Situated deep in the Derbyshire Dales, Wirksworth is as deeply imbedded in the arts as it is in lead and grit stone. Only truly accessible since the opening of the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway in 1867, in this small, tranquil town there is access to as much art as you like, and some of it is quite outstanding.
The Wirksworth Festival is curated carefully within and around its scenic surroundings and numerous resident artists, musicians and painters. Yet a man from Matlock Bath (not ‘Barth’) may well be the gem of not only the festival, but of the Peak District and poetry as a whole on this side of the Pennines.
Mark Gwynne Jones is a spoken word poet of much critical acclaim. He is an advocate of spoken word poetry and this summer performed at Latitude Festival. “I was amazed that the poetry stage, which is big at Latitude, was so close to the main stage. They could have put us in a quiet corner but I was on when New Order were on. One part of me thought ‘I wish we didn’t have all this noise coming through the walls’, but the other part of me was proud. I thought ‘we are the poetry tent and we are here’ – we were in the centre of it all and taking them on a bit”.
He is a poet with as much humility as he has rhythmical grace and although recently returning from an enlightening tour of India, he has somehow found time to reform Psychicbread, offering a musical backdrop to his poignant and observational rhyme after a five year absence.
“If you have nothing or no one to bounce off, then it is harder to be creative. But it isn’t just getting together with friends to make sounds and music, it is the conversations that inspire the material and content as well”. Mark Gwynne Jones is of the same ilk as John Cooper Clarke in that he uncovers social and moral meanings from seemingly absurd aspects of life, and magnifies relevance in common place events to drive his multi-layered, laughing laments of life.
Mark Gwynne Jones performed his solo poetry in the first half of the show, weaving humorous anecdotes and jokes into his set before seamlessly orating his predominantly more recent material to the full Wirksworth Town Hall. Apart from Who’s Common Now?, the poems included were written in the last year or so. His theatrical vocalisations and expressions are as exuberant as they were years ago, when Plastikman cast the limelight over his otherwise slightly awkward and nervous demeanour. Gwynne Jones openly admits that he suffered terrible shyness and anxiety as a boy, and he confronts this anxiety head on with the magnificent Toad. “A lot of the poetry comes from the immediacy of experience and not being tied down to a linear line of time or place”. Mark Gwynne Jones has, to a great extent, overcome his anxieties by approaching experiences in his life from a new direction of thought. “When you can tap in to what is right here rather than in the room next to you, either behind you or in front of you, you are able to focus on the immediate experience and appreciate it. Then your anxiety dissolves”.
There is always a certain pause between the poet’s last syllable and the moment you put your hands together to acknowledge the completion of a Mark Gwynne Jones poem. The reason being that beyond the evident hilarity in his commentary there is an ambiguous and thought provoking underbelly that arguably sets him apart from his contemporaries. A realisation that his ingenuity with words are designed with more than just entertainment in mind. He subliminally forces us to consider greater meaning in the simplistic. But entertain he certainly did. The Town Hall doubled over with laughter at tales of a tortoise’s lustful encounter with a plastic shoe, and his boyhood tricking of a one- eyed deaf colleague into sucking fudge made of clay.
It was the second part, however, when Gwynne Jones took to the stage with Psychicbread that the show took on a more significant sense of occasion, as this was the first time the band had appeared in the five years since the death of drummer John ‘Beano’ Thorne in 2011. Gwynne Jones was visibly excited by the prospect of playing as a band again. From his position at the mic, he fidgeted and turned, wide grinned, to watch his friends play their psyche-ambient-prog-rock around his narrated words. Speaking after the show, Gwynne Jones spoke about Psychicbread and what the music added to his lyrics:
“When I am doing solo performances I have to rely on a lot of humour to sugar the pill the whole time, whereas when I perform with the band I have the music there as a vehicle and a soundscape so as I don’t have to be calling on the comedy. The words have a new vehicle to be transported”.
When speaking of presenting poetry with music, Gwynne Jones pinpoints rhythm as a common denominator. “One of the secrets that make Psychicbread work is that I sometimes speak across the rhythm, sometimes I deliberately try and hit the rhythm, but I will try and free the voice from the rhythm. When people sing in bands they are always within the rhythm but suddenly, when you do spoken word, you can be free of that and it can create a greater sense of theatre”.
Impressively, Psychicbread had written completely new compositions for this performance. In only two months the band have invented an eclectic variety of atmospheric and theatrical pieces, compromising of reggae, Spanish style guitars, afro-beats and experimental percussive psychadelia. “I think because Nick, Deb and I have been together so for so long that there is a chemistry and we can slip back into jamming and something will come out of it”. Gwynne Jones continues, “I think what makes it non-generic is that Deb and Nick will listen to the poem and then soundscape the poem rather than saying “Oh, lets do a reggae number or something”.
Psychicbread are Deb Rose, Nick ‘The Hat’ and new drummer and percussionist Alex Ivanov. Guitarist and long time friend of Gwynne Jones, Nick ‘The Hat’, adds “I wouldn’t say it comes easy but we are so comfortable with each other that it comes naturally and we don’t try and emulate anybody, we just do our own thing, and just try and empower the words and get the message of the poems through to people – and it can take poetry to a bigger audience. I think the strength of it is a result of being so at ease with each other. You see the words are everything, we just react to the words and get a feeling of what music will fit them.”
Mark Gwynne Jones acknowledged absent friends and in particular former Psychicbread drummer, the late John ‘Beano’ Thorne. “I think Beano is up there looking down on us and smiling” said Gwynne Jones after a rather rousing drum solo from the newest member of the band, Alex Ivanov. Psychicbread are back making music and delivering sublime poetry once more. Tonight they showed Wirksworth exactly what words are worth.
Words by James ‘Jimmy’ Gallagher
Photo by Susan Mulroy
Quiffed Owl 