How did you get into spoken word?

It was a complete accident! I didn’t know anything about it, and there was an event in the town centre so, a mate and I just went down and found out that you could just get up and do some words, do some rhymes. Afterwards a guy came up to me and offered me another gig – Glastonbury. 

I enjoy writing stories. It was never a plan to do [spoken word], it was always the plan to start writing stuff that was longer, and now that I’m at that point, I don’t really do the shorter stuff any more.

How do you write a poem?

With the longer ones, it starts with a scene or characters and I work from there. Then, I just write loads. [Old Me] is about 25 pages, but I wrote 200! And then everything goes through 17 drafts. It’s long, but in the way that in the end, you’re clear what you’re working towards. You’ve got to think about the whole piece. It’s full-on and hard work, but it’s not about me. I’m the one speaking it, but it’s about all of our processes.

Working with other people is essential. This is about serving an idea not a person.

Tell us about making your living from poetry…

I spend more than half my time teaching but it’s not just bread and butter – I don’t want to sound righteous, but it informs everything: what I’m thinking about, talking about, working on. I’m lucky, they’re definitely not separate.

How do you approach poetry education?

It’s about finding your voice. Realising that if you have something to say, you have to learn the craft to say it. It’s not about coming in, and me saying, “I’m going to make you a poet.” The kids coming in probably know more about poetry than I do, but what I’m OK at doing is helping people figure out the reasons why they want to do it, and what they want to say. Sometimes you have to break down people’s expectations, but it’s more about giving people the space to play so they can make their own choices.

I don’t know anything about [the mechanics of poetry]. I’m not interested in dissecting things on the page. I’m interested in reading stuff, in finding something amazing, but the reason for bringing me in is not to dissect poems but to get people writing who don’t think they should be writing, who don’t think they can write.

What advice do you have for young spoken word poets?

Take your time, see a bunch of stuff, listen to a bunch of stuff, and figure out what you want to do. And once you think you know what you want to do, don’t look at anything. Nothing at all. Try it, do it, share it with some people who are going to tell you if they think it’s not great. See how it feels to speak it. And then make sure you’re not doing the same thing 14 times – if you’ve done it once and it’s worked, don’t do it again. There are a lot more people doing it, a lot people aware of it, which means there’s a lot more license to do whatever you want. It’s not about listening – don’t listen to anyone who’s telling you what you should be doing, including me!

Polarbear is performing Old Me at the Roundhouse until 3 December 2011. Book tickets and visit his website.

Image by Idil Sukan.