On stage

In the studio

The CD

Some media comments

Gareth Calway, Poet
“With the ruthless eye of an assassin and the deep affection of a man coming home, poet Gareth Calway laid into the very structures of Welsh identity last night (18/4/00).

Performing his one-man show at Cwmbran’s Congress Theatre, he lampooned the characters familiar to us all from our schooldays and beyond.

The 75 minute performance, called Marked For Life, features selected works from Calway’s three books. Although a teenager in Pontypool and Abersychan, he now lives in Norfolk and works as a head of English at a local school.

The audience of around 50 people warmly applauded each energetic rendition.

Targets included the boy who felt odd because he didn’t want to play rugby - to a line up of grotesque teachers familiar to anyone with a mind to remember.

To a soundtrack of Lennon, Dylan, Bowie and Pink Floyd, Calway parodied his own profession with characters such as Mr Hasbeen - he took early retirement at the age of 92 - to his modern equivalent Mr Trendy - armed with a degree in child psychology he thinks he knows it all.

Other Welsh totems such as the pub, language and the powerful role of Our Mam In The Family all fell under his attack.

Typically Welsh, he reserved some of the best jibes for himself in this semi-autobiographical and totally entertaining show.

A studio CD of the show, combining poems, documentary sound effects and songs, is available from Ancyrian, Cole Green, Sedgeford, Norfolk, PE36 5LS for £12”
South Wales Argus, 19/04/01

“A marvellously witty - and at times poignant - take on the ‘best years of our lives’ set on the day of an OFSTED inspection at the fictional Driftwood King Edward I Grammar Secondary Modern Comprehensive! Calway, who teaches English in Hunstanton, is a natural performer and the CD - based on a one-man show of the same name - is a lively mix of poetry, theatre and rock music featuring a host of colourful school characters and types. An imaginative antidote to the narrow and clinical culture of league tables.
EDP Books, February 2001

Celt Versus Woodhead
Calway’s “Marked For Life” album contains comic accounts of his coalfield and grammar school adolescence, a few tender moments and two staffroom crowd-pleasers, “OFSTED” and “The Bullying Woodenhead”. His poems are enhanced with documentary sound samples and Les Chappell's skilled guitar work.

Poetry can be found as well as made. An England and Bristol City supporter, Calway has recently been recording crowds at football matches. “Their songs are full of poetry and passion,” he says...

At heart Calway is an educator, a man who wants to give a love of language to young people, but who is prevented from doing so by the demands of the national curriculum (and now the Key Stage 3 Framework.) “You can’t teach year 9 a love of Shakespeare and coach them for exams at the same time,” he says, sadly. Too often we’re going through the motions.” What he can’t do in the classroom, he now does in theatres, village halls, staff-rooms, community centres and at festivals. Reflective rock and roll poetry in the mould of John Cooper Clarke and Linton Kwesi Johnson. And because he cares about education, he’s give it a sharp and intelligent campaigning edge.”
New Times, May 2000

Gareth told “The Teacher”- “my schooldays show Marked For Life gives a chalk-face view of teaching over 20 years and also gives a background based on my own years as a pupil and student.”

Funny and poignant - and not without a healthy NUT view of successive government education policies (as in the poem, OFSTED) ruining what ought to be “the best job in the world”- other titles give a flavour of the experience: Child of the 60s (a Lennon pastiche), Welsh Rubgy, An Act of Worship, School Disco Rap (from Symphony No. 1 in Coal Minor), The Bullying Woodhead (sic) and Sex Education. 32 tracks - poems and songs, fiction and documentary, complete with school sound effects - are collected on a CD of the same name. His coalfield schooldays in Wales set the mood- “Rugby isn’t cricket in Wales - it’s war.” Bullies are pikes and teachers are sharks who mark us for life.
Mitch Howard, March 2000

“with a one man touring poetry and theatre show set in a fictional Welsh comprehensive on the day of an OFSTED inspection, Gareth has conjured up an hilarious gallery of colourful characters from trendy teachers to Old School Tartars.”
EDP

“strong, passionate and tinged with regret and humour without losing an ounce of lyricism”
Red Sharks

“Marked For Life is quite brilliant”
Schools Poetry Review

“An authentic report from the chalk-face”
Peterloo Poets