We sat down for a chat with Poppy Burton-Morgan about her latest project
What was the transition like from poetry pamphlet to full stage performance?
Well, it’s been a gradual and joyously iterative process. The show really started life as a single performed poem – the title poem ‘Explaining Being Pan to Nan’ which I read, at the very last minute having been suddenly offered an open mic slot, at a poetry night in Frome in October 2024. Then I realised there were a few more things to be potentially explained to Nan, and for her to explain to me… so by the end of the year I’d written the entire pamphlet.
Then in January I had the great pleasure of performing a 10 minute slot at The Glitch in Waterloo, which is now my London venue for the full tour. As a predominantly queer space celebrating queer artists I thought I’d share 10 minutes of the Explaining poems (rather than my nature poems or my complaining-about-parenting poems – those being my other main poetic themes) and it was so well received that in February I decided, very much on a whim to turn it all into a show. Now we’re in June and the shows about to open (back in Frome where it all started only 8 months ago) so it’s been pretty whirlwind. But I’ve had lots of headline poetry gigs over the spring so I’ve been testing the individual poems in front of audiences and rewriting as I go.
Of course preparing the pamphlet for publication and last minute edits on the manuscript has also fed back into the performance. Obviously there are some nuances of tone that you can only communicate through performance but similarly or conversely the formatting of the text on the page, the choice of punctuation, the placement of line endings – that also communicates something that can’t necessarily expressed in performance. There are also more poems in the pamphlet – I’ve kept back the trauma ones to live solely in the book. So that’ll be fun for all my readers!
Were there any surprises in how the material evolved?
Yes – I did not expect it to end up so tender. Although I shouldn’t really be surprised by that, because the majority of my writing, which historically has been musical theatre and opera, is absolutely characterised by its heart.
I also didn’t actually realise the poems were as funny as (certainly some) people find them until I started performing them aloud. So then I rewrote them, leaning into those comic rhythms (which generally meant moving punchlines from the middle to the end of the line) – it’s a particular thing writing ‘funny’, it’s like writing music in terms of the rhythm of a joke.
Your Nan sounds amazing. Tell us a bit about her.
My Nan – well actually she was always known to us as Mutti, which is German for mother, because that’s what my mum and her siblings were raised to call her. I did consider calling the show ‘Explaining Nooky to Mutti’ but it needed too much contextualising, also as becomes clear in the show – she definitely doesn’t need straight up nooky explaining to her. In fact she ends up doing a decent amount of explaining to me! But what a woman. Iconic. Married at 18, 4 children by her mid twenties and then she decides in her 30s to go to university for the first time and ends up as an English professor. Married 4 times – an absolutely outrageous flirt – the younger the better. Actually the definition of a cougar. Wild, original and an icon. Rosemarie Morgan, Rosie to her friends. The whole show is dedicated to her.
What’s been the hardest part about staging something so personal?
Learning the lines.
I literally have no shame around sharing this hugely personal autobiographical content – maybe it’s my autism and the classic autistic capacity for oversharing but I literally feel completely at ease telling a room full of strangers, or friends, found family or even blood-related family about my pegging dildo and my sexting exploits.
But having spent the last seventeen years working entirely as a writer and director the biggest challenge for me on this show is returning to performing and learning the lines. And it’s not even tge actual learning because I can learn them. I have learnt them. It’s the fear of not remembering the lines. I’ve literally gone back into therapy to overcome my performance-anxiety. So vulnerable making, this whole process. It’s really reaffirmed my compassion for actors who do this shit all the time. Put me back in the auditorium giving notes!!!
And what’s been the most rewarding?
The audience response literally makes me cry. As I establish in the show I’m a big cryer anyway, but as I’ve been testing out bits and bobs of material over the last 6 months I am repeatedly humbled and heartwarmed by the range of responses. I get tears of gratitude and laughter of recognition from the young (or older) queers seeing their experiences represented. I get people who just love the language – poetry audiences are really passionate about poetry (probably because poetry audiences are mostly made up of fellow poets). And then I get the people who’ve genuinely had their minds blown, like the softly spoken dapper gentleman who accosted me outside the loos after a performance to quietly tell me that he’d greatly enjoyed my set and learned a lot!
Has performing this show changed the way you think about your past relationships -or even your future ones?
Yes!!! I’ve realised, really retrospectively, that I’m soooo not fussed about all the kinky adventurous sex. I mean it was fun and it gave me some great material for the pamphlet and this show but I really just want someone to hold hands with.
I also feel such affection for all the people I talk about in the show – all of whom (bar Tom the Dom*) I’m still friends with and have invited to see the show. In fact there are a few ex lovers that I’m now much more reconnected with because of doing this show (from me just checking in that they’re happy to be represented in it, albeit anonymously – because consent is everything!!!) So I would highly recommend creating an autobiographical poetry show about your previous lovers as a really effective way of making friends with exes.
And for the record I am still currently available for holding hands and going for dim sum.
*I was going to meet Tom the Dom for dinner, dim sum, as it happens, but then he ghosted me. So his is the only ‘revenge poem’ in the show. But I think that’s fair enough and let it be a warning to ghosting fuckbois everywhere. Also Tom, if you ever read this – you still owe me dim sum.
EXPLAINING BEING PAN TO NAN tours the UK from June 18th to October 2nd.