(Hicks/Stickley/Sutherland/Wright)
In July 2006 the UK’s top poetry collective Aisle16 set off on a destination-less tour of motorway service stations to create a bizarre poetic travelogue of these soulless strips of consumerist hell. Is there beauty in a KFC mega bucket? Can poetry exist on the M25? And is it really better to travel hopefully than to arrive?
Aisle16’s Services to Poetry details the five days Aisle16 spent under the neon lights of Britain’s service stations. Featuring ten original poems, each one a desperate post card home from nowhere, backed by grainy camera visuals and the dullest holiday slide show ever.
Aisle16’s Services to Poetry features Aisle16’s trademark digital slideshow, their patented ‘multi-vox’ delivery style, and includes pieces such as It’s Mimm’s O’Clock, Luke Wright’s riotous clobbering of South Mimms services; The Nakedness of the Long Distance Driver, Stickley’s paranoid tale of his time in a Trucker’s shower; Hick’s woozy roadside dumping, At Ferrybridge; and Sutherland’s ode to arcades and the blue light gun, 21 Light Gun salute. Each poem is preceded by an extended introduction that slowly unravels the story.
Aisle16’s Services to Poetry is a more personal show than Poetry Boyband. It tempers the groups acerbic, surreal edge with poignancy as Aisle16 search for some kind of meaning in what is turning out to be the worst holiday ever.
“It has a purity and power you never expect until it is there in front of you.” Johann Hari, The Evening Standard