Tony Smith (26/09/07)

Well, uhmm… I’m talking about my poem ‘Rosy Lee’. Uhmm… It was kind of inspired by a song that, uhmm… the group Thin Lizzy did in the 70’s called ‘Rosalie’. Well I didn’t plagiarise whatsoever, that crossed my mind when I started to write it an’ also, old cockney rhyming slang ‘rosy lee – cup of tea’, which is in the poem, an’ it’s easy thing to rhyme with, I think I rhyme it with ‘tea’, and ‘explode with glee’ it says, and it was also inspired partly by a student friend of mine, (who’ll remain nameless), who does karaoke quite a lot, that’s his main enthusiasm, other than his studies, and he, er, one night he was performing, it was last year in Scarborough, doing his karaoke but then someone said to him, ‘you get up once more, an’ do t’karaoke an’ I’ll thump yer’ and that kind of inspired the bit, where I said, y’know, ‘do that one more time on your throat I’ll choke it’. Uhmm… I think I’ve mentioned that towards the end a bit, I’ve said he’ll remain nameless, but he wouldn’t mind me saying this, he’ll probably have a good laugh about it when I tell him. Uhmm… I think it’s appropriate for this exhibition, because it’s a light-hearted poem, it’s not deep, it’s not heavy, it doesn’t go over anyone’s head, it’s very much light-hearted. I would like to perform it sometime, I would like to perform it sometime, an’ I think that will hopefully be arranged some time in the near future.

Note: Tony Smith contributed Rosy Lee A LOVE POEM and curated Hardeep Kaur Kalsi’s Harmonium.