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Telling the Story – Penny Pepper – The Naked Punk

~ Writer, poet, performer, speaker, activist and cat lover. Staunchly socialist.

Telling the Story – Penny Pepper – The Naked Punk

Tag Archives: disabled woman

Swifts and Trips

06 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by Penny Pepper in A Disabled Woman, Activism, Birds, Cats, Derby, Disability Politics, Naked, Politics, Social justice, Woman Writer, writer, Writing By The Sea

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author, Birds, book signing, cats, childhood, disabled woman, East Sussex, Hastings, inequality, poet, south coast, St Leonards on Sea, stereo, Swifts, Ted Heath

Now on the south coast, the evenings often long and sunny, the swifts are back and fly over my house as dusk falls.  They are so regular it’s spooky.  I dash out to see them soar and shriek at speeds that seem impossible.  Their presence is undeniable and brings a welcome shift of focus in my life.  As do the sparrows chattering away in the small trees along my street.

Naturally there are gulls, mostly herring gulls, who get in on the act, although not as much as might be imagined.

Last weekend I was invited to the Derby Book Festival to do a reading and signing of First in the World Somewhere.  Yes, The Naked Punk went on the road.  The fun bits are meeting people, finding out about them and what triggered interested in your book. There’s no point in second guessing this as I always get it wrong.  The most unusual reason was because the person buying the book, caught onto the fact that I once had a cat called Heathcliffe – just like they did.  Never mind the bollocks, never mind my rage against Thatcher.  As usual it’s all down to cats.  Ably interviewed by the lovely Bea Udeh, poet, producer and mentor (@BeaUdeh),

I even enjoyed the moment when an old childhood friend remembered me doing an impression of Ted Heath when I was about 12 years old.

These happy experiences often come in counterpoint, because there remains a great big weight of stereotype over my head.  To some, I can only be “the disabled” and this means a variety of things.  Sometimes that I have no voice of my own, sometimes that I am merely “the cared for”.

And sometimes that I have no choice.  As often happens to those of us defined as The Other.

Thankfully reading from the book and signing a few pages lessens these isolating experiences and reminds me of what has to be done. And very soon The Naked Punk is on the road again to do just that.

At the Derby Book Festival Penny Pepper sits at a table next to Bea Udeh. Penny wears a red dress and her hair is up.

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Penny Is The Naked Punk

30 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by Penny Pepper in A Disabled Woman, Activism, Disability Politics, Intuition, Love, Naked, Politics, Sex, Social justice, Woman Writer, writer, Writing By The Sea

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author, compassion, disabled woman, diversity, East Sussex, England, feminism, feminist, inclusion, journalist, Naked, new stories, performer, poet, pride, privilege, punk, social justice, spoken word, storytelling, subvert, woman writer, women, writer

Why am I The Naked Punk?

Punk is my raw beginning. It saw my writing find a raging home in early fanzines. It fired a freedom in me to start accepting myself, that I was OK as a human being, as a woman, as a creative, who could challenge the categories imposed upon me. It is the energy that triggered my activism, and my passion for social justice and equality.

I’m Naked because I strive to be open in my writing, to show what needs to be shown.

Stories that strip away stereotype and expectation, stories that you’ve not heard before, because we’ve been barred from that privileged club for so long.

My stories subvert and maybe challenge, in the same way I provoke when I’ve posed naked – literally – for artists and photographers, and when I’ve performed burlesque. To draw an audience into a nakedness, to share the fun and the message: accept yourself, accept a new story.

Sometimes it’s good to know when I’m too naked. When the challenges we all face conspire to make us vulnerable and forgetful of protecting ourselves. I don’t want to be in this space. No one should, and we can find compassion for ourselves and each other to not let this happen. Naked is always a choice.

As The Naked Punk, I’ll always be on this bumpy journey.

I don’t have answers and it’s not easy – but through my work I’ll enjoy sharing punky naked questions along the way.

Book signing in Brighton, December 2017

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A Little Penny Blog: Poor Building, Poor Futures and Insomnimonster

27 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by Penny Pepper in A Disabled Woman, Activism, Disability Politics, Politics, Social justice, Woman Writer

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activist, austerity, blog, Bullingdon club, Conservatives, cynicism, disability, disabled people, disabled woman, Insomnia, Maximus, Mslexia, poet, politics, poverty, sleep, social care, social justice, Tories, writer

I didn’t sleep till 3am. About. Why is it, I can fall asleep in the car in startling sunlight, but squirm in my too-hot bed in a wretched state past the witching hour? Counting cats, fussing my cat, doing a crossword, sitting up, laying down. Staring at my eyelids. Any ideas, my friends how to slay the Insomnimonster?

