Interview with Tim Wells

Published in X Magazine

Sitting at the back of the bar in an overcoat, tattoos up and down both arms, you'd never imagine this man was the editor of a long standing poetry magazine or someone known for their poetic verse. But Tim Wells is something of an enigma. Behind his thick cockney slang lies a brain itching for new stories as he scratches down bits of conversation in the pubs and markets of east London.

Beginning his writing career in the hallowed halls of his local primary school, Tim waited 'til he got a bit taller before he began performing on the poetry scene in the late seventies and early eighties. "There was a lot of dancehall music going on at the time (Eek A Mouse, Yellowman and Lone Ranger were massive) - I was doing poetry. Did a lot of skinhead shows and ranting poetry was really big at the time so I was doing a lot of shows with them. I was doing gigs with Seething Wells, Attila the Stockbroker, John Cooper Clarke, Ginger John the Doomsday Commando and Phill Jupitus...I got to be the token working class skinhead at a lot of these but I got to shag a lot of social workers and teachers so there were some fringe benefits."

As it often goes with writers and performers, Wells took some time off writing to pursue other things. "In the early nineties I started writing poetry and stuff again and did a show by chance really cause there was a friend of mine that did this open mic for a laugh. It was in Hackney, run by a very camp man dressed in orange with very orange skin - quite frightening. I did my stuff and he came up afterwards “I must have a date" and I was like I'm not really like that. He actually meant to book me for a poetry show."

In the mid-nineties, not long after he returned to the scene, he started Rising Magazine (with the aptly titled tag line "Tough on poetry. Tough on the causes of poetry.") which is currently in its 33rd issue. "We did the first issue pretty much as a joke. There were probably about 4 people in it but we probably used 12 different names. We did 100 copies and it sold out within a week so I was just like alright then, there must be a market for this...I wanted to publish a magazine that I'd want to read to be honest, which is still where I'm at."

A long running debate in poetry circles revolves around the idea that the poet can either be a page poet or a performer but not both, which Wells doesn't shy away from. "I've always filled Rising with well known, what people call, big name page poets and well know spoken word poets...To be honest, I think a lot of the time it's definition only promoters and publishers use. But in terms of reality, yes, there are certainly poems that work better written and there are poems that work better read. That's certainly true but I don't think that should prevent a poet from doing either really...At the end of the day, it's how it reads on paper. I mean it's a book. And to be honest, if I enjoy it, I'll put the fucker in. It's as simple as that."

Not only does Wells perform in the UK and run a magazine but he also finds time to take his brand of working man poetry to the states on a regular basis. "I do a lot of shows in America and I've been about twice a year for the past 8 years. Mostly New York cause these days it's really easy to get from London to New York and we've got some very good contacts out there with people like Cheryl B.

I find it easy to do shows in America because in England it's like 'oh, he's just a cockney git.' where in America it's 'he's ethnic' It's sad that you have to play to that but it does work.. So a lot of things that get thrown up in England don't necessarily apply in New York so I find it very easy to get work there. Also the fact that I cover things from a very different angle than American writers goes down well. One of the biggest differences [between the US and the UK] that I find certainly in New York and certainly in, let's say, LA - maybe less so in the centre of the country - but certainly with some poets, they just get hung up on ethnicity. And sex. And it's formulaic..."

"I think a lot of the time writers write lazily is because this is what they think a poet should write about, so I actually find it very unoriginal. The stories I relate to are human stories. Take Baden Prince for example or Cheryl B. Baden writes a lot about being a big, black man and Cheryl writes a lot about being a New York lesbian but neither of them actually sit out with a big sign around their neck saying that. That's cause they're writing human stories in which they feature. I've never been either of those things but I can relate to their stories 'cause I find them funny, I find them sad and, on a human level, I think they're great. Whereas someone stands up and does a poem that goes "Love me. Love my foibles" it's like ugh - not really - there's nothing to work with there. Having said that, there's a lot of enthusiasm in America which is great. I mean we've had some really good shows out there"

In an unusual move this past March, Tim Wells joined forces with 4 other transatlantic poets, Sarah Kobrinsky, Luke Warm Water, Cheryl B and Roddy Lumsden, and hit the mid-west of America. They came together as a true cross-section of what is happening in the English-speaking poetry world today. Remarkably the whole idea for the Plains English Tour began with Sarah at their local pub. "She quite rightly pointed out that when people went to America they tended to go to the east coast or west coast and never down the middle. So she was saying it'd be great if we could come and see it. I was like, yeah, sounds good enough, I'm always up for an excuse to travel, get drunk and meet strange girls."

