Return to the Underground

Just got home from a far better than average poetry reading. There were poems that impressed me, poems that inspired me, poems that gave me insight into their writer’s character, for every poem, and every thing we say and do, gives some insight into our character, only one or two poems that totally bored me, a lot of new poets, in the end a fair few female poets, although they were still outnumbered unfortunately, many poems in foreign languages: French, of course, quite a few in French including a new guy who screamed his rage at the machine into the mike, I had no idea what he was saying but I was impressed, Spanish, Romanian, Portuguese, Icelandic and I might be forgetting somebody, a little bit of music and one poem that gave me an idea for a lesson plan. Also, we were back in Souterrain after about a couple year absence, and it was good to be back. Also, everybody loved my poems and lots of people brought weed so an excellent evening, all around.
There’s another reading on Friday, I’m really not sure who’s organizing it or the concept behind it but it seems to be English speaking poets only and a set line-up, but we’ll see what happens, I’ve seen these devolve into open mikes as well.
It’s weird having two so close together, and that seems to be a common thing, not just with poetry readings, but with any kind of event, you go for a month with nothing and suddenly a whole bunch are scheduled all together. It doesn’t give me any time to write anything new, so I think I’ll take along some of my books and read a Best of… type compilation. It goes back a way and there’s plenty of stuff nobody’s ever heard before.
All for now. Bon nuit.