Writing

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulbotKa5LnM](via the ever-giving Metafilter) I love video games, and, as some of you may know, I’ve written dialogue for games too, as well as helping cast and direct voice actors. So, you know, I get a little piqued when game companies release titles with crappy dialogue. What’s the point of pouring all that time and … Read more

I’ve just finished reading my friend John Osborne’s first book, Radio Head. It’s the story of how he decided to listen to a different radio station every day, in a last ditch attempt to inject some variety into his boring data entry temp job. He ends up guiding you through an entertaining, uplifting state of … Read more

Oooooh! Guess what space cadets? Ugh. Okay, that made me a little bit sick in my mouth. Note to self: don’t use chipper wankerisms like ‘space cadets’ ever, ever again. So, in any case, hello undifferentiated morass. With just over a month to go, there’s a short sneak preview from We Can’t All Be Astronauts … Read more

After a week off due to me fannying about the UK feeling all whimsical and introspective, flipping off beggars then getting poorly, pray doff your hats for the triumphant return of The Performance Poet Interviews. At least it’s not me having opinions for once, thank whatever interventionist deity presides over blogging (probably some sort of … Read more

It’s that time of week again. While I lie, sleepless, in my sickbed, clutching at the thick air and phasing in and out of languid fever dreams, you get to enjoy the erudite opining of Ross Sutherland. How did you get into performance poetry? I’ve written poetry since I was five. My gran and I … Read more

The first game I ever worked on was an RTS space sim called Nexus – The Jupiter Incident. It was developed by a Hungarian company called Mithis, who wrote a script, then had it translated into English by a native Hungarian speaker. This was where I came in. It was my job to take the … Read more

Since you asked, Cone O’ Tragedy‘s most popular feature is my weekly interviews with UK performance poets. We’ve heard from Dockers MC, Polarbear, Nathan Filer, Yanny Mac and Nathan Jones. This week, it’s the turn of Joel Stickley. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjBUymEywto] How did you get into performance poetry? I saw Luke Wright perform a few poems at … Read more

Hooray! Line And A Dot has released a second nose-tingling installment of We Can’t All Be Astronauts, the graphic novel adaptation (the text version of which is TOTALLY available to pre-order on Amazon!). Click on the pic below for a bigger image, and click here for part one.

How did you get into performance poetry? There were some important men in my life early on. Mainly Ginsberg, then Gershwin lyrics, then the terrible Thomases (Dylan and R.S)… and Eliot! Where am I going with this? Through certain half deserted streets, probably. So anyway reading Eliot really gave me a kick up the arse … Read more

So yes, I do a bit of moonlighting on another blog, Mercy Recommends. For a whole bunch of weeks now, I’ve been posting a regular feature every weekend, one which I call: ‘Video Games: A Cultural History’. The tone oscillates between irritatingly flippant and a kind of Simon Schama esque middlebrow patrician didacticism, and I … Read more

So, a while back, the ever-awesome Metafilter put me onto this exchange, between gaming legend Tim Schafer – who worked on Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandago, amongst others – and joystiq.com. In it, Tim and his interviewers turn a simple email exchange into an adlibbed mini text adventure. It’s a lovely, … Read more

Previously, we’ve heard from Dockers MC, Polarbear and Nathan Filer. This week, I spoke to gravelly-voiced raconteur Yanny Mac. Yanny Mac has performed at Glastonbury, The Edinburgh Fringe, Latitude and the Port Eliot Lit Fest. He compered the Poetry Arena at Latitude in 2007, with his buddy Pikey Paddy, and until recently, they both hosted … Read more

Last week, I talked to Polarbear, the week before it was Dockers MC. Today, it’s the turn of Nathan Filer. http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2458754&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1GOTH vs EMO from nathan filer on Vimeo. How did you get into performance poetry? Ten years ago I was living in Greece and working as an hotel entertainer. I was utterly useless. One holidaymaker … Read more

As some of you may or may not care, I just finished a mini-tour of our show Found In Translation, the story of my, Ross Sutherland, and Joe Dunthorne’s attempts to infiltrate the infamous French experimental literature group, the Oulipo, a group so radical and misunderstood that many people still don’t believe us when we … Read more

The shrewder amongst you may have discerned that this blog, far from being a innocently whimsical aggregation of my daily musings, is in fact a massive shill for my forthcoming non-fiction debut, We Can’t All Be Astronauts – which comes out on June 4, and you can preorder now (at a substantial discount). If you’re … Read more

Last week, I spoke to Dockers MC. This week, it’s the turn of the prodigiously talented Polarbear. How did you get into performance poetry? My best mate told me it was just rhyming without a beat and that I should get on stage at a poetry night in Birmingham. He had no idea what it … Read more

In contemporary page poetry, rhyme occupies an uncertain position in the technique hierarchy. If you’re a performance poet, it’s pretty much indispensible. That’s not to say that every poem you write need be in pat, metrically-tight couplets, but even if you’re delivering a prosey monologue, if you want it to flow satisfyingly you’ll need to … Read more

Hey folks. Here’s the first in my promised series of weekly interviews with the great and good of the UK performance poetry scene. Hopefully they’ll build into a nice little collection for anyone looking to find a new fave poet or find out a little more about an old one – I might give everyone … Read more

Over the coming weeks, I’m going to be running a series of interviews with the great and good of the UK performance poetry scene. The nice thing about doing stuff online is that I can embed videos alongside the Q & As, and turn appropriate sections of their replies into hyperlinks so that, for example, … Read more

I feel as if posting this will mark an unshouldering of sorts – a chance for me to finally let go of baggage accrued over the past eighteen months. I first discovered This American Life via the superb community blog Metafilter, a website which has introduced me to almost everything I like on the internet. … Read more