This was a wonderful trip at the invitation of The British Council, Poland as part of their "Faces and Places: New British Writing" programme. More at http://www.britishcouncil.org/poland-literature-faces-and-places-past.htm

The event had full professional PR and someone called Tonym Walshem was featured on around 20 Polish websites!

The venue was the groovy Cafe Kulturalna http://www.kulturalna.pl/flash.html located in the incredible if controversial Stalinist monument The Palace of Science and Culture.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Palace_of_Culture_and_Science

The official photos are now online at http://gilling.info/slam-wawa-2008-03-27/

The event was the 5th anniversary of slam poetry in Poland as organised by the good people at http://www.slam.art.pl/page_new/index.php.

Poets had travelled from all over Poland and 250+ people were crammed into the smoky room, many sitting cross legged right at the poets' feet. The energy was excellent - transcending the language barrier.

I did two different 20 minute sets between slam rounds and, despite nerves and language issues, they were pretty well received. “Tony is a versatile performer, who proves that there is no such thing as language barrier in poetry” Wojciech Cichon, The British Council and slam poet at http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=258499174

Huge thanks to Wojciech and all at the British Council, to Warsaw slam master Grzegorz Bruszewski who looked after me so well http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=149919266
, to Bohdan Piasecki the excellent compere and slam founder and to everyone who made me so welcome. I hope to come back someday!

Na zdrowie!