Here is a photo of some of my fellow poets at the fabulous evening mentioned bellow. Here you can see Simon William, Susan Taylor, Clive Pig, Kristina Bieganski, Tim King, James Turner and Jackie Juno. Clive and Jackie being the two headed Bard of Exeter for this coming year and Simon and Susan both having been heavily involved with the Arvon foundation. We were all part of a selection of workshops brought about by Apples and Snakes and held in the Barbican Theatre, we were blessed to have been taught by the fabulously crisp and clear Lucy English and for our final workshop Francesca Beard for final tips on how too survive the stage. The set of workshops culminated in this gig at the B-bar, Barbican Theatre, Plymouth.
The Beautful Bar at the Barbican
The evening was amazing, as a group it would be fair to say that we had truly been on a journey together walking beside each other, the more experienced as mentioned above and the Virgin performers and anything in between from seasoned Open Mic-ers to my self - a patchy participator in which ever scene i find myself near to on my travels.
The night was opened by an apparently spontaneous argument beginning in the audience, however, just before the British silent panic grew, it became clear that it was actually orchestrated by Clive Pig as the opening to his piece 'Poetry is not a Four Letter Word'. Exploding out from the audience Clive began his "verbal tirade on the anti-poetry brigade" leaving the audience in no doubt that the poetry they were about to hear that evening was going to be exciting and varied.
After this outburst we were guided through the evening by the wonderful Mama Tokus resident compere at the Barbican Theatre who had also been being Kindled as a performance poet, she shared with us her exuberant and lively poem about the Marchesa Luisa Casati.
Jackie Juno and Mama Tokus
There were four poets in each section with a refreshing 10minute break between each section, the organisation at the Barbican is top notch and I believe we have the Apples and Snakes co-ordinator for our area, Gina Sherman, to thank for that as well as the other staff at the Barbican. I think it's really important to recognise how much attention it takes to listen to poetry properly and those 10 minute breaks make all the difference for both performers and audience.
On to the other poets - every poet held their own space on the stage drawing around them selves their own special air, each poet reading only one poem meant the change-overs were fast and the selection diverse. There were poems about Essex girls teaching astro-physics, the diversity and togetherness found in a chip shop queue, beautiful friends in memorandum with exquisite cello backings. One poem contained thoughts on the large hadron collider, bits of folk music, funny info on ancient folk lyrics, the benefits, or lack of, in eating Ivy, we had some MCing from MCMC that flowed into some impressive free-styling. We had intimate and revealing poems about the power of friendship versus the sway of drug addiction, one about the nature of trying to capture a poem, another of 10 things about the poet, one of a poets ideal world and the final poem from Jackie Juno about the magic of birth hilariously punctuated with "bovine screams and lupine howls".
MCMC and myself
An all in all wonderful night and i would like to thank Apples and Snakes and the Barbican Theatre for making it all possible and i would like to thank my fellow poets all for being so wonderfully talented and fun to metaphorically travel with.
Kisses of gratitude x x x
