If we are to defeat fascists, we have to move forward with love

Morecambe is a very friendly place. Waiting for the pedestrian crossing to give me permission to cross, a man approaches me with a beaming and open face. I am here for the poetry festival and presume I have met him somewhere before. Usually, that is how I interact with people who I don’t recall, so I am friendly to strangers. At times, they have had to explain to me, “By the way, we do’t know each other, we’ve just come to your gigs a few times.” I don’t think Chatman even knew me from that. He was just convivial.

Wrapped up in his anorak, he couldn’t believe I was just in my t-shirt on the seafront. “You must be chilly.” “Oh no, not yet.”

He feels the skin of my forearm.

“Ooh no, you’re not cold… oh well, I better get on.” And off he goes.

Later, a man without a coat but with a dog, approaches me. He does not have an anorak. “Ah, finally someone without a coat. Can’t believe how many people are wrapped up for winter already. I’m walking this dog for a friend. He pays me with a lovely cappuccino, I better get him home.”

It’s only at the bus stop where there is hint of altercation. As I walk to the sea, a man finds it necessary to shout “Homo!” I wonder on, unbruised. Almost a sense of nostalgia. It must be because I’m not in a coat and my t-shirt is for a Bette Davis movie. 

That night, I watch the poet John Hegley. John is a human who could be described as being “a tonic”. 

Earlier in the week, performing a gig in Kilmacolm, west of Glasgow, I felt an unruliness of emotions. I had felt a great, chin trembling sadness all day, and when I took to the stage, I found myself bursting into tears.

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I left the stage for a minute, howled, breathed and then returned for 80 minutes. As the week progressed, I worked out my melancholy, and found the sunlight, but watching John on stage at the Winter Gardens was the final spoon needed to restore me fully. Before him was a poet new to me, Jan Brierton, and her poems of menopause, drudgery and rebellion were full of vim and joy. 

In The Old Pier Bookshop, high up on my favourite bookshop list, is a wonderful tunnel of shelves to explore. I left with too much, including a guide to industrial archeology and a naturist book from 1938 of women enjoying rural pursuits while unclad, a terrible prickly risk. 

After my show, I took the train to Stirling to watch my friend Josie Long in her new tour, Now is the Time of Monsters. She is another performer that needs to be prescribed in an attempt to battle the anger and cynicism of the world. 

If we are to defeat the fascists who wish to brainwash those who suffer by telling them those to blame are the refugees or trans community, then we have to move forward with love.

I have recently fallen in love with the late poet Andrea Gibson. The line that dazzled me and led to me falling for them is “The truth may not be hopeful. But the telling of it is.”

Let us embolden ourselves by elevating those voices that have open hearts and a desire to listen. 

Baby Jane and the Bear

I’m walking along the promenade 

In my T-shirt For Whatever Happened to Baby Jane 

And someone waiting for the 755 thinks they’ve got something worth saying 

“HOMO!” He shouts impulsively 

I’m impressed by his cultural knowledge of LGBT

He’d have exploded if I’d been wearing my T of young Bette 

Though the intonation smacked of disgust 

I believe he must 

Have also meant 

A little compliment 

I’ve been lifting weights of late 

Have a hairy chest and face 

And what I think he really meant with that ugly stare 

Is “If I’m honest, Poppa, you’re bear” 

FOOTNOTE

I have since been told 

I may be between a bear and a twink 

It is, I think 

Something called an otter 

Which I hope makes me even hotter 

better and brighter than ever.

Robin Ince is a comedian, poet and broadcaster.

Ice Cream for a Broken Tooth: Poems about life, death, and the odd bits in between by Robin Ince is out now (Flapjack Press, £12). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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