Bridget Hart

In June I performed at Find the Right Words, a great poetry night up in Leicester, I was really pleased to be invited as I don’t get to do many poetry nights these days. Ivo and I were on our way up to the Peak District for a break anyway so it seemed like a great plan. I had just released Better Watch Your Mouth and made a few sales from that and met Cynthia who is seriously cool with well crafted poetry that stood out during the open mic, I’ve stayed in touch with her and she’s doing great things for DIY punk in Leicester.

A few weeks after this I was approached by the theatre curator, David and invited back to do one of their own poetry evenings, which I would be headlining. He said ‘just send us 100 words about your show and any images, etc..’ I was thinking right, my show, totally… I’ve written one yeah! Cough. The date of the show was in December, I had loads of time, so I sent a brief description of the show that HAS been in my head for a long time. A show about DIY punk, and female musicians, a show about friendship and toxic macho bullshit, a show I speedily named Riot Mouth.

Unfortunately summer kept me busy, and I had intended to start writing as soon as my last festival was done at the end of august, to at least have a basic scratch up together. But my boyfriend and I split up after six and half years and it sent me spiralling into more depression. The biggest phase of it that I have suffered. I have talked and will talk very openly about mental health because I didn’t get the help I needed growing up because people weren’t willing to talk about depression, or mental disorders, or anything remotely difficult and contradictory. It was better to pick up and move on. I don’t believe this, I really believe that talking openly, and from experience which challenges preconceptions and established ideas and opens up conversation. Being able to reach out is hard, but for someone like me who craves validation and love from others, it isn’t that hard, the hard part is rejection. I choose to face this fear in this setting but cannot get there in other ways. Anyway, this post is not a deconstruction, it is meant to be a positive thing. The depression hindered my writing, big time. I couldn’t even think about it without getting knots tightening in my muscles.

Riot Mouth – a show that’s been in my head since I wrote Let Loose Lucy about growing up in a punk scene where I was abused, sexualised and ignored like scores and scores of other women, non binary and trans folks, in fact, probably all of us. Spoken word shows are a great way to explore bigger ideas, to unpack and evaluate concepts that we otherwise mention in poems but they have no real correlation. I had lots of ideas swimming around in my head about women in punk and how to explore and deliver something that was in-depth and well rounded. I wanted to celebrate the women I had discovered over the years and inject herstory in to punk sparked by Viv Albertine’s comment at the exhibition on punk at the Southbank centre:

and also because of men like Henry Rollins who tour big venues to discuss their own past in punk, which is restrictive and reinforces the male narrative of punk. We must remind ourselves that punk does not belong to cis white men, it doesn’t belong to the late 70’s era. It belongs to anyone who exists in the counter-culture, and the way it has progressed alongside the mainstream. We must remind ourselves that punk IS political, it is a fight against oppression and the rise of establishments that commodify through violence. It exists in societies around the world, to Burma, to Mexico, to Europe, to Japan and Russia, and our own multicultural society in the UK, and that should reflect in our retelling of punk. Which is what I want to create with this show. I know my limitations as a cis white woman with a certain amount of privilege, which is why I have directed the show as more of a memoir, to lay out plainly my experiences, to allow people to take what they can from that and relate it to themselves.

The hardest part is always the start. Because of depression I spent months agonising over starting. Did I really want to revisit things that I had forgotten? To remember all the teenage years I spent with Stacey? The is no simple answer to that, I just had to be brave and dive in. Once I started though, it seemed to come naturally. I typically wrote a few hundred words at a time and tried not to put pressure on myself to finish. I was anxious that December was drawing closer and closer and I was still nowhere near a place that it was ready to perform to an audience. In the last week I managed to finish what sat comfortably as the ‘first half’. And left it. I went back and edited parts, performed in my bedroom to work out the parts that didn’t transition smoothly off the page. I wanted to be accessible and have an ease that made it seem I was just having a conversation with someone. There are funny parts, devastating parts and parts that are just hard for myself, and it was important to get them to flow together as one narrative rather than all over the place, as memories tend to be.

So we drove to Leicester for the show and I wasn’t happy with it. Every time I tried to practice, I made mistakes, I fell over my words and couldn’t bring any energy to it. I am hard on myself about everything and this was no exception. Ivo, who drove me to Leicester has been hugely supportive and my main genuine pig, he tried to make it feel better but I was sure I was going to flop. It is so nerve racking to stand up on stage and perform, even more so a show that is entirely about your own life. I tried to fight off ugly narcissism because I love reading and listening to other’s life stories, especially because I love history from below which is common people’s history, the less told stories that run parallel and are affected by the imperialist, patriarchal, facist history that dictates our society but are barely heard, or recorded. (I want to write another blog soon about how history is being recorded differently now thanks to social media and the internet but that’s a whooooole other thing.)

But I did the show. There was thankfully a small audience that night which made me feel more at ease. Stacey’s aunt Tina came, I saw her as I was coming out of the green room onto the landing and I think my heart stopped for a moment. I was so happy to see her. I haven’t seen any of Stacey’s family who were there in hospital when she died. Sometimes those days feel like a dream I had so the fact that Tina came, was amazing for me. It felt like Stacey was there too, giving me the shove I needed. I went outside for a smoke during the interval, I was speaking to Cynthia who had come to see the show and the wind swept up the last page of the show! I watched it grow higher into the air, lifted up and out of site over the top of the theatre where it landed, and might possibly still be on top of the roof. I thought I would panic but had suddenly found clarity that I didn’t need the page, that I could do it without it.

Adrenaline is a great thing isn’t it? It’s almost like auto pilot. It surges energy through every part of your body. That’s just what I needed stepping out on stage, a bit shakey. But I did it, just the first half, reading from the page. It went really well! I was so pleased! I had some great feedback from the small audience, Rick Saunders who had done the support slot was so lovely and encouraging, Lydia Towsey (who is one of my favourite poets) was also giving me warm phrase, constructively going through everything with me and why it worked, and what might work better. Tina loved it too, she said that Stacey would’ve been there, pushing me on, probably embarrassed about some of the secrets I let slip about her teenage self (sorry mate). I left that night with fire in my stomach and several deep sighs of relief.

So that’s where I’m at, just wanted to reflect and process that night, and the development of the show. I want to spend the first half of next year finishing the writing and getting it up to scratch ready with the help of Henry Raby who is just brilliant and has already given me a lot of direction. I want to continue without putting too much pressure on myself, but am itching to show it to everyone. I am so proud of myself for this small achievement. Despite a devastatingly hard year, I have reached some of my life goals, like releasing a book, endeavouring to write new material and just surviving. It will take more time, some days I am impatient and angry, some days I am closed off and numb, but the days that are good are great, I am cherishing those days to move on a little at a time.

I went into 2017 taking a deep breath, and now I am letting that breath out and being present. I don’t really believe that at the stroke of midnight on 31st January everything resets and things change. I’ll still be in a state of transition and surviving, but I hope I can accept the past and grow up and into my new skin more comfortably.

A little promotional note – I won’t be doing a Christmas/Winter sale but if you buy a book or a bundle from my shop between now and 17th January (I have extended it) I will donate 20% to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust in loving memory of Stacey.