I had a fabulous time at Nottingham Playhouse last night, listening to Pam Ayres tell stories and perform her work. She’s quite open about how people write off her poetry as ‘doggerel’, but despite the naysayers, it was a very entertaining evening, and a couple of her poems were both funny AND brought a tear to my eye. AND the place was full to bursting AND the queue to buy her books was very long indeed.

‘She must be making a killing,’ I thought, remembering my old friend Jean B saying such a thing when we went to see Pam together many years ago at the local town hall. Whatever the case, she’s not done badly for a working class girl who left school at 15, and I shouldn’t mind being a step or two behind her.

Which reminded me that as a working class girl who left school at 16 myself, a Pam Ayres anthology was the first poetry book I ever owned. Bought for me for Christmas or my birthday by one of my siblings, if I remember correctly, and I loved it.

And as I recalled last night, much of my earliest stuff was rhyming doggerel that I wrote to make the people I worked with laugh, so it’s very possible she had an influence on me, back then. I wrote a piece of rhyming doggerel to make my writing group laugh yesterday too, in fact, and it did, so maybe she’s an influence, still.

Doggerel (or doggrel), btw, is ‘poetry that’s irregular in rhythm and rhyme and written for burlesque or comic effect; or, alternatively, has monotonous rhythm, easy rhyme and a cheap or trivial meaning’. Charming! Still, my great x 6 grandad was a writer of musical hall comedies, so I guess it’s in my blood.

We weren’t allowed to take photos at the Playhouse, so here’s an image of the book I think I had at 16. I no longer have it, probably gave it away when I went to Uni in my twenties and began learning about ‘proper’ poets. You know, the poor ones, who wrote about sad things or serious things and died from lack of bread …

#writersofdoggerel
#yougottalarf
#jealousmuch