Mab Jones

Mab Jones is a comic/poet/event organiser from Cardiff who has used spoken word to successfully manage a speech-related challenge, namely, Selective Mutism. Winner of the John Tripp Spoken Poetry Audience Award and in last year's international Liverpool Lennon Performance Poetry comp, as well as a finalist or semi-finalist in the UK SLAM! Championships, the BBC Radio 4 National Poetry Slam, and the Funny Women Awards. She is a performer who places emphasis on audience enjoyment and entertainment. She has performed at all the major festivals, the Edinburgh and Leicester Fringes, in New York and Washington DC (where she represented Wales at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival), at the Comedy Store, at RADA, as well as many more, and has headlined gigs with Apples & Snakes (Plymouth), WordPlay (London), Word Up (Wales), Write Angle (Petersfield), Wicked Words (Leeds), Poets and Mash (Manchester), and a host of others. Literary Mention of the Year 2010 (Welsh Icons), winning Poem of the Month with Write Out Loud (May 2010), and a nominee for the US Pushcart Prize, her “delightful comic verse, articulate and imaginative” (Three Weeks) will have you enthralled. “Fantastic!” - BBC Radio Wales; “A real creative force” - Evening Post  http://www.mabjones.com/ @mabjones

How old were you when you first started writing poetry?

I wanted to be a writer from the age of 11, but I actually only started writing 4 years ago, thanks to a bursary from Literature Wales. Before that, I struggled with my mental health, my weight, got forced into lots of jobs I hated (call centres, mostly), and even lived abroad for a bit. I read loads, and ran a couple of poetry and fiction magazines from my bedroom as a teenager… but I knew I wasn't ready to write. Now, I'm making up for lost time!


When and where were you first published?

As a performance poet, I look for gigs more than anything else. I believe my first publication was in South Wales newspaper the Western Mail, after I won the John Tripp Spoken Poetry Audience Award (a Wales-wide spoken poetry competition). That was in late 2007.


How would you describe your poetry style?

I enjoy playing with form and rarely write blank verse. I like complexity, and I love rhyme, if it is well done. Too often, it isn't! It gives rhymers a bad name. My style is generally satirical and witty, with dark humour and even darker subject matter. I like to make people laugh or cry. Ideally, both. I love word play. I would say my style is pretty individual, as when I started I didn't even know what performance poetry was!


Have you performed at any events/competitions in 2010, how did it go?

I was in the Liverpool Lennon Performance Poet competition, which drew over 600 applicants. I came 3^rd. I'm happy with that, especially considering the fact that all three judges had chosen an entirely different top 3! I'm not much of a slam poet, however, being more of a people teaser than a people pleaser… As for events, I performed at loads. The Edinburgh Fringe (my 3^rd run!), Green Man Festival, Nozstock, Leicester Comedy Festival, Cheltenham Literature Festival, at comedy, cabaret, and poetry nights all over the UK… The list is long. I love performing, and have 'done' over 350 gigs in the past 3 and a half years. I don't think I'll ever tire of that.


Who has inspired you over the years in the poetry scene?

I did a gig with John Hegley a couple of years ago, and was very inspired by the man. A truly eccentric character, charming as hell, and lovely to talk to. We did tai chi together on stage, I remember. He was great! Cardiff poet Peter Finch has been a long-term inspiration for me, also. A real renaissance man, and always very encouraging.


What has been your greatest (Poetry) success to date?

I think it's simply becoming a performance poet…! When I was a child, I often found myself unable to speak in certain situations. Then, when I was 16, I stopped talking almost entirely in social situations, for a period of 8 years. Only later was this diagnosed as Selective Mutism, an anxiety-related disorder that affects one's ability to speak. Ironically, I worked in a fair few call-centres at the time - I could follow a script - but outside of that, I was silent. I remember overhearing one work colleague calling me 'the ghost'… That's what I was, for a while. Poetry was my re-birth, in a sense.


Do you have any ambitions you'd still like to fulfil?

Too many! Especially since I feel I have to make up for lost time. I'd like to have a collection published. I've sold almost 1000 copies of my little chapbook, and I'm going to be in a couple of anthologies with Parthian books, this summer. But, my own book would be nice. I also think I have a face made for radio. Anyone want to book a saucy Welsh poetess, please get in touch!


Do you have a special place you write?

Not really. Anywhere is fine with me, though I like writing on trains quite a lot. I'm more particular about notebooks (for which I have a fetish), and pens (I like to mix it up between school-style Berols, gel pens, and typing on my laptop).


Who is your favourite poet and why?

Oh dear. There are too many to choose from! I think Hilaire Belloc is incredibly underrated. I admire him because he was also a political activist, and wrote on myriad different themes, a bit like myself. Belloc was sometimes labelled anti-Semitic, but he actually spoke out against this, in public and in print, many times. I think he was very misunderstood… As a satirist, I find him quite brilliant.


Do you have any projects in the pipeline you'd like to share with us?

I'm working on a 1-woman show, commissioned by the Humber Mouth Literary Festival, which explores speech and silence, and my own experiences of being unable to talk - the poems are a mixture of curious, confessional, and comedic. I'm also taking a show just before then to the Exeter Fringe, with poet Anthony Fairweather who, off-stage, has a bad stutter; but, on-stage, spouts swift, rhythmical verse without breaking a beat! I'm interested in the stage as a space in which we express our inner selves… That's how it's always been for me, anyway.

I also just found out my spoken word version of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida has made it through the first round of the RSC Open Stages competition. I'm working to put this on by next March. As well as writer, I will be acting as director and producer. It's a lot of work, in very new territory. Winning plays will be performed next year in Stratford-upon-Avon as part of the World Shakespeare Festival.

I'm also writing a 30-minute play as part of a course I went on at Ty Newydd, which I was given a bursary for by Drama Association Wales. I'm organising the literature tent for a festival, am due to be published in two Parthian books anthologies in June, and am currently doing the NaNoWriMo challenge, which involves writing a poem every day for the month of April. You can read them here: http://www.mabjones.blogspot.com/ One of my poems, about the biggest bud in Wales, now blooming for the first time in 10 years, has been published on the Botanical Garden of Wales website, and I'm planning a visit there next week, which I hope will inspire even more poems.

So, I'm very busy! Lots in the pipeline, as usual. But, it's all work I love - I feel very lucky that the thing I love is also the thing I'm quite good at doing. Poetry rules!