access to is their own.
For more on spoken word in Dublin, check out Danny Carroll’s radio documentary
