Purchasing hairspray, choosing a belt,
waiting for cheese on toast to melt
and daytime TV doesn’t watch itself.
A poet’s work is never done.
Luke Wright has a vocation: “It’s what I was born to do, say filthy things that rhyme”. With Sex Butler, outrageously Cool Mum, and the Ballad of Fat Josh - he robbed pizza delivery boys and ate the evidence - you could nearly believe he means it. But Luke’s brilliant new show A Poet's Work Is Never Done is a fast-moving journey from the bantery mockery of the show-title poem to powerful and dark scrutiny of modern life. “In a society where we do everything ironically, where does that leave meaning?” Luke’s theme, beneath the wicked wit & relentless rhyme, seems something like atonement. For cruelties of youth, insensitivities of adulthood, dread of spleen-filled old age … even the delirious stand-up that splices his poems is tinged with self-deprecating failure.
Most performance poetry has an edge of fury for social ills – callousness, classism, prejudice, stupidity. Luke is extraordinary in that his target is himself. Luke’s Got A Joke is the most searing character assassination – even in a week of politicians’ expenses revelations – I’ve heard for a long while. He feels it’s the best thing he’s done.
“Here is wit, beauty and unashamed intelligence, in a show which should reap nothing but recommendations.” said Edinburgh Festivals Magazine in a 5 star review. The audience at the Merlin last Friday agreed, and gave extra applause to Luke & charming support act Molly Naylor - who worried unnecessarily we might judge her for writing about boys - for their 6 hours on the M25 to bring the show to Frome.
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