Not Being Allowed In… poet slumps outside ‘perimeter’

Hampden Park Stadium & the crowds are flowing fast and thick – it is quite a testament to the folk putting this whole day together that a epic flow of steady tidal humanity was able to pass through the queue barriers, and into the security check point without huge lines of silent impatience trailing around corners and up a hill.

I stood and watched for an hour as people walked steadily from Mount Florida station -up a hill and down a hill and around a corner, and made it past the dancing volunteers and the Venue reds, through the queue barriers as they were directed, past the police holding machine guns, and into the line up for security without stopping.

Not being allowed to work with those queues, the ones where folk do actually line up, are still and waiting for any length of time – the trailing line for security – is a constant frustration. I appreciate everyone is doing their job and poets reducing queue-induced tension are not high on the priority list. So this little film has moments of blazing exchange with punters, but a whole lot of people passing by – while I stood feeling futile. I wasn’t even allowed into the actual queue barrier lines before the airport style check point – but at least there was an ease of entrance and everyone getting in without grumble.

The megaphone man shared his few lines of Burns for us. The volunteers were dancing to ‘Happy’ spun on their amp.

We moved on to other venues in the city- the SECC & Kelvingrove where we met the bowls queue. I find it fascinating the tiny time it takes to share a smile and a poem and hear someone else’s thoughts. Always, it is “is that yours?'” or “did you write that?”, surprise now that the caution has been ditched by dialogue.

Quite a few today said no to poetry, which is ok- I’ll just move on, but what surprised me was the response from the street statue as I offered him a little poetry ticket while on his smoking break – “I hate poets”.

Ok,

Fair enough.

Maybe he’d found the perfect job where he didn’t have to talk to anyone all day but felt everyone’s gaze fall on him