Speaking my truth

I did a poetry reading recently. It’s one of the weirder ones I’ve done and it’s stuck in my mind, so, I thought I’d share it with you.

I came out of the reading feeling good because the second half of it was nice. I was my amusing on-stage self. People liked what I read/performed and laughed when I cut the tension of the poems with a bit of dark humour. In the SECOND half, that is.

And after the reading, the Q and A session went well – lots of smiling faces (the faces I could see anyway, my eyesight is pretty bad). Afterwards, a few people stayed and said a couple of nice things and I think I got a hug or two before we left. The hosts of the gig were lovely, they were kind and looked after me well.

But it was when I got home, over the following days, what had happened in the first half of that reading/performance really started to bug me.

This is what happened in the first half:

We are in a sold out auditorium and the audience is largely of a particular socio-economic, age bracket and racial group. I am very used to this group, I have been performing to them for 25 years. Literary festivals (and many other poetry gigs) draw this particular audience. They are the group that buy poetry books, go to literary festivals and keep them financially afloat. There are also one or two brown people scattered here and there in the crowd.

There is a moving welcome from a tangata whenua elder. I’m very moved and feel the truth of the fact that all of us are standing on stolen land where many have been murdered and banished. I say something short about that in my intro.

I begin with my James Cook poem. The one that David Seymore and his ACT cronies had so much fun with before the last election. I wonder if they’re leafing through my books to find something else to get some mileage out of, as we approach this coming election?

Then I launch into my werewolf poem (or Media Council Case 3392) which is my response to the people who banged on the Media Council’s door (egged on by Sean Plunkett’s ranting) asserting all kinds of crazy things, including comparing this poem to Isis beheading videos and calling it “borderline terrorism”. I use some of these quotes in my poem. It’s a funnier poem than the James Cook one.

An older woman in the back row has apparently been commenting all the way through my performance. I don’t really clock this until she stands up and wants to speak. It’s obvious she’s angry. The mediator points out this is not the time for her to speak. She’ll have that opportunity during the Q and A. Good idea.

The woman is not at all happy with this. Although I don’t catch what she’s saying, it’s obvious that she wants to speak now. I remind her politely that the Q and A is after the performance. She walks out.

I talk to the audience about walk outs. They are not a bad thing. We had a number of them during The Savage Coloniser Show. I also bring up my elderly Uncle Cecil. He’s my favourite uncle, a lovely old racist. Sometimes I take the things he says to task and sometimes I don’t, but I love him all the same. It’s all done very lightheartedly, a good way to break the tension.

I’m about to return to the poetry when a person from the audience takes the stage and explains that this woman has lost a loved one recently and goes into some detail, explaining this woman’s involvement with the local arts community.

Then, yet another person (from the back, the same row as the offended woman) stands up and says, quite passionately, that ‘we’ (I think she means me) should be sensitive to what others are going through.

In the days following this, I’ve thought of what I should have said at this point. I should have said something like this:

“ I’m sorry for this woman’s loss, but I’m here as a poet, not a psychic or a community worker. If my work upsets you, don’t come and listen. Or maybe, ask yourself, why these poems upset you”.

It would be great if my brain worked this way - if it could find a good reply straight away - but it really doesn’t. I can find the right words for the page but it takes time. In the moment, particularly if it’s a stressful moment, like this one is, I might have only roaring silence. Or worse, some kind of weird survival apologetic vibe kicks in, which I flagellate myself for afterwards. Sometimes, forever afterwards.

I don’t remember what I actually said. I know I started saying that I was sorry for this woman’s loss (there have been a lot of losses in my family lately, so, I feel for anyone who has lost a loved one). I’m not sure what I said after that. I know it darted into my head at one point to say it was ‘on me’. God, I hope I didn’t say that!

Of course it’s not on me! It’s not on me, that a poem about colonisation upsets someone. It’s not on me, to be sensitive to what emotional state a complete stranger is in (in a room full of strangers) while I’m performing.

That is crazy!

If I censor what I read in public because it might offend someone, then do I also censor what I write? The point of writing, for me, has always been to tell my truth. Come what may.

What I have found, over the 25 years that I have written my truth and put it out into the world on the page and on the stage, is it also speaks for many other people. I know this because people all over the world have told me so: after readings and performances in New York City, in Moscow, in Casablanca, in London.

Seventeen year old school girls from small rural towns in the South Island have written to tell me that, for the first time, they feel seen and heard after reading my poems.

That is the surprising gift of writing which I do not take for granted. And of course on the other end of the scales are those people who are offended, upset or using my words to make cynical political hay while the right wing sun shines.