Heather Moulson

Hello Poetry Lovers

Welcome back to the Talk Show studio (rapturous applause)

Now, settle down as we welcome our guest the wonderful musician and poet Elaine McGinty!

(Loud applause and standing ovation as our esteemed guest glides down the lighted stairway)

Pleasure to be here, Heather.

They always have been, my parents had music around, mainly Irish and then with older brothers and sisters, raiding their record collections and like most people, at school sharing about new bands.

I’ve always written poetry, from an early age. Then I had a period in my life when I just stopped completely. I’d been exploring music and wanting to make my poems into songs as a teenager, I learned bass guitar. Then I was in a situation where it wasn’t ok to do music and writing so gave it up for some years.

Later in life I started again,  joined bands, but the band Joe & I founded, Phoenix Chroi was the first time I felt able to share my poems, the songs were an amalgamation of my words and Joe’s bass.

The responsibilities of setting up and running Phoenix/Fiery Bird made being in a band too difficult logistically, Joe and I went to it as a duo doing spoken word/songs and bass. It was also more liberating to include more fluid styles.

We also feel the venue should be run by gigging artists who know what it feels like to be on both sides of the stage.

Fiery Bird Venue is a project run by & within the community benefit CIC we founded- Phoenix Cultural Centre – in 2011.

It was a combination of things really. We were original musicians but my own home town (Joe is a more recent adoptee of Woking, he is Hackney born & bred with spells in Ireland) despite being known for it’s music & writing heritage had no original live music venue.

Also, no grassroots cultural centre despite ethnically the highest diversity in Surrey. I was working in community development and learning as well, and people I was working with were saying they felt left behind by the regeneration of the town with nowhere safe and welcoming to go at night.

Friends of ours had taken over empty buildings elsewhere in the country, Tottenham for example, and made them into vibrant and welcoming creative places. We saw that opportunity for Woking, to celebrate and welcome new art of all disciplines and cultures and provide a space where people could unlock their creativity again or practice if it they were already connected. It seemed to make sense to have all those things in one space for everyone, every generation, background, wealth, sexuality, gender, whatever.

Woking didn’t have a single dedicated music venue or grassroots arts centre. It felt obvious to be honest. 

We’d started putting things on in pubs, cafes, on the street, in the park and then opened a small shop space (right opposite where are now) in 2013. The Public Living Room in the current Phoenix Centre where Write Out Loud takes place is what that space looked like.

Then we moved to a 1000 capacity nightclub in 2018 and were due to go to our permanent space in 2020 but the Council went bankrupt and couldn’t complete it so the owners of the building we are in now offered it to us for three years to keep us going. That now houses the Phoenix Centre on one side and Fiery Bird music venue on the other.

So we are making the best of it while we have it and hope a permanent space can be found during that time. 

 

Yes, I am finishing my Song Therapy qualification for community based music and I would love to get a collection of poetry together. Joe & I have more songs/spoken word to record too. 

Right now, I am a bit bombarded with venue stuff, we recently had a break in, there’s always some challenge to deal with,  but I really want to set myself that goal as I have a really bad habit of putting my own creative work last.

It makes me a bit of an ironic hypocrite when here I am telling everyone to come and express their creative life when the place I am setting up for people to do that is the excuse I use for not doing it myself! 

There’s been loads of lovely ones both with the band and the poetry gigs. Generally it’s meeting some great people and hearing their work and the variety of it that has led to more gigs with them.

I love how different people are and the perspectives they bring. The kindness too. The best I think was in a working men’s club night where it wasn’t poetry and when we started with the songs/poems and bass. People were ‘ok wtf is this going to be like’ but talking like people do on a night out.

Then halfway through the first piece, there was silence and it went on like that to the end and there was a great response. A woman came up to me and said ‘I hate poetry but I loved that, that sounds like my life’ 

Then Al Pacino came in and carried me out on his shoulders

(Ok the Al Pacino bit isn’t true, it’s obvious I’d crush the man with my matronly girth) 

I think the worst was a feeling that we had been booked for something and I felt like it was being a sideshow, performing monkey, fulfilling a stereotype to make something look inclusive. It made me remember that people that could make change, don’t always want to listen to make that change, but know enough to show that they at least look like it. We were literally their lip service. That didn’t feel good. It reminded me to discern.

Wasn’t Elaine a wonderful guest, PL’s.

Thank you for tuning into the talk show studio. We’ll be back with more poetry action real soon….