"It was actually the easiest tour we've ever organized 'cause every one of the venues was super helpful though they were all freaked out. They were literally saying over the phone 'oh why are you coming here.' As soon as the first person said that I thought that we're doing the right thing." To understand this reaction, you need to understand the mentality of small towns in the centre of the country. When you're from a place that only has one poetry venue or in most cases none, you eat up anything new like a pool of piranhas. Given that, it's understandable why they were so warmly received. Not only did they make the cover of two daily papers but they found themselves with their own poetry groupies that came to almost every show.

The most encouraging thing that came from this tour occurred when a group of students travelled over from Fargo, where the poets had toured, to get a taste of England for themselves. With this in the back of minds, there are plans of more tours and further exchanges of poetry, writing and performance in the near future. My hope is that the audiences will still remain the same enthusiastic and welcoming group they were when Tim came to town and gave those prairie folk a bit of east London and a little bit of his reality: "I don't think cause I'm a poet., I'm the voice of a generation. I've known for a very long time that the voice of people is Homer Simpson."

A Man Can Be A Drunk Sometimes But A Drunk Can't Be A Man, If You Can Read This You're Too Close, and A Boys Night Out in the Afternoon are available from Donut Press, London.

Rising is free with an SAE (or for foreigners $1US). E-mail timmywells@hotmail.com

Suspicion

Police shoot suspected suicide bomber in London...

Was he? Is our paranoia running unleashed or is this true?

Mr Whitby, told BBC News: "I was sitting on the train reading my paper. "I heard a load of noise, people saying, 'Get out, get down'! "I saw an Asian guy run onto the train hotly pursued by three plain-clothes police officers. "One of them was carrying a black handgun - it looked like an automatic - they pushed him to the floor, bundled on top of him and unloaded five shots into him. "I saw the gun being fired five times into the guy - he's dead."

The result? Two London underground lines - Northern and Victoria are reported to have been closed. These are the two lines that run through Stockwell station.

I hear that and then read passengers on the northern line said a man was walking through carriages with a rucksack. The train was held at Kennington on the northern line as there was a report of a suspicious man on a southbound train, a spokesman for British transport police said." Police held a man but he appeared to be innocent of any wrongdoing, he said. What if they would've just shot him...I hope that the man they killed did do something wrong. I wouldn't like to think what's happening to us otherwise.

BBC News 24 is now reporting that armed police have surrounded the East London mosque on Whitechapel Street and are telling people to stay indoors. Police have taken dogs into the mosque and they are reports of "two suspect pakcages" in the mosque although this could just be a false alarm.

This is becoming an everyday thing...do I keep writing my family and letting them know I'm OK or just let them assume that I am? There are rumours flying around everywhere. There is supposedly a website saying that these strikes on the 'infedel Britian' will continue until all offending European parties are out of Iraq. That as the 'heart of Europe,' we are where they need to strike.

I think - what am I doing here. I work on a fitness website. I write poems and plays. Surely there is something I should do to make being somewhere where safety is becoming more fragile, worthwhile. It's not persuing folkdancing....just not sure what it is yet.

Rolling on

It seems like things are going back to normal now. The show is back on, the tubes up and running and still not quite sure who is all involved. Two people have been detained and other "fugitives" are being tracked down...back to how it's been for the last two weeks. We are now being told to watch everyone and note anything suspiscious. One step close to Big Brother.

Again...

There have been more explosions. 3 underground and 1 on a bus. More. I can't believe it. They think that they were just detonators so there was no structural damages and no one was killed but if there had have been...the tubes are being evacuated. Read more what the BBC says. This is what they are saying other people are saying.

Now 6 lines are closed on the tube: Bakerloo, piccadilly, victoria, northern, waterloo and city and Hammersmith and city. Also all of the Kings Cross Thames Link is down...which now explains to me why the overground line at Upper Holloway had police tape up and a policeman waiting there. They've even evacuated the entirety of Shepard's Bush.

They say that up to 250 bags have been left unattended since July 7th. Come on people. Let's get serious.

They've also just arrested someone in Whitehall...what is going on? About 20 yards from Number 10.

It's all confusion here. No one knows what is happening. London has been put on alert beyond a red alert. I am watching the news online right now. We are told to stay put.

