'The Toll' by Luke Wright

Video for his poem The Toll.

The last time I saw performance poet Luke Wright was at the Tropicana in Weston-Super-Mare, where I gave him a post card for his trouble, with his show 'What I Learned From Johnny Bevan'.

This time round we were in Clevedon's Theatre Shop, a small intimate space where it gave Luke a tight grip on the audience as he performed some poems from his collection 'The Toll'.

Swaggering on stage he gives a high energy performance with rollicking anecdotes about Brian Eno having a Korma and conversations about Iain Duncan Smith with his dad.

He gives off a laddish air of a macho one-of-the-boys attitude but there are several sensitive moments including in the titular poem about a woman working at a toll booth.

Luke seems to be a poet that yearns and wishes there to be a coherent identity to England, a land he loves and tussles with, with his connection to one of the most English of poets John Betjeman.  Indeed with the way that Luke entertains he could arguably be considered as an heir to the man who wrote about teacakes and tennis.  Luke is not only interested in the England of now but also of the England of the past.

There's a poem about a man in Georgian times who decides to eat what he likes when he likes, which involves a lot of Oysters being shucked and a lot of prison arrests that has no rehabilitative effect.  Apparently the news, in those times, were sung as poems on street corners.  Luke muses on the lovely voice that Huw Edwards must have.

Iain Duncan Smith  (a 'shyster' in Luke's opinion) is used in a poem reflecting austerity by using only his initials for the beginning of each word.  This shows the robust flexibility of the English language that Luke exploits time and again.

It's a lot of fun and certainly not as harrowing as 'Johnny Bevan' but it does reflect a nation still divided, still arguing, with the desire for wholeness and healing.  Luke does a fantastic job at raconteur and public poet, hectoring when necessary and then bringing the whole audience into a secret that he allows us to be in on. 

He does a new show every year and this year he is touring with his new verse play 'Frankie Vah'.  You can see where he is playing next here.

In my opinion we live in one of the greatest times for poetry and will performers such as Luke Wright it will continue to be so for a good long time to come.