Conor Rogers

A collection of poems written and performed by Conor Rogers.

Conor’s poetry is a newly discovered discipline, It has been used to further expand on the narratives within his paintings. He uses his poetic language to translate both his sense of self and his symbolic connection to life in Britain. He investigates his connections to memory, nostalgia, place, cultural identities, class, power dynamics and personal philosophy. His poems can either emerge quickly and instinctually in response to lived experiences or very slowly through hours of self exploration to uncover deeper meanings to his themes.

He addresses themes such as, belonging, council estate sub cultures, class stereotypes, social insecurities and glorification, British histories and traditions. He utilises humour, fears, slang, dialect, prejudices, habits, our ego’s to set the intensity of his stories. He likes to invoke a stronger connection to his poetic works through spoken word which are often narrated with either comedic intensity or forceful direction, emphasising dialect, slowing and speeding up deliveries of metaphors and controlling the manner of meaning. Through poetic text and visual language he endeavours to offer windows of engagement for readers and listeners to witness his allegorical and symbolic odes to life.

This collection of poems have been created between 2020 - 2021

“CW: content contains a few swear words.”

‘A taste of their empire’ - This poem was created in response to the visual and auditory memories of walking around Conor’s council estate. It is inspired by the current narrative of being a 'Manor Boy' (a youth from the Manor Estate, Sheffield) which has acted as a thread of dialogue for many of Conor’s recent paintings. The use of the term empire here is an attempt to question the notion of belonging. This resulting memory trace draws attention to the nature of life on the council estate, the experiences, the sounds, the conflicts which have imprinted themselves into Conor’s identity.

‘Home’ - This poem is an extension to the painting Conor created back in 2020 called ‘Home’, whilst it simultaneously is an artwork in itself. It is an attempt to document his encounter with a homeless man called ‘Richard’ on the streets of Sheffield. He imagined himself in the shoes of Richard and attempted to write a poem highlighting the topics they discussed, deconstructing both his own personal relationship with the experience as well as paying respect to Richard’s story. He wanted to use the poem as a tool to discuss what home is to us, to reveal our own ignorances, as well as highlighting the contrasts between the wealth divides and social power structures.

‘Manor Boys’ - Is a response to Conor’s recent solo show 'Manor Boy' at Yorkshire ArtSpace Sheffield in 2021. For the show he engages with and interrogates the demonisation of the estate he grew up on in both local imagination and national press. With the poem he offers a more personal, nuanced and familial representation of the community of residents through the lens of his own experiences – coming of age the Manor Estate. He is interested in the symbolism and burden of language and its role in storytelling, affecting perception and reinforcing stereotypes.

‘Dreams of a better life’ - A personal and society wide requirement of dreaming for better things lead the artist to explore the social conditioning behind this psychology . What is the better life? Will we ever find out what it is? Are we all continually conditioned to want more? The poem highlights how social and cultural indifference can imprison you based on your circumstances and create a yearning for more and more. Our utopian beliefs can become dystopias especially when external conditions affect how we understand who we are.

‘I am not a bitch’ - To write this poem Conor observed his personal connections to motherhood and the roles they played on his community. “Mothers, you would hear their cries, their rage, their laughter echo from their front porches through the streets, like the guardians of the estate.” He uses his relationship to memories of his own mother as well as the mothers from the estate to form the narrative of the poem. It highlights their bravery, their vulnerabilities and impulses, their strength and defiance.

‘Pop the lock’ - Conor wrote this poem as a response to an old form of local slang called ‘twocking’ (stealing cars). He wanted to use the term as means engaging with the social behavioural tendencies inhibited by the youth culture he was once surrounded by. This poem is essentially about the paths we choose to walk down and the circumstances that direct us there . It uses the Police chases Conor would witness on a daily basis to structure the narrative of the poem. Whilst it identifies the criminality present and the psyche of neighbourhood bad-boys it also points towards the underclass demonisation which occupied their lives. “Crime was an unfortunate escape for them, a way of rebelling, a tool for miss-guided social empowerment and a way of developing some sense of control and power in a world of so little help and support”.

‘Sign your soul’ - A poem about our complicit nature of going with the crowd and living a life where economic status over rides the spirit of self. Conor explores the gap between the two, where freedom and imprisonment come face to face with each other to provide context on what is conditioning your life.
”For me I felt this pressure following the process of trying to buy a house whilst at the same time I was grieving for the loss of a family member. I was caught between the terror of committing to a mortgage and being present for a powerfully important moment in my life. My sense of freedom was brought into question and the result was the reality of what is truly important to us”. The poems intention is to translate the societal and personal narratives that condition peoples understanding of happiness. It uses the base of getting a mortgage, getting married and having kids as a pathway into questioning these conditions.

‘These kindred spirits’ - The temptations of gang life and the rewards of higher social status seemed to be an attraction to most on Conor’s council estate. Many were completely unaware of the social indoctrination influencing their behaviour. For this poem it plays on their vulnerabilities, rituals, behaviours and the quest in pursuing acceptance. He would use memory as a base for this piece and describe lived experiences within the body of the poem. It offers commentary on what motivated the so-called ‘gangsters’ to take up their social roles and uses sarcasm to reveal how they would emote these roles, instead becoming naive and child-like.

‘What are the odds?’ - A poem written in response to the betting slip painting series 'its going Darnall'. It is about the ritualistic behaviours of people and the spaces/environments they inhabited. “The betting office to me is like my own holy place, I made a pilgrimage there every weekend with my granddad. I found deeper connections to people who shared the world I was amongst, stories, hopes, desires and failures were all captured/experienced and I want the work to express this connection. The work is an attempt to tell a story of experiences with addiction, with false hopes, with our working class rituals but most importantly the sense of who we are.”

‘Reggie’ - Conor uses the discovery of a close friends family pet Parrot ‘Reggie’ as a shrine to cultural differences. The bird is used as a symbol of irony, it embodies the ‘Mockery’ of a culture and plays on the parrots characteristics of ‘Mimicking’ the sounds it heres. Conor imagined the bird as a commentator for society passing judgements and slurs to his community. The bird is used as an all knowing being, a powerful oracle where the family seek wisdom for handling the societal judgements they experience as a member of lower end of the class system. The irony of the birds wisdom presents engagement points for readers or listeners to question their relationship to class, social discrimination, ownership and the commodities that represent us.

‘Piggy Lane’ - Conor narrates the short journey he would take walking the dog with his grandfather down an old dirt road between the local allotments always finishing at the pub. The poem is what Conor likes to call a ‘memory trace’ a technique of describing the memory of a place or time and is used to reconnect him to the memory in present day.