Tonight I was meant to host Nathan's Edinburgh preview. It was postponed from July the 7th when the first preview was set to happen. He'll call me in an hour. We've been joking (as there's nothing else to do but joke to keep sane) that it's this rival poetry group Aisle 16 trying to get his preview cancelled. Reports say that it sounded like champagne corks popping...maybe it was them being middleclass leaving us in a state of champagne terrorism...

Was that in bad taste? Maybe it is...you just don't know what to say after this happens again. What's next? I don't want to know.

It's scary. I always pride myself that I am a strong and capable person. But when things like this happen...it's terror attacks. It'll make us no longer want to leave our flats. I think I'm going to start biking. Everywhere. All I have to worry about is all the bicycle theives. I will update when I know more.

Late at night...

Yes. I made the mistake of having two coffees at dinner and that was two too many coffees for me who has cut the caffiene from my diet. So I am awake. It is almost 3 am. BUT I have finished the third draft of the short version of my play, Clippings. I think it finally works but I'm still worried about it. You see the project I am working on is one of four plays based on the assasination of Franz Ferdinand. I chose to do something modern...suicide bombers and the like...in Britian...not sure how well it will go down in light of recent events but I think it still says things that should be said. Just hope others (especially my producer) see it that way.

My sister, Sarah, of whom I share a matching tattoo which she designed, has complained that I haven't mentioned her at all here except to say that she is a weirdo. In fact she's not. She's quite conservative in fact and is a video editor for Help TV. She's the one with the big glasses and goofy hair (haha). I wrote the bio for her. She also does work on a show called Careers TV. The picture you see there is her all growed up. She didn't ask me to write that bio. Does that mean she doesn't love me anymore?

Hopefully in the next couple of weeks she will be sending me a DVD of Cardio Kickboxing. 20 minutes of squatting fun. Did I say fun? I meant ouch! Her boyfriend John copied it for me. Did I say copy? I meant got for me in a completely legal fashion. He has a cool new website - you should go check it out. Hopefully I can convince him to do the template for my brand new website. Then I too will be cool.

Got to sleep...the clock is heading to one step closer to 3...

Cast of Characters

This is the last big one, I promise! I thought it would be important for me to do up a cast of characters so when I am talking about people, you'll actually know of whom I am speaking.

My flat contains:
Lindsay - British. Friend and flatmate. She works as an Editorial Assistant for a company called Anness Publishing. She does beading projects for books, likes swimming on the heath and wants to have one or two cats. We've been living in the same flat together for 3 years.

Leanne - Canadian. Friend and flatmate. Brought into the household by myself just over a year ago. She works at the Canadian High Commission for the department of defence. She loves indie music, indie boys and cool clothes. We started a radio show together called Transcanada radio which is on hold at the moment as the radio station we were on was crap.

Mark - British. New guy. Likes cars, Japanese movies and being bossed around by girls. Not been there long. Not sure how long it's going to last.

Other people from London:
Scott - American. Boyfriend. He works as a producer for the video game company, Lionhead. He has an MA in writing and is finishing his first novel. He is funny, straight to the point and hates being hot. My sister is sad he's American as it is her dream for me to have British babies one day...she's a weirdo.

Alice - Canadian. Friend and fellower blogger. She likes handbags, always is stylish and works for Giant TV. She has two fish that keep her company but scare overnight visitors as they like to stare in the morning as they wait for their feeding.

Nathan - Welsh. Friend and poet. He runs a poetry/ comedy night, gets compared to John Lennon/ Harry Potter and wears clothes that make him look even taller than he is (though he is always stylishly dressed!). Might be the thinnest person I have ever met.

Alex - British. Friend. Met when my friend Jody and I went for some "fashion" photos. He just finished his training as a scuba dive instructor in Thailand and will be teaching and researching sharks in Austrailia if all goes to plan. He loves sharks.

Joss - British. Friend. Went with Lindsay and I to Croatia last year. Currently living in Nicaragua. May marry his current girlfriend there and come back to England. Likes lots of naps, smoking and beer.

Aoife - Irish. Friend and poet. Is one of the most friendly and laid back people I know. Would give away the clothes off her back if you asked (haven't tried so just assuming...). She is part of my plan to take over the literary world and is also published by Tall-Lighthouse.

Sam - British. The boyfriend of Leanne.

Ed - British. The boyfriend of Lindsay.

Atif - Canadian (born and bred in Edmonton, babbee!). Friend and producer. We are working on movies together though I've been slow at writing for him lately. He is newly married and works for Aim-Image.

Les - My publisher. Very sweet guy and great poet. Has a cat named after Hemmingway and is building an empire out of theTall-Lighthouse

Kent - Canadian. Long time friend. Been friends for 12 years in fact. I even went to grad with him. He is living in Chiswick with his Swedish girlfriend. They seem very happy...even with some confusions with english translations.

Ian, Sam and Thomas Groves - British. My boss, his wife, and son. So nice and let me stay at their house sometimes. It's huge!

Jaime and Clare - British. Friends who just got married :) I met Scott at Clare's birthday in March. How fortuitous.

That's it for my cast of characters at the moment. I'll introduce others as they come into my stories...

What I'm doing here....

Now some of you may be wondering what I am doing here. Why London? Well most of you already know I finished school in Vancouver in April of 2001. Literally a couple weeks after I did my last couple of classes, I found out I won the registration for something called the SWAP program to England. I chose to come to London, got on the plane in Edmonton on December 31, 2001 and arrived here January 1, 2002 (and no they don't celebrate New Years on the plane...it's like it never even happened...) Since living here, I have had the following jobs: sales exec with a small internet stationary company, receptionist at Ross Perot Junior's technology company, hander outer of flyers (one day only!), convention staff, sales and marketing manager at an internet fitness equipment retailer (got to build a couple studios and a new shop in Buckinghamshire). Right now I am working for a company called The Healthfinder Limited who owns a WHOLE bunch of fitness related sites. Currently, I am working on the largest of the sites theFitMap.com - I had to recruite a team of writers that just have generated over 600 pages of new copy for the site. Lucky me, it's my job to edit it all and put it live. It's going to be a pretty cool site when it's done though :)

After reading all that, you may think, I thought Heather wanted to be in the arts. Well, to be honest, the day job is all a means to an end. As with going to any foriegn country, there is an issue of visas and working legally and all that crap. Almost everyone I know, who has wanted to stay and didn't have the luxury of having something called an ancestry visa, you have to jump through hoops. You can get one of these magical visas if you are from the commonwealth and your grandparents or parents are from the UK. This means you can basically work here forever with no restrictions. Must be nice for some... Unfortunately for me, I was born a generation too late so the hoop jumping began. Through lots of wrangling I got a work visa and am sponsered by one company. That means I can ONLY work for them. If you do this 9-5 jobbing on the same visa for 4 years, you can apply for your recidency which will eventually lead to getting a British passport - yeah! I only have 1 year, 1o months and 3 days left.

IN the meantime, I am busily writing away. I've already published a small poetry collection with a new full collection out in October with the publisher, theTall Lighthouse. Also I have a woman, Melanie, who wants to be my poetry agent (I've explained I have to work full time for another couple of years...she keeps forgetting but I'm sure she'll get the hang of it soon). With poetry, I do readings all over the country - in a couple weeks I get to go to Bristol Prision to do a show. Aoife Mannix (another fellow poet with Tall-Lighthouse) and I are going to do a show called "Accents on Words" that we can hopefully tour over the next year to various festivals and the like. Very exciting!

I've also been working on some plays. Finished a couple of full length ones, got shortlisted for the Varity Bargate Award (in the top 50) and had my short play, Intersection, produced in a show DOing Lines held at the Pleasance Theatre. I have another show called Clippings being done at the Riverside Studios - but it is just a shortened version of the full length show I want to write. With another couple of projects on the go, as well as an idea of creating a new company, my life is fairly busy! This autumn I start my MA in scriptwriting at Middlesex University so that should be interesting...2 more years of school....But once I get my residency and my masters, I'm hoping I can start doing all this writing full time (including teaching) and then the world will be mine for the taking!

Missions

Seem to be popping up everywhere. Now not all of these are important missions but missions none the less. We have Alice's mission - the Steve Guttenburg Project - and my Folk Dancing Mission (which was suggested by Alice as a good mission to have).

I have discovered today that my cousin Garrett has a mission too. It's called One Game. It's all being done in protest of the shut down of all hockey for the past year due to the strike. He urges us to boycott the first game of the season to show the hockey players and management that if it wasn't for the fans, there wouldn't be hockey. I hope it works. Power to the little people I say. At least the ones who watch hockey.

Let me get a little bit serious here. I was in Pure Groove on Saturday to get a little Foo Fighters injection via their new CD and a red cover caught my eye. It's called Future Soundtrack for America. What's that you may ask? Well it's a CD put together by Music for America and MoveOn to raise money for non-profit groups working to make America a better place. And I quote: " 100% of our profits from this CD will go to non-profit progressive organizations working to involve more Americans in our political process, to advocate for ordinary people and traditional values, and to help keep the Unites States a country all of us can be proud of. Thanks for your support." Though I am not American, I think a little Edu-ma-cation can go a long way, so I bought the CD. With artists like REM and Death Cab for Cutie and Tom Waits, I thought it was a good buy - if they are giving their time for free, I can spend a tenner on it. So go buy. Now.

Are you still reading this?

Did you buy the CD?

No?

What are you waiting for?

Go.

(and check out our other missions too. It's worth it.)

The Setting

I live on Holloway Road. Now I am sure unless you lived in London, you wouldn't even know where Holloway Road was. Saying that, I'm sure some people in London don't even know where it is. The first time I ever came to this neck of the woods, I got off at a tube stop called Archway and was a little spooked out. Everything had the look of a dodgy LA street like you see in the movies minus the hookers. I promised myself I'd never come back again. Then I moved there a couple months later. Tastes change once you get used to a place and that happens fast in London.

Don't get worried...it isn't that bad. Let me tell you a little bit about what you can find in my hood. Let's start with food. Food is always important...especially for someone such as I who likes food. Now Archway (that's what the area is called) is blessed with the stuff. If you like the greasy late night variety, we got plenty of kebab shops and the ever faithful KFC. Since I am not an eater of chicken, it doens't hold a lot of appeal for me but for others, it's like heaven sent.

There are 3 places on my road, within spitting distance of my flat (though I never actually tried to spit on them from my house - seems quite rude), which are my favorites. The Sitara (nicknamed the Jazz Indian as the son of the owner Raj loves jazz and has pictures of Charlie parker and the like on the walls), the Peking Palace (100% vegetarian - no questions why I like the place) and the Tollgate Cafe (great for breakfasts with the added bonus of one time having the cutest. waiter. ever.).

If food isn't your thing, and why wouldn't it be?, there's also two other hotspots that have to be considered when rating the area for coolness. Our local record shop, Pure Groove (who also record acts as 679 Recordings such as the Streets and the Earlies and the Futureheads in their studio upstairs), and the coolest pub ever, Nambucca (live bands for a pound!), which we don't go to enough by far. If I make a stretch, I'll also include our favorite Indie dance clubs - The Garage (Saturday Night staple) and The Buffalo Bar (the venue for nights such as How Does it Feel to Be Loved and Art Rocker) that are located in Highbury and Islington but are on the same long long road that I live on.

That sound help a bit with the surrounding area. Though real estate agents are calling where I live Lower Hampstead Slopes to reflect the leafiness of Hampstead Heath, it's still the gringy place where Columbian "money Exchanges" pop up and get shut down and the store below us will give us alcohol late into the night. Shhh. Don't tell anyone. We like their dodgy ways.

Safe and Sound

I've realized that with the events that have occured over the the last 36 hours that I don't mail home enough. These thoughts ring my head - who will think something happened to me? Will someone tell them? Would anyone think to ask? But this type of tradegy sparks contact and suddenly you're hearing from people you haven't spoken to in years - you're in Rehab? I'm sure I'd love to wave at seagulls in the Pacific. Wow-3 kids in 3 years? All by surrogate mums? And you haven't bathed in all that time? Crazy...

Over the past couple of years, I kept thinking of becoming one of these blogger types. Blogging away instead of working...making my life all about my new blog wallpaper, who else is in the blog ring, is this font really the best way to go. So after all that? Here I am.

But seriously, it's surreal here. We're all meant to keep working, to keep our heads up and I just can't concentrate. Just can't get my head around it all. I just can't think. Or keep thinking - God. I'm lucky. I'm so lucky. They're still pulling bodies out from under the ground and I'm sitting at my computer at home having a decaf coffee and chinese take-away. It could be any other day. If only I could get the image of the blown apart bus out of my head. The red blood on the walls. The news saying they can't confirm the number of dead in that explosion. Without telling us, we all know it's becuase there aren't enough parts to identify.

But I will be writing on this from now on. So check back every now and then and add comments when you want, let me know what you are up to and let me know if you are coming to stay. It's OK. London is fine. Please visit.