It's not the winning...

I have never won a poetry slam. By the end of tomorrow night, that will probably still be true. But I'll still give it a go. I will be joining my fellow poets at the Rio Cafe (Hyndland Street, Partick) from 8pm to perform two 2-minute poems in front of an expectant audience keen to get their money's worth (having got in for free). Three judges will award points for the quality of the writing, the performance and the audience response. The three highest-scoring competitors after the first two rounds will get a further 3 minutes each to fight it out for the prizes in the final.

I do this sort of thing quite a lot. Sometimes I get absolutely nowhere. Sometimes I get the audience completely on my side, and still get nowhere. Sometimes I get the audience on my side and the judges on my side, but end up just not quite managing to clinch it in the final. I know that lots of it is luck, but I also know that I need to raise my game to make the best of what luck I have. So, you'd have thought that by now I would have rehearsed my poems for tomorrow night at least a few dozen times. Well, you'd have thought that if you didn't know me.

It is ironic that one of the reasons I have not capitalised on my pole position in slam finals, according to a poet friend of mine, is that I don't appear to be "political". I do, in fact, have several poems which are of a political nature, but they tend to be either (a) not very good or (b) more stealthy or full-on funny than in-your-face earnest. This is my challenge for tonight: write two or three poems, preferably funny, at least one of which is overtly political. Wish me luck!

Yes, I sometimes use props and costumes...