A Quick Word with a Rock and Roll Late Starter [Paperback]

...his poem could only come from a writer steeped in the culture and caught up in the scene. What I say is: give this boy a backstage pass. SIMON ARMITAGE

Driven by a feverish energy, ambitious, witty and studded with
brilliant passages ...

PETER SANSOM

A staggering, swaggerig paean to pop from one of the rising stars of British poetry. Craig Smith takes us into the mind of a could have been/should have been rock star, whose encyclopaedic knowledge of pop history provides the backing track to his own obsession with hitting the big time. The poem's central character is a triumph of characterisation, as vivid as any seen in verse since Dorn's 'Gunslinger'.

Have you ever picked up a guitar and dreamed of Stardom? Have you ever done a mock interview in your head, lying in the bath, laughing with Jonathan Ross or David Letterman about your fruitless early years in the wilderness? Have you even known that you were going to make it, known in your very soul you were going to be famous, from your split-ends down to your toenails you would soon be mega, massive, global, that before too long everyone the world over would recognise your name, your likeness, would recognise your greatness?
And did your dreams, plans and schemes come to nothing?
That's what this long poem, 'A Quick Word with a Rock and Roll Late Starter' is all about. Heroic Failure. Tragic Anonymity. The Dream that Didn't Come True.

Craig Smith is a Huddersfield-born writer living in London.

RRL0011
UK -
US -

Unlike my friends.
My friends, so called,
were shown the opening.
I thought they'd crash the party,
squat like bums in the navel of the industry,
establish a cairn where chaos meets harmony,
prescribe a scrip for the roll 'n' roll pharmacy,
like dumb kids singing for the love of eternity,
stake a claim for the arse-end of infamy,
take it to the bridge
and then come back to get me.
No such luck.
Instead they sacrificed art for show biz,
took the purse,
chowed down on glory and fame,
posed for the Face,
gave up on their collective history
and played the game for easy money.
God, what they learned from me,
these chumps sat at my knee,
hearing stories of me and Liam
pre-Patsy, pre-Platinum
bearing down on some poor slob town
on a transit-borne suicide tour,
me supplying weed to keep
their 2 and 4 a tick behind the beat
so they were tight without being neat
and camp without being effete,
to ensure they got high without losing it,
living to excess without over-doing it,
embracing the life
while at the same time eschewing it,
making mad cheddar without pursuing it.
It's the funk and the fury,
the coke field and the brewery,
aspirations while signing on,
tantric sex
and the creative use of sound effects.
It's love and death in the key of E.