🚨Warning: may contain rhyming couplets, theatrics and swearing 👀
Welcome to Poet’s Corner – home to performance poetry written by Viola VV Fox.
In spring 2026 I attended a Performance Poetry workshop at The Northern Lights Writers’ Conference at The Waterside Arts Centre in Sale, with the bloomin’ brilliant Louise Fazackerley. Spurred on with helpful advice, I gained the confidence to take the rhymes and riddles I’d been scribbling down for burlesque acts and potential song material and turn them into stand alone-pieces.
The traditional Poets’ Corner is in Westminster Abbey, where over 100 poets and writers are buried. Nearly amongst them, and my personal favourite, is Aphra Behn – a 17th century playwright, poet, novelist and spy, who wrote under a pseudonym. Her controversy earned her a burial spot near Poets’ Corner but not actually in it – giving her the punk edge I admire in any poet.
The Clockwork Riddle
Viola, Viola, babe, babe, babe
Listen, listen, listen
I know I am the villain
In the pressure for conception
I turn the cogs
That rule human perception
I've got no eyes
I've got a perfect face
You don't need to fear me
I can be embraced
Measure me in blood
Sorry - sunlight, sand
I hold all your answers
But I can't hold your hand
Though I'd really f****** like to...
I am simply a convention
A continuum, a dimension
Seen, heard, everywhere
Through mechanical invention
Viola, I can heal all your wounds
By the second, minute, hour
What am I then, eh?
A constraint or a superpower?
Welcome to the Circus
When she's oh so sad
Her circus comes to town
She longs to be a pin-up
She feels like a clown
For the prize of rotten candy
She gambles her worth
In her hall of mirrors
She sees a little girl
Join her on her carousel
Her organ strikes again
Drink whisky
Light a cigarette
Seek the validation
Of men
Welcome to her show
This is her confession
A cocktail of absurdity
A tale of depression
What does a woman do
When her sadness comes around?
She picks a pen up at the piano
And she writes it all down.
More performance poetry coming soon!
The Life Crisis 