Luke Wright worries "too much" about whether he is considered a proper poet.

Though his recent writing has been on respectably weighty subjects like funerals, messed-up friends and love, he has a prediliction for the humorous which doesn't always sit well in the world of "serious" poetry.

Most damningly, he performs his work.

It shouldn't be a problem, but, as he points out, there is a snobbery about performance poetry, especially the funny kind. People don't generally hold the likes of John Cooper Clarke in the same esteem as Keats, for instance.

Luke didn't actually set out to be a performance poet. He is dyslexic and couldn't read his poems properly off the page.

"They sounded rubbish when I read them, so I started learning them and that's where my performing style came from," he says.

"But I don't like the term performance poet' because people can be like, "We're real poets and you're performance poets."

"We're all poets in our own way and I think poetry itself should be sonorous. Whether it's Sylvia Plath or Attila The Stockbroker - most of the best stuff works well being read aloud."

Luke definitely set out to be a poet. Even as a graduate he would sneak off early from his "crap temp jobs" to perform gigs in far-flung parts of the country.

He is the founder of poetry collective Aisle 16, hosts the Glastonbury Festival Leftfield stage and has two five-star Edinburgh Fringe shows to his name.

He curates Suffolk's Latitude Festival's Poetry Arena - the largest live poetry event in Europe - and has co-written a book, Who Writes This Crap?, a stocking-fillerish rogue's gallery of rubbish writing from pretentious restaurant menus to a jargon-laden letter from the council.

It's an impressive CV. And he's only 26.

Recently married, Luke's latest show, Poet and Man, is, he says, more personal and more reflective than his previous one, Poet Laureate. In the latter, he put forward his tongue-in-cheek manifesto for his election to Andrew Motion's post and showcased poetry about middle-class Ikea riots.

Now, satirical lines about the pretension of Brit Art ("Get new/Then get newer/Go through a blue period/Then get bluer") have been replaced with poems about dying with honour rather than dignity and the early days of his marriage: "We ask each other non-sequiteurs/that don't seem worth answering/Do you think Kate still has that old sideboard?/Will it rain at Glastonbury this year?/When do you think my order will arrive?"

But Luke is wary of becoming too self-absorbed - "I don't want people to think it's just me w***king on stage" - and the sense of Wright-as-stand-up tends to outweigh the heavier material.

Just look at It's Mimms O'Clock, his ode to South Mimms Service Station, or the Central Trains lament, Stuck In The Middle With You: "Your station staff are wretched./Their inertia is infectious./Your conductors talk like fascists/to disguise the fact they're feckless./Your seats stained with the gruel/of a thousand black-shoed spectres./Your colour scheme is/S**t."

"I think you can do lots of stuff with comedy and make just as many serious points," he says. "All my heroes, from Pope and Swift right through to Betjemen and Cooper Clark were all able to make a serious and poignant point while being funny as well.

"I think when people see performance poets they think we're slaves to the humour, that we're trying to be serious but we can't resist getting a knob gag in there.

"Everyone wants to have a really funny poem that gets laughs all the way through because it's great to perform live, but if a poem won't be that, it won't be that.

"The poem has to come first."

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