Mike Smith - 'Ordinarily Speaking'
In 2002, I decided to set out on the performance poetry road. I could, at last, answer my careers master’s relentlessly intimidating question,

“Smith, what do you intend to do when you leave school?” with,
“Perform Poetry, sir!”

My poetry springs from our everyday shared lives - thus www.ordinarilyspeaking.co.uk - and I’m pleased to say that audiences of all ages, children and adults alike, find it humorous - when they’re meant to! - engaging, often provocative and driven by powerful rhythms and rhymes. I love the energy of rhythm and rhyme, but only when they are fresh and ‘right’: they must be the servants of meaning, and not vice-versa.

Words, parts of words and groups of words are not neutral objects or feeling-free zones. T.S. Eliot once said that we feel before we understand, and the more that children can energise language through movement and voice colour - what I call pumping up the language - the more that feelings will engage and understandings will follow.

At the moment, much of my performance work is in schools, with audiences aged 3-18, but I’m slowly building a ‘history’ of adult venues, especially village halls, but also in arts centres, folk festivals and theatres. I’ll perform anywhere!

When I perform in schools, I combine performance with workshop, under the heading Poetry Workshops In Performance. The unique feature of this form is that, where primary schools are concerned, I can work with the whole school in a day! It must represent this year’s Good Value Award!

Most Memorable Literary Experience

Singing Buddy Holly’s ‘Everyday’ in the bike sheds, every morning,
before having to go into school.