Rowan McCabe is the world’s first door to door poet.He calls at homes and introduces himself as door to door poet. He does not sell them a ready made poem but collects enough stuff from their lives to make a poem and come back later to perform it.
Fire
What do you do with your massive trees
From a JCB at Glastonbury?
You build a fire outside your tipi.
That’s what you do with your massive trees,
Your massive trees at Glastonbury.
What do you do when the fire gets small?
Some chopped up wood you start to haul
‘Till the fire is burning tall.
That’s what you do when your fire gets small,
When your fire gets small at the festival.
What do you do when the logs burn down?
Try to drag them along the ground
To get them back where they begun?
You can’t, they weigh a fucking ton.
You get three Welshmen to grab the trunks,
Count to three in their native tongue,
Heave along your massive trees,
Your massive trees at Glastonbury.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/jul/06/door-to-door-poet-glastonbury-rowan-mccabe
What is door to door about the poet? He is collecting only the raw material for his poems from the ordinary lives of people. What does he give back to them? Much richer versions of their commonplace lives and events. Everything about a “door to door” activity is so mundane, so insipid but look at what he has made out of a perfectly commonplace event of a festival.
The poem above is all about a log fire in the Glastonbury festival. I love the irony running deep in the poem.
What do you do with the massive trees…./You build a fire outside your tipi.
What do you do when the fire gets small?/Some chopped up wood you start to haul
What do you do when the logs burn down?/Try to drag them along the ground
to get them back where they begun?/You cant, they weigh a fucking ton.
Love the interesting usage “where they begun”. Can one bring back the trees to their former positions where they had stood before felling? We can only destroy trees but cannot bring them back to life.
Thoughtsblog 