Modern street poetry began in London in the early 70's with Street Talk Pete, who had learned about it whilst living in New York. Peter Baines (as was his real name) had met some of the Greenwich Village poets. His poems were originally about reminiscences of his life there with his girl-friend and later wife Marilyn. He printed up multiple A4 size copies of his writings, with titles and sketches, which he sold on the streets of New York; he called his street poetry distribution the "street talking press". He then brought this to Britain , and set up the "street talking press" in London.

Bongo Mike met him in 1972 in Charing Cross Road. They began distributing poems together, and the first one was a joint venture, which they would distribute on opposite sides of the street.

Bongo Mike was not satisfied to be the "Number Two Street Poet" in London, as Street Talk Pete jokingly called him. Bongo then started distributing poems on his own, and between 1972 and 1978 wrote and sold multiple copies of around seventy illustrated street poems of his own composition, arranged in several series:- " moments, a solitary walk, motorway, bongo doodles, the death of a street poet, breakdown", and a final series composed in a student cafeteria in Leuven Belgium "living in the gutter" (which were never sold on the streets).

Angus Mcgill, writing in the London Evening Standard in the early period of Street Poetry, commented: "For nine months now Bongo Mike has lived solely from the proceeds of his poetry. Can the Poet Laureate say the same?"

Bongo also had numerous exhibitions of visual poems in places like Camden Arts Centre, Camden Lock, BIT information, the Japanese Garden and the Bath Festival of Alternative Arts. The visual poems, which were in colour, comprised poem, sketch and collage, and were exhibited in normal white-wall situations. Bongo Mike, however, being perhaps over-idealistic in his early days, did not sell the originals of these works, despite receiving some offers.

A SOLITARY WALK.

Bongo expanded the distribution of the street poems into a wide number of venues - mainly public place situations - and it was while doing this that he first became aware of the multiple performance possibilities in the Situation Art concept - although he did not dwell on this at the time. And as well as streets, he performed and sold poems on mainline railway-station concourses, tube station platforms, tube station ticket halls and inside tube-trains and buses.

AN EXAMPLE OF THE FIRST BONGO POEM SERIES

Street poetry in its day had an underground image, which was seen as rebellious. After an exhibition at Camden lock, Bongo Mike stayed in an empty house opposite Bit Information in the Westminster part of Notting Hill Gate. He worked on a series of visual poems called "The Light in the Window", which was then exhibited in the offices of Bit Information.

Shortly after a review of this exhibition in a Kensington Newspaper, followed up by a brief review on television, vandals claiming to be from the council, smashed up his home and his few treasured possessions, and he was made homeless.
It was not long after that he met Extremely Frank Jeremy.

Extremely Frank Jeremy (Jeremy Helm) began working with Bongo Mike in 1974, distributing the street poems in the various performance places that were now developing. As he said to the Evening Standard (many years later when they had stopped performing street poetry and were already performing music in multiple public places): "I was impressed by the idea of this less limited way of presenting poetry, taking it out of the academic context".

After studying English literature At Cambridge University, Extremely was looking for something a bit less rarified.

But he was not expecting that, after they had been invited to perform some street poetry at the "Windsor Free Festival", the whole festival would be smashed up by the police just before they were about to perform.
But they carried on with street poetry despite this, distributing and sometimes performing around the whole country.

At the end of the episode however street poetry collapsed for economic reasons.
Printing the street poetry became too expensive for the price of the sheets on the street (they had always been proper prints, not mere photocopies).

Years later when they had begun performing musical Situation Art there was a dramatic postscript to the street poetry era.

In November 1987 their photo appeared on the front page of the Independent Newspaper, along with them being in the opinion column of the same edition of the paper (about their campaign for Situation Art).

Four days later they were present in the ticket office of Kings Cross tube station during the "Kings Cross Fire"

And in the thick murderous smoke their knowledge of the ticket hall gained from street poetry saved their own lives and that of others who followed them to safety.

After the official inquiry into the fire they were awarded "certificates of appreciation" for bravery, by the Chief Constable of the Transport Police.

There was however in the street poetry era the growing virus of accessible art" which invaded street poetry because of concepts like "bringing poetry to the people"; this was quite different from situation art, which Bongo and Extremely became aware of, and later on developed further, through their musical work.

A few of the poems which Bongo wrote and they both distributed, demonstrate the inner conflict which was unconsciously developing in street poetry between the growing fashion of "accessible art" and their developing awareness of "situation art" in their street poetry distribution.

Poems on the Underground
Some years after the collapse of street poetry a venture called Poems on the Underground appeared - these were poems in amongst the advertisements on the insides of underground tube trains, sponsored by various Arts Council type organizations. In this venture there was no inter-activity between the public and the artist - an example of accessible art, although the original inspiration of poems distributed in public places clearly stems from street poetry.
But there was no arts council grant, or any other grant, for street poetry, despite approaches and applications made by the street poets, and even though some of the venues where the visual poems were exhibited were in part sponsored by the arts council.

It was noticeable that street theatre groups who existed solely from arts council grants began and ended only so long as there was a grant available for them - whereas street poetry proved itself inter-actively as a working force, and only collapsed because of financial problems which any venture can run into.

POEMS EXHIBITED ABOVE
"THE LAST TUBE HAS GONE - from the series "death of a Street Poet", A SOLITARY WALK - from the series "a solitary walk", THE STORM - from the series "moments", THINGS COULD BE WORSE - from the series "death of a street poet", POEM OF ILLUSION and POEM TO A SIGNPOST - both from the series "a solitary walk".