Poet John Lister Is Taking To The Streets To Try And Break The Record For Non Stop Verse Making

Poems created at speed on themes requested by audience.

John Lister meets groups of people on the streets and composes poems for them. He recites a poem about love to a woman, then kisses her on the cheek. Another woman suggests a poem about the Earth and he produces a poem of thanks to God, then kisses her too. A poem about fish is requested and the fisherman gets a handshake. John Lister is wearing a smart suit with a pink carnation and bowler hat and carries a walking stick. The word “perchance” appears often in his poems. Anglia TV reporter asks him how his instant poetry began. He says he saw a 6pm show with Michael Aspel on London Weekend television and an amusing feature prompted him to contact the programme and they used him for verses a couple of times. He does not preserve his instant poems, but he does sit down and suffer and write serious poetry and would be keen to contact publishers. More verse follows about sex and daffodils and more women are kissed. The reporter was Paul Barnes for this video made to be shown in a news story on Anglia Television early evening news / magazine programme About Anglia.

Keywords

Poetry; Poems; Doggerel; Kissing

Additional Description

The Anglia TV metadata connects this with Aylsham Carnival Week but also mentions Ipswich. The distinctive buildings appear to be Ipswich, Suffolk.