David Bryant: Checking The Engine

Sunday 21 June 2020

Checking The Engine

Right, so this is a new one. A poem which hasn't even found a place in a live set yet, because it was written too close to lockdown (and who knows, maybe it never will. Maybe I'll decide I don't like it by the time I'm even back into a position to think about live sets again).

One of the problems I have with poetry as an artform, which I'm sure I've written about before, is the idea that everything is a confessional - that as soon as you write about it, it's both the whole truth and nothing but the truth (rarely so; often poets have a tendency to pick places or objects which scan better or which stronger metaphors can be built around) and something you feel really strongly about, or have suffered some trauma over. Otherwise, why put pen to paper in the first place? Well... the truth is that ideas are largely uncontrollable, and if two things which seem as if they could connect incredibly well in a poem pop into my head at the same time, then I'm hardly going to be able to resist the temptation just because it's not a burning issue or it may lead to false impressions.

"Checking The Engine" wasn't inspired by a recent situation, but by those awkward relationships which have dogged both my life and everyone else's periodically. The people you're meant to get along with and life has thrown you together with, and have nothing against, but have noticed are a little stern, false or disapproving around you. Partners of friends whose differences of taste and opinion have somehow become a problem rather than something to be laughed off. Neighbours who wish they weren't living next door to you, without ever really telling you why. Dinner party guests who have taken an immediate dislike to you for working in the arts or writing poetry (you can only assume, having never met them before, and given that these are the only facts they've been provided about you). Usually what causes these people to finally snap isn't a serious situation, but an honest mistake or a trivial issue which then creates an eruption of rage, like one of Frank Spencer's jowl-quivering foes in "Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em".

I'm going to resist the temptation to say whether the concluding lines of this poem are the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but they are based on something that actually happened to me. I did own a racing car duvet as a child - the top of it nearest the pillow was a cockpit, and the road stretched ahead on the rest of the covering. God, I loved sitting up in it and pretending to drive my bed around the chicanes of Brands Hatch, or imagine I was sleeping in a racing car for the night and not a warm house. I sat up for ages twisting an imaginary steering wheel pretending that I was an adult and I was able to drive, and of course, in the end I never actually learnt. Anyway.... POEM.

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So....

I'm David Bryant. You'll hopefully have gathered that anyway from the title of this site, and the URL. It's supposed to be polite to introduce yourself, but in this instance I'm a bit like one of those irritating sales representatives who approaches you at conferences to tell you who they are, even though they have a horribly whimsical name tag placed boldly near their one of their nipples informing you of that anyway. Anyway, hello. Take my calling card from my hand, please - it contains details of my Twitter account, and my mailing list.

I write poetry and short stories, and over the last decade have had them published in numerous places and also performed them all over London. I've been featured in "South Bank Poetry", the Hearing Eye anthology "In The Company of Poets", "The Delinquent", "The Alarmist", "The Gloom Cupboard" and "The UK Poetry Podcast". I've also performed for many well-established and well-known nights and promoters (and lots more not-so-well known ones) including "Apples and Snakes", "Utter!", "The Cellar", "Y Tuesday", Borders Bookstore, Whitechapel Art Gallery, "New Blood", "Tall Lighthouse", "The Klinker", "The George Tavern" in Stepney, and other people I could mention, but won't because otherwise this biog will just end up becoming reduced to one long list of places and people and you'll just surf away.

Of course, it's perfectly possible that you'll know me from the blog "Left and to the Back", which focuses on obscure and lost vinyl recordings. That's been featured as an Internet pick of the week in "The Guardian" and picked up attention from numerous entertainment websites worldwide (even Belgium) and remains the most successful thing I've done. Poetry and short stories cannot yet compete with old vinyl recordings of adverts from the Milk Board of Mississippi, I'm afraid, but if you like what I do over there, you'll probably enjoy my other material as well.