Robin Surgeoner
‘Making Merry’ is a cycle of transcription poems based on a series of interviews with the writer, performer and athlete Robin Surgeoner, the founder of Angryfish. Surgeoner describes a childhood in Reading and Hong Kong and a connection with the water that started with being given hydro exercises and led eventually to Paralympic gold.
The poems detail Surgeoner’s musical career from joining Dan Dare’s Dog while at university through to his development of Angryfish as a stage persona, a band and a training organisation.
Surgeoner describes how he started as a poet, and gradually moved from that into songwriting. He recounts his development of The Why Festival and the one-man show ‘All the Things We Could Have Been‘, which subsequently developed into a much larger performance with multiple performers.
You can download a PDF copy of the cycle of transcription poems by clicking on Robin Surgeoner Making Merry
More information about my work in transcription poetry can be found in the conference paper ‘Transcription poetry as a vehicle for documenting the lives of disabled people’.You can download a PDF copy by clicking on DSC Paper 2010 D2
Previous examples of my transcription poetry work can be found on Disability Arts Online
- ‘Paddy: A Life’ http://disabilityartsonline.org.uk/paddy-masefield
- ‘The Explorer’ http://www.disabilityartsonline.org.uk/The-Explorer
- ‘Neglected Voices’ http://www.disabilityartsonline.org.uk/Allan-Sutherland-Neglected-Voices
Other outcomes of this piece of work include archive materials such as sound recordings and interview transcripts. With its distinctive voice and clear narrative line, transcription poetry lends itself well to live reading and we shall be organising a number of readings as part of ‘Electric Bodies’.