I’m an accidental poet. It’s not anything I meant to do or aspired to do. It just fell into my lap accidentally like cake thrown at a wedding. Yes, you’ve got gateaux on your one and only suit but it’s cake, it’s edible and you’re fairly sure the suit will clean and even if it doesn’t you’re not due to wear it for another 18 months and you’ll have probably got too fat by then. Poetry is my gateaux in the crotch. Make of that what you will. I’ve always written. It’s been the one constant in my life. I probably average about 5000 words a week without breaking sweat. Much of it will never see the light of day, some of it turns up without my name on it and some becomes stuff I will share.

I started off doing story telling but this was purely to build up my nerve to do stand-up comedy. I then managed to do stand-up comedy; easily the scariest thing anyone can do onstage and I include that guy who got eaten by his own tiger. He had it easy. He wants to try something tough... die on your arse in Northampton. You’ll be screaming for the tiger.

Stand up wasn’t anything I was particularly good at but I knew it was time to quit when I had a great gig and came off stage going, “Meh.” I didn’t feel bad but I didn’t feel great. Just “meh.” I played the rest of the gigs in my calendar and walked away from it. I’d explored my mental health issues in stand up and was writing more about that.

However, I felt I was constantly chasing the joke. This began to frustrate me. Once I’d given up writing stand-up all the stuff I had fell into place and became a play called Bert. Recently that’s just smashed it at The All England Theatre Festival. It won pretty much everything which is a nice feeling. Much better than dying on your arse in Northampton. While ending stand up and doing playwriting I also wrote stories. I dropped back into story telling.

Story telling tends to be the little brother of poetry at various nights so I found I was sharing the bill with more and more poets. I suppose it rubbed off. I had a terrible day, drove to a gig and in a fit of anger wrote a poem which I performed that night. Within six months I was doing pure poetry sets. I had no idea what I was doing and took more inspiration from movies, story telling and hip hop than any poet. You hear of these poets who have read poetry all their life and have an encyclopaedic knowledge. I’m not one of those. That could be a bad thing but I also think it’s a good thing. As someone much greater than me said... “Find out what you love from a different artform, then work out why you love it, then bring it into your artform.” So I find I’m flitting around. Writing plays, stories and poems. Doing performances here and there.

I’m in my early to mid 40’s at this point and keep being told I have a “unique voice”. I start getting a bit of clout and even get paid for occasional bits of work. But poetry wise I found it a very cliquey scene. I probably won’t win friends for that but that is how it felt. I’m staunch working class and as such I think I have a genetic predisposition to hate cliques. Poetry wise, I kind of felt a little stuck in a rut and unable to progress and I’ll be honest, I almost quit. I decided to stick with play writing and story telling.

On the last poetry gig in my diary I bumped into Pixie Vic and Glyn Phillips. Their sets lit a fire under my belly. They both made me realise there was something in this poetry thing worth fighting through the cliques for. Weirdly, that night, as I did my set Steve Pottinger walked into the room.

Apparently he stood at the back, saw my set, thought, “He’s alright” and messaged Vic about me.

Two weeks later we bumped into each other at a gig and got on like a house on fire.
Then I bumped in Emma Purshouse again. We’d bump into each other every few years. I’d always held her on pedestal as what could be done in poetry and spoken word. I felt like a little kid plucking away on a guitar trying to get the E-Chord right and suddenly meeting Jimi Hendrix. I always felt that way when I met her. Suddenly I’m doing poetry and Purshouse is performing after me.

I genuinely remember us all coming together purely because our surnames began with the same letter. I think it was that tenuous a link. But we all hit it off. We’re all very different in how we write and perform but we’re all on the same page. It’s effortless performing with those two. We’ve got each other’s back. We formed PPP and all work our socks off promoting poetry and spoken word.

Trying to big people up and give others a platform. And ultimately trying to get people who don’t like poetry to give it a go as audience and participant.

When we perform I genuinely feel I have the best seat in the house every night. I still smile when I think of certain gigs. Steve doing Birmingham to London on the last night in Edinburgh was an phenomenal performance. But the first time we did the show Purshouse did her Trump poem. It’s a poem I’d heard about 50 times before but that night she knocked it out the park. I just find I’m sitting there thinking, “I’m two feet from these two and they know who I am and they have my number in their phone.”

But we also spin off and do our own thing. While doing PPP I’ve published my first chapbook. It has the title, “Poetry is Jazz, Welcome to Punk Rock” which it a title I’m very proud of. It’s almost sold out it’s first run and I’m working on a new collection. I’ve written several plays which have been well received. I’ve also taken part in several 14/48 Festivals. This is a speed theatre festival which sees 14 brand new plays created in 48 hours. The UK branch even sent me to Seattle in January 2018 to participate in the festival there. Imagine that, little Dave Pitt from Darlo, wandering the streets of Seattle representing the UK at a Theatre Festival.

Yes, there were a few moments of disbelief and quite a few tears.
More recently I’ve even flown further from the PPP nest after writing and performing a one man show. Boxed In had it’s premiere at the Arena Theatre on 23 rd April and I think I’ve just about recovered. It’s a personal story about stories. About how stories enable us to have empathy for others but how we’re muting and blocking those whose stories we probably need to hear the most. It went very well and after giving it some breathing room and a post mortem will be doing it again.

And PPP have some very exciting projects coming up. And I’m still writing poems, plays and stories. It’s going well. See you out there. Say hello.