Thanks to Rose Condo for photo of me 🙂

So, this is my first local gig since moving to this county, so I felt some pressure to get a good turnout and atmosphere. I ate a Bao bun for the first time in The River Head before heading over to The Mechanics to check the venue was set up.

Rose Condo

Rose Condo, my co-host for the evening, started the event with a poem which was about eh secret thoughts of pens. And then read a poem where we blew bubbles when we heard a word repeated. Both the bubbles and Rose were very fun to photograph.

After Rose followed a varied and enthusiastic bunch of open miccers.

Showcase Poets

Sadly, one of the showcase poets pulled out a few days before. I managed to replace her and then the replacement poet contacted with lost voice and full of a cold. I made the decision instead of booking someone at the last minute who would not have time to prepare, the fee for the missing poet would go back into the tour costs as online audiences are really low now and audience numbers in real life at some events have been lower than I guessed.

Tim Taylor

Wow! The handmade guitar poem. A ‘flame that flickers in the wood’ and it ‘has a voice but can never sing alone.’ And Tim writes well about what it is like to live/be in the valley, ‘I rushed laughing through their valleys, like a stream.’

Felix Owusu-Kwarteng

Barry Bacteria and Victor Virus were brilliantly inhabited and the wordplay and rhyme in these were equally fun and dark. ‘Cure, kill and conquer, alter the sensation of taste.’ And ‘vindictive, virulent virtuoso.’  And, wisdom in the saying I had not heard before: ‘Never roll a barrel down a two-sided hill.’

Jack Faricy

Jack performed an exquisite piece about carrying a piece of lapis lazuli up a hill ‘a block of blue makes the sky look less like sky.’ And he talked of ‘the peace of mind that comes from painting on window frames.’  

Anna Tuck

Anna’s self-love poems were beautiful and affirming. Self-love is ‘a lifeline when you haven’t got a friend.’ And I was so sad for the ‘baby tomato crying when he loses his Mum at the fruit and veg stall.’

Joe Williams

I think we all know Joe’s ‘deluded busker’, and if we don’t, it may just be us:

“40% Oasis, 

40% Coldplay,

20% Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.”

And from ‘Hibernation’:

“It was a blizzard year

that brought down houses,

bit through brick and bone,”

made me think of the three Beast from the Easts we have had since moving over The Pennines.

And an after party!

One of the best things about a local gig, apart from going back to you own bed on the last bus, is the fact you can have an after party 😊 I met Joe’s parents who I had met dozens of times online but never in real life.