We’re pleased to report that this year’s Glastonbury Festival official website poet in residence is Pete the Temp. Mr The Temp (BA, MA, PDF) is a poet, educator and loop pedal artist. He has performed at over 20 UK festivals making him as common a sight in a festival field as a portable toilet. In recent years he has worked with the British Council and been featured on BBC Radio 4, World Service and Newsnight. He’ll be sharing his poems with us throughout this year’s Festival…
A Valid Thing to be Doing With Your Weekend?
Welcome to the future becoming itself
Streams of human energy pulsing
Between sources of light, sound and heat.
Big tops the size of central banks
But with higher rates of interest.
Bass lines that would be banned
In certain totalitarian regimes
A wide gazed lady identifying herself
with a toy parrot tied to an upturned broom
Reggae that floats like ganga smoke.
A giant turtle of love.
A lady who’s job it is to use both nostrils
To play three recorders at once.*
A gang of dub step grannies
On motorised shopping trollies.
Bright green thoughts chatting up the future.
Revolutionary ideas shaking hands (and fists)
Brain fibres slowly tearing open
Hearts learning to speak new languages
Millions of hairs standing up
To be listened to by Billy Bragg
And a man who thinks that it is acceptable to sit
On a frankly collapsible chair
Reading a book.
*Please note this is a comprehensive list of absolutely everything that happened at Glastonbury 2015.
Healing Fields
I believe
That some cancers
Are caused by not being able
To shout into the air
What you feel
When you feel those feeling.
Make Glastonbury tickets available
On the NHS.
Welcome Party
Welcome to Glastonbury:
Symphony of the unnecessary,
A glorious cacophony
Of bowel throbbing bass lines
And bleeding sound frequencies,
A city of flags
and youthful virility.
A Mecca for pilgrims
of music and mischief,
A sludgefest wasteland,
of abandoned bits of Millets,
A carnival of abandoned logic.
Welcome to Glastonbury:
A petri dish community,
A conspiracy
Against the tyranny of normal,
Dull and lonely.
Come on a journey
To Shangri-La!
On a camel chain gang
Of bulgy eyed gurners
Staggering through
An epidemic of insomnia,
Shepton-Malleted
Mud clad munters
Rising like orcs
From the bowels of Mordor
Welcome to Glastonbury:
We’re sinners all of us
And we love it!
We are your technicolour
Summer vomit.
Your mass desecration
Of cultural convention
Your Glastonbury.
A Letter Home
Dear Mother,
I hope one day you’ll learn to understand
And accept what I have to tell you.
Last night I fell in love with a bass bin.
I didn’t know that I am bass sexual
But I am.
It said something to me that
Gave my soul a hard on.
I am going to spend the rest of my life
Learning the language
Of its monosyllabic heart.
Goodbye.
Get Serious
If Occupy London
Had 175,000 tents
Full of protesters,
Its own printing press
And an underground
(three million litre)
Reservoir system
Would it have enough to draw on
To bring down the financial system?
If Tahrir Square, Egypt,
Had a 1200 acre territory
A 45 year history
And was a living , unfolding
City of revolution
What future
Could the Arab Spring blossom?
If Occupy Wall Street
Drew 2000 acts
To rock 100 stages
And had more headliners
Than the Wall Street Journal
What kind of party
Could it overthrow?
Would you be a revolutionary
If it was as fun as Glastonbury?
The Giant We
We is
cloud defyin’,
wellie stampin’,
bass munchin’, sound bleedin’,
eye bulgin’, mud splattered,
bass battered, butt shakin’, accessorizin’,
retweetin’, phone losin’, programme borrowin’,
flag followin’, celeb huntin’, queue formin’ queue
jumpin’, fence jumpin’, jumper wearing, jump jump, jump,
jumpin’, kick drum beatin’, beatin’, beatin’, mate losin’, mate makin’,
mate matin’, portable loo pooin’, steam punkin’, steaming punk pukin’,
vitamin lackin’, liver killin’, shower needin’, shower gettin’, gettin’, get in,
yurt breathin’, practice bein’, Dali Lama lovin’, lovin’, lovin’, crystal eatin’,
herb consumin’, lay line dancin’ stoned circle, campin’, glampin’, stampin’ singin’
staggerin’, fallin’, gernin’, splashin’, risin’, huggin’, swellin’, record breakin’, Tribe of LOVE!!
The Republic
The Republic of Youth
Detonates nukes –
Swirling fists of sound and light
Against the thickening grey
Of an aging sky.
Like a power plant feeds
On bituminous sludge,
It sucks on pipelines of young blood
And oozes liquid YES from bass bins.
A totalitarian regime of music,
A revolutionary adventure of why the hell not
A sprawling Sim City festival metropolis,
A hedonist refugee camp.
Pete Bearder
‘Glastonbury’ by William Blake
I wandered tho’ each churning field
Near where the churning music flows.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of mash up, marks of whoa!
In every cry of every man,
In every munters cry of weheaah!
In every marquee, in every tent,
The mud forg’d maniacs I hear.
Pete Bearder
Pray for Rain
What do you want:
the Sun to 7am you,
yell MORNING
from a resounding
naked sky,
make you crawl
to the grass
like a foetus
from your sizzling
egg yoke tent,
make you breakfast
for the Gods of Party?
You are not that breakfast.
You are dinner,
or a late lunch
(three courses).
You’ll be digested
by the mud
in you own sweet time.
Glastonbury – To Take
• A kazoo,
• A bugle
• A bag full of noise
• Water
• Vodka
• A small pot of laughter
• A tentless chat up line
• Your last bits of youth (In a sack / in a trailer /
in appropriate behaviour)
• Some nuts (Not pistachios they won’t last the train)
• Oranges for immunity
• Trench foot cream
• A tissue for your eyes when they start to bleed from laughing
• A mat designed for breathing
• Crystals designed for healing
• Something to roll up with
• A small container filled with love
• A list
• A sense of misdirection
• A map to Mr Party’s house
• A acceptance that next week will be rubbed out
• Your friends
• Your children
• Your gran
• Yes, your gran!
• A light
• A lighter
• An Inner light
• A spare inner lighter
• Condoms
• Waterbaloons
• Extra condoms
• Bin liners
• A trolley to carry around the good memories you collect
Leave everything else behind.
