A Poem A Day For A Year - 18/02/15
As you may have seen, last night was the first Do The Write Thingevent of 2015, held at Bar Ten on Silver Street, Bury. This was a very special event as it was the birthday of our beautiful Editor, Keri. I do not mean to use hyperbole but I think it was the best event we have ever done. As we are off the beaten track, as it were, over away from Manchester proper, sometimes turn-outs can be a little on the low side, as a lot of people with interest in spoken word events cannot get over to Bury, particularly on a Tuesday night. We sometimes have open mic spots left free and things do not always run strictly to schedule.
Last night, however, was a complete, unequivocal success. Every spot was taken, the turn out was fantastic and the vibe in the room was absolutely splendid. We had funny poems, moving poems, audience participation. I even took my top off for a poem. This was the moment we decided to have complimentary sick bags under every seat. We had regular members or the group reading, new faces and two superb head line acts.
In the first half we had Drew Lawson of TSG doing his first gig in a while, in his own words. He is try to prepare himself for Word War One, a poetry slam competition, at the 3MT net month. Best of luck with it, Drew! Then we had. We also had Lorraine, co-founder of the group and owner of the venue saying the word ‘menopause’ quite a lot and reading some other lovely poetry too! Following this was my mummy, Margaret, grandmother of Bunbury, reading ‘Who Killed John Lennon?’, a rewrite of the ‘Who Killed Cock Robin’ nursery rhyme. I am envious of this poem. Very jealous. It’s amazing. I hope she will let me share it with you one day. The Fiona was the last open micer of the half, reading some nicely-woven prose about fellas in kilts and national pride! The headliner for the first act was Karen Little, reading the ‘longest poem she has ever written’ and it was marvellous! She has sent it off for publication consideration and it would be a poorer publication without it!
Then came the break. Time for trips to the loo, fresh drinks and out competition. We had out little bottles filled with letters and challenge the guests to make interesting/funny/rude phrases out of the letters. We have prizes and everything! Here are some of the efforts below.
The second half kicked off with a fresh face, Christopher Bainbridge. The energy in the room was already high at this point but he ploughed even more positivity into the crowd! Then we saw another fresh face in Fran, who kept the wave going on (and also ran herself into contention for punniest line of the night!) and over into Joe, another regular member of the group. Then we saw the Nearly Dead Poets, or two-thirds of them, introduce a brand new member in Pamela, who accompanied Ziggy Sawdust on guitar. Our headliner rounding off a wonderful night was Joy France, who had the crowd shouting ‘balls!’ in al the right places and getting very passionately sweary about a pen! Bic for her? Not on her watch!
All in all, it was an amazing night and we cannot thank everyone enough for coming along. The next one is on the 31st March. We cannot yet reveal the headliners for this one but oh my, it’s going to be good. You know the date, you know the place. You know you gotta be there!
Oh, the winners of the competition, I hear you shout, before we move on. Fiona was our runner up with ‘KOOKY BLUBBERY BUMBUD