John Turner - Speak Easy 23/02/10

Welcome to the official YouTube channel for Speak Easy, the deadliest open mic. night in town! This is our very first video upload, and were starting as we mean to go on. This video opens with a most unsettling thought, but thoroughly excellent introduction from our lovely compere Sarah Thomasin, and before long were joined by a man who is beyond compare.

John Turner has been organizing the Speak Easy event every month for almost a year now, always putting in a memorable performance himself, and in this video we see him in a positive tour de force the Saga Lout treats us to three full poems. As he says, the first two of these are about being a poet Its important to be a poet, he says he opens with a rather intriguing musing on how its easier to write poetry when one is sad or even angry hes absolutely right of course, if Speak Easy has taught us one thing, its that its quite straight forward to make your audience uncomfortable. Just kidding!

His second poem is set to a tune; its a well known fact round these here parts that John Turner is quite a musical fellow. He likes his dodgy beats. He deals with a different aspect of being a poet here: the sense of self satisfaction you get when you write something clever, and through an incredibly upbeat performance, gets across his message on the joys of performing poetry live. If you want to experience this joy for yourself, send a postcard with your address on it to I want to read at Speak Easy, j.turner@shu.ac.uk, Sheffield, S1 J/K, or just turn up on the night and well do our best to cater to you.

Thankfully, John Turner hasnt finished hes got one more for us. His poem called Fifteenth Story Incident with Small Fruit is extremely amusing not unusual for John and the Speak Easy readers of course its about the suicide in America bloke off TV, and rather than me spoiling it for you, why dont you just watch it? Needless to say, with such an irreverent man dealing with irreverent subject matter, were treated to a little insight into troubled minds again, not unusual for Speak Easy! That was another joke. Enjoy!