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Fran Harvey chats to the poet and performer about his book which chronicles his year of taking spoken word to the doorsteps of the UK
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On the surface, poet and performer Rowan McCabe’s book, The Door-To-Door Poet: My Adventures Across England (Eye Books, released 18th September), is a funny, self-aware chronicle of the year McCabe spent in pursuit of a madly brilliant project: namely, to travel to 12 different places in England, knock on random doors, find out what’s important to the people who answer, and write them a poem. He set out in March 2019, trying to cover as diverse a range of locations possible, and it all ends in the shadow of a global pandemic. Absolute. Madness.
But once you’ve met McCabe, the Door-to-Door Poet seems less mad and more… well, inevitable. He’s an expressive and interested person – not once does glitching Zoom freeze on a blank expression. And though you can wrap it up in silliness, the core idea hangs on McCabe’s innate belief that art needs to be brought to people where they’re at. The Arts Council has been targeting ‘areas of deprivation’ for some years now. Does he think that’s working? McCabe tells me that his hometown of Hebburn has recently started putting on theatre in a working man’s club (“unheard of”), and it was a hit – his grandma loved it. But, he says, “it’s easy when you’re in that line of work to see the good and only the good. I think it’s also worth not underestimating just how many people there are still out there who haven’t found the right poetry for them yet; for who the term ‘spoken word’ means nothing at all. It’s a meaningless phrase, you know, and so they’re missing out. I don’t think that’s the fault of the arts gods in particular. I just think it comes down to lack of funding.”
Trying to change people’s minds about poetry and art, I think, is important. That’s a lot of what I do
McCabe didn’t always receive a warm welcome. “One in ten people answered the door; and one in ten of those spoke to me,” he says, “but only one person actually slammed it in my face.” And he became aware of the trust people who did respond were placing in him. Some were desperate to be heard, sharing stories of loss and war. But others were more suspicious. He visited both Stockton and Jaywick – towns regularly used as media fodder for ‘what is Britain coming to?’ headlines: “You sort of fight an uphill battle, where you have to gain the trust of people and show them that you’ll try and tell their story in a way that’s fair and doesn’t feed into those stereotypes.”
So, since it’s been five years, what’s important to McCabe now? He thinks carefully before answering. “Maybe it’s just because of what we’ve been talking about in the last few minutes, but trying to change people’s minds about poetry and art, I think, is important. That’s a lot of what I do. It’s getting up in an assembly filled with 200 Year Nine students: you get up and make a bit of a tool out of yourself, and you do some silly poems. And with a bit of luck, you’ve shown them something that they weren’t expecting, and maybe won a few of them round to the idea of writing. And that’s really important to us.”
Rowan McCabe brings his Door-to-Door poetry to The Cluny 2 in Newcastle (16th Sept), Arts Centre Washington (18th Sept), Pop Recs Ltd. in Sunderland (24th Sept) and Drake The Bookshop, Stockton (25th Sept).
Fran chats with Rowan for the latest edition of our My Writing Life podcast – listen below:
