Diary of a Listener: September 2008
I spend an extraordinary amount of time each week attending poetry readings and other live literature events. I probably get to an average of two per week although sometimes it’s more than that. For example, according to my diary, on the five evenings between Wednesday Feb 27th and Sunday March 2nd this year I attended four events and only missed getting to another one on Saturday 1st because of transport problems. If everyone watched this much live literature there would be no future for digital television.
I suppose for many poets the poetry scene partly exists to fulfill a function that would once have been performed by the local pub. You turn up, you meet some people you know, you have a few drinks, something vaguely entertaining happens and often, by the end, some people have a few drinks too many and end up doing some shouting at each other. But the poetry itself obviously matters, too.
There’s so much live literature going on in London these days that there’s a choice of events most nights. Encouragingly, most of them get half-decent attendances and the ones I’ve ended up at recently have generally been worth going to, even if Dragons Den’s been on.
Loads of people turned up to the launch of Peter Ebsworth’s Southbank Poetry magazine at The Poetry Café towards the end of July. Peter put together an impressive line-up that ranged from Roddy Lumsden giving a preview reading of new poems from his new collection, to several contributors to the magazine who had never read in public before.
The Poetry Café is a great venue from the point of view that it’s centrally located and everyone knows where it is. As a space to read and listen to poetry, the downstairs cellar feels like The Poetry Society bought it specifically to inspire darkly comic poems about performances curtailed by malfunctioning fans and audience members collapsing due to suffocation. At the Southbank Poetry event, Niall O’Sullivan got an even more positive reception than he would’ve got for his excellent poetry by slightly cutting short his preinterval set to allow the audience to go upstairs to catch their breath.
Bingo Master’s Breakout is another event that takes place in a basement. Named after a song by The Fall, it’s London’s most popular (and probably only) poetry, karaoke and bingo night. It’s hosted by The Vintage Poison collective (Kevin Reinhardt, Lucy Leagrave, Robert Yates and Gareth Lewis) at the St Aloysius Social Club, near Euston Station.
Each poet gets to read one poem and perform one karaoke song. There’s a featured poet who also gets to act as bingo caller, a function performed at the August event by Ray Blake in a manner as unsettlingly comic as his poetry. When it came to the karaoke, Jon Stone’s performance of 24 Hours of Tulsa was almost good enough to convince me that the late Gene Pitney was in the room. I did my own version of Kirsty MacColl’s There’s a Guy Works Down The Chips Shop Swears He’s Elvis.
The Vintage Poison collective clearly do like poetry – and put on lots of good high quality, inventive poetry events – but the big success of Bingo Master’s Breakout is that it’s a poetry event that’s good fun for partners, friends and family of poets who don’t necessarily want to spend a Friday night at a poetry reading.
There isn’t usually quite as much singing at the regular Sunday evening readings at Torriano Meeting House in Kentish Town, although there’s usually at least one song from resident political a cappella performer, Eric Levy. Eric’s singing – a different working class anthem every week – is just one of the elements that make Torriano an indispensable landmark on the London poetry scene. The readings have been taking place for over 20 years, with readers ranging from Stephen Spender to John Hegley to Labi Siffre, and Torriano Meeting House seems to serve as a secular church for some regular attendees.
Torriano usually has a two or three month summer break for regular host, John Rety, to take a well-earned breather but due to the loss of funding from both Camden Council and the Arts Council its been necessary for readings to continue through the summer to help pay the rent.
July to September saw twelve Torriano regulars, myself included, each taking on the organization of one reading.
Partly due to the fact that I’ve got a spare pair of keys, I’ve attended 11 out of the 12 readings and enjoyed them all. One of the highlights for me was the Lammas festival reading hosted by Anna Robinson, with readings from Fawzia Kane and Diana Tang that included a Druid blessing and lots of popcorn – things you don’t get at many poetry readings.
Usually cheap and sometimes cheerful, the live poetry scene – in ondon at least – continues to produce loads of events I’d like to turn up to. That’s a good thing. ?
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magazine list
- Features
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- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
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- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
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- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
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- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
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- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The