I did think, hey, I’ll start doing some little blogs. Stop all this fretting for the Big Idea. This is the big idea.

I’m in a state of flux. Oh lots going on, such as working for the marvellous Mslexia people with a blog, and around the near corner there is more. Meanwhile…

Look, I’m not apologising. I hate a government that pushes profit above people and makes poverty a crime. I’ve read history, I know the Victorians.

We’re reliving that era now. Is anyone looking into the even darker recesses of  Tory plans? Have any property barrens done deals with them Bullingdon Boys to build (cheap crap) places where the very poor can be parked yet? A working rehabilitation centre? Ahem. A Big Society All In It Together Work Hub? Drop-in Back To Work “Counsellors” on hand, all trained online by a Maximarse type programme, naturally, to incentivise you away from being damnable lazy plebs.

As for us Cripples of all types, I can see it now. Vast rebranded warehouses with us all in little truckle beds, cheap po-pots underneath, emptied by those press-ganged from the Job Employment Reassignment Korp…

Oh dear. More for another day. It’s still good to be alive. Honestly.

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Down in the BBC Bunker: Me on the Newsnight Welfare debate

22 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by Penny Pepper in A Disabled Woman, Disability Politics, General Election 2015, Politics, Writing from London

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

activist, austerity, BBC, BBC Newsnight, Conservatives, demonised, disability, disabled, disabled people against cuts, disabled woman, Food banks, general election 2015, ILF, Labour, poem, poet, politicians, politics, save ILF, scroungers, welfare cuts, White Dee, writer

The BBC, at Broadcasting House, is a strange old beast. Somehow reassuringly familiar and ragged at the edges, despite the shiny high tech news centre that beats at the heart of the renovated building.

I’m back for Newsnight, for a discussion on the government’s record on welfare. Down, down in the bowels for the studio, it strikes me as a carpeted nuclear bunker. Corridors, so many corridors, annexes, and turnings. Once in the Green Room, I’m given coffee and go into make up. As usual the BBC staff are polite and helpful, always eager to please.

I’ve done a touch of research – such as scanning through the main parties’ manifestos for new welfare policies and looking up official benefit fraud figures, which incidentally are negligible. Looking through these papers calms me, because while I rarely get nervous in the obvious sense (been around too long!), I am consumed with an anxiety to do my best and make this count. I know there will be a programme agenda – we will be gently coaxed and kept in order – so it’s important to be ready for all opportunities to make a point.

As other guests arrive, I’m struck, as I often am, with a sense of otherness, the Me and Them. Only someone who has experienced exclusion would understand this fully. Everyone was polite. ‘White’ Dee, who shot to fame via Benefits Street, and Lucy Hardwick, from the Accrington Food Bank, were the most approachable. Fraser Nelson, from The Spectator, bore a passing resemblance to Nick Clegg, which was scary in itself. But Nelson did not make eye contact. We waited in an intermittent silence punctuated by small chat, ready to be lead into the studio space. Rumours abound through my Twitter feed that the Tories were scared off, so Mark Harper, Minister for Disabled People, pulled out. Is the Pepper really so fearsome?

I’m reasonably happy with how I did. Pleased I managed to cover some key attacks that the coalition government has landed on us: the closure of ILF; the caps on Access To Work; the sanctions hitting people with learning disabilities and mental health issues, and the demonising of disabled people. Yet there’s always room for more, especially with the election only two weeks away.

Emily Maitlis was charming and skilful; at one point she asked me has the government helped disabled people in anyway? What could I say but ‘Absolutely not.’ I never hide my socialist leanings but, honestly, show me anything remotely of worth that has been done by this government that actually supports and understands the challenges disabled people face.

The experience heightened my belief that there remains a huge gulf between politicians, certain sectors of society (mostly the rich sectors) and disabled people. Maybe the gulf has always been there, but it is at the heart of the discrimination we face now. We are still defined as separate. We are not part of society, in the sense of living within and belonging to communities, families and networks. At least, that’s the perception I come up against throughout my work. We know the opposite is true. We know there have always been disabled people and there always will be. Us today, you tomorrow; that’s how it goes for humanity.

