"Mam, there's a poet at the door!"

Published: 24 March 2018
Reporter: Peter Lathan

Rowan McCabe

Who in the North East (or anywhere else for that matter) would ever expect to have one of their kids answer a knock on the front door and hear them calling, “Mam (or Dad), there’s a poet at the door”?

Unimaginable!

But it happened. On 10 October 2015, Rowan McCabe, a poet from Newcastle, did just that. He went to Mundella Terrace in Heaton, Newcastle and started knocking on doors, explaining that he’s a poet and he wants to write a poem for them. He reads them one he made earlier—ten 4-line verses with an ABAB, CDCD and so on rhyme scheme, all about what he's doing (and containing a joke about not being a Jehovah's Witness).

Kyle from Yorkshire is chatty and interested; he enjoys surfing but the surfing at Scarborough (the nearest suitable place) is crap. McCabe says he’ll write a poem about that and deliver it through his door. Kyle thinks that's great.

And so it started. His poetic peregrinations took him to Darras Hall and Ponteland in Newcastle (very upmarket), to a council estate in Stockton (including the street where Channel 4 filmed Benefits Street), to Fenham and its Mosque, to Bensham in Gateshead with large Jewish and Muslim communities (as well as some tough areas), to the Byker Wall and to Glastonbury.

The aim of his foray into the world of bespoke door-to-door poetry was to find the answers to two questions: “can anyone enjoy poetry?” and “are strangers really as scary as they’re made out to be?”

Now McCabe is making his story into a play. Door-to-Door Poetry, directed by Peader Kirk (No More Worries, Indiana Jones and the Extra Chair), will preview at ARC Stockton on 11 April at 7:00 (Pay What You Feel) and then plays at The Peacock in Sunderland at 7:30 on 20 April (tickets £5) and at Northern Stage on 1 and 2 May at 8:00 (£10/£8 conc).

The show is supported by Arts Council England, Northern Stage, ARC Stockton, Sunderland Culture, The Cultural Spring, New Writing North and Apples and Snakes.

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