Cover of Phil Knight's book, by Alan Perry
Phil Knight ended his high energy and hilarious launch at The Imp last month wearing a daft hat and flinging paper aeroplanes into the audience.
He was delivering his raucous mockery of performance poetry with a magnificent finale to a wonderful evening, organised with the Dic Penderyn Society.
Despite his satirical take on the posturing of such poets, Phil is himself one of the best performers around today.
I've watched him develop confidence and a range of poetry which is truly unique, brought together in 'You Are Welcome To Wales', the third in Red Poets' RED VOICES series , which has been a delight to edit.
While Phil undoubtedly follows in the tradition of Harri Webb and John Tripp as scathing social and political commentator and expert satirist, he is also very different.
Surprisingly, it's not the avowed internationalism of his Trotskyist beliefs (he's a long time SWP member and activist) which singles him out.
No, it's much more to do with his interstellar imagination and hyperbole which knows no bounds.
In 'Bara Brith' for example , he takes a simple overheard conversation and converts it into an exposure of touristic expectations and, ultimately, the way Wales has been historically exploited by our close neighbour -
' ' You can cover it in Devon cream.'
Money changes hands and once more
something Welsh is drowned for the benefit
of a cash transaction.'
When he's angry he can rant with all the venom of Patrick Jones and 'Elegy for the Original Mad Cow' pulls no punches in laying into Thatcher's legacy.
It certainly rivals Elvis Costello's 'Tramp the Dirt Down' as a diatribe -
'She had dragon-breath that stank of gin,
A sane society would have put her in a loony bin'
He is much more stylistically adventurous than Webb and rarely favours those ubiquitous couplets.
'The Tree Rings' may be atypical, but it is simple and thoughtful as he muses on time and the passing of generations, to end -
' and the profits
of tomorrow hold
more value than
the trees of
history.'
His two Martian poems owe nothing to that movement which included the likes of Craig Raine, but are about the poet acting as tour guide to Zog the Martian, paying a visit to Knight's home town of Neath -
' At the end of the day, I asked the visitor
what he liked most and he replied
the highlight had been in meeting
' a man with an incredible Welsh Dalek.' '
In addition to being a satirist and commentator, Knight also translates work from Latin.
'A Warning for Tyrants' by Julius Capitolinus is surely a message for our times -
' Beware of the multitude,
even if you do not fear a single soul'
While he definitely draws greatly on Webb for his literary satire 'Synopsis of a Post-modern Prize-Winning Welsh Novel', he has very much his own voice.
Though I'm unashamedly biased, I'd say that 'You Are Welcome To Wales' is the funniest book of poetry I've read.
Humour's often seen as a second class means of communication when it comes to verse : a device for those performance poets indeed. In Knight's case however, it exposes pretension, hypocrisy and , above all, releases us to see the world anew.
Swansea artist Alan Perry's wild and wacky cover perfectly captures the world of Phil Knight : citizen of Neath, friend of aliens and Welsh poet waiting to be celebrated.
RE-CYCLING MADE EASY
(for Phil Knight)
You will be issued with five bags
and bins suitable for re-cycling.
The large green bag
will be for garden waste
which will include grass, hedges
and all cuttings except dandelions;
this is because the Chief Executive
has declared them 'honorary flowers'.
Any bags containing them
will be duly ignored and local slugs
will be called in on force.
The larger blue bin is for household waste
and you have another smaller blue one
to keep in your house , so your dog
can knock it over looking for scraps.
The blue bin must contain food bags,
these are decompostable and can be purchased
( sausage skins or blown-up condoms
will not be accepted as cheaper alternatives).
The larger bin will soon crack
giving easy access to rats and saving us problems.
The large blue bag is for plastic only,
but when we say plastic that doesn't mean
hard plastic or plastic wrappings
or , indeed, plastic bags of any kind.
If you have any hard plastic
we suggest you take it to a Charity Shop.
We do accept bottles and containers
but not polysterene or bubble-wrap ;
the reason for this is it would distract our operatives
who would make models with the former
and waste time popping the latter.
The black or green boxes are for a variety
of things such as cardboard and glass bottles.
Please ensure that all cardboard is flattened
and graffitied with lewd pictures and bottles emptied
of everything except, of course, alcohol.
Any tissues or paper towels you have been using
for disgusting purposes must be destroyed
as evidence, but please include
all letters and receipts with bank information.
The giant invisible dome will be collected
once in your life-time, when you kick the bucket.
It must contain your vision
of a better world written as a shopping list
or a mathematical formula.
Your vision will be filed on our computer
and, we guarantee, not deleted.
If any of your dust is left
the elements will duly deal with it.
RSS Feed