Any other view is frankly a lie and unsupportable. Our definition as ‘other’ and our absence from mainstream consciousness is caused by the barriers and attitudes that we tirelessly fight. I don’t want to reinforce the Them and Us schtick, but I do believe it is ingrained, meaning disabled people have the add burden of these unhelpful, unwanted preconceptions.We make Them uncomfortable and they don’t like it.

I don’t know how we change this, other than chipping away, chipping and chipping as always, which is what I’ve tried to do for 30 years – as have many of us.

At the very least, I suppose it’s a good thing that they have Us on a programme like BBC Newsnight. And so to end I would like to dedicate the poem below to that august programme in thanks for inviting me on-till next time

Scrounger

I’m a sponger, a scrounger

A lazy-arsed lounger

A raspberry* in rainbow

I pose you no danger.

I’m the bottomless pit

Of your pity and debt

On the sick since John Major

I’m still on it yet!

 

I’m the latest cheap target,

Tabloids dark darling

Draining the markets –

The unit of measure

Economic displeasure.

 

I’m a blamed useless-eater

A foul fraud repeater

Do I make it all up?

They say that I suck

The money from purses

Of rich bloated bastards,

The kicks and the curses

Fall from our leaders

On us liars and bleeders,

We’re pariahs and feeders

Gorged on too much –

From the big nanny state.

Yet you’ve condemned us already

There is no debate.

 

We can’t be sustained

Because bankers are greedy

We’re lazy, we’re rank

we’re targets of hate

To e-rad-icate!

 

But I’m a rouser with words

To shout and to hit,

Saying who are the Nazis

Raking over this shit?

 

I shout and I spin

At the string of their lies,

I’m a new Boadicea

Together we rise!

 

They have no compassion

Yet we have rebellion,

and rage with our passion.

As time it is rushing

defiance it chimes!

 

We dare to fight back

We dare to fight loud.

 

WE

DARE

WE

DARE

WE

DARE

 

*raspberry (ripple) cripple

 

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Lost in Spaces: Harold Pinter and the happy slog of rehearsals.

28 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by Penny Pepper in Writing from London

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Daisy Festival, disabled woman, Guildford, Hackney, Hackney Empire Theatre, Harold pinter, London, lost in spaces, rehearsals, Rich Mix, spiral sky, vocal exercises

For the last few weeks I’ve been closer to home in the Harold Pinter Studio at Hackney Empire for rehearsals of Lost in Spaces. Mare Street, where the Empire is situated, is a vibrant and diverse place in Hackney, East London. From the studio’s large windows, I can look down towards Hackney Town Hall. Once, I was a Rhinestone Roller down there in the square.

Bethany, my director, takes me through some vocal exercises and one in particular really strikes a chord, to use a vocal pun. Vowel sounds, over-emphasised, making exaggerated shapes with your lips and mouth. Next, you go through the alphabet, adding a consonant, starting with B. BAY BEE BI BO BOO. And on through to Z. I change my tone and my speed. I slide up and down a scale. My throat feels a little tight to begin with but I know it is building up strength.

This week we do the first complete run through of Lost in Spaces – albeit with stops and starts and as yet no real props. There are three sections to the piece, allowing me to ‘rest’ for 3-5 minutes off stage, during transitions that will most probably feature tracks from my 90s LP, “Spiral Sky”, with a photomontage. Oh what heady days, and all the hits that never were… We will see!

Next time, off to Rich Mix for rehearsals. And mustn’t forget to mention a chance to do a tiny preview of the show at Daisy Fest in Guildford on June 4th. Hope to see lots of you there! 

As time passes with all this work and development on Lost in Spaces, I’m excited as much as I’m nervous.

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Penny Pepper Writer and Poet of the Untold

Penny Pepper Writer and Poet of the Untold

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Recent Posts

  • Assorted Thoughts of Penny & Leicester, The Naked Punk Approaches
  • Today I Wrote a Poem
  • The Naked Punk Shows Her Claws
  • Swifts and Trips
  • Penny Is The Naked Punk
  • Penny’s Pen is Ready to Poke
  • Sundry Thoughts: Rogue One – Crips and Twists.
  • You Should Know Better: a regular blog on stereotypes and disabled people
  • My Journals: Invasions and Legacies
  • Penny Thoughts: The World Gone Crazy.

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Penny at Soho Theatre

Abnormally Funny PeopleFebruary 20th, 2012
Doing a guest slot of witty words and charming cello with Jo Cox. Come and cheer us on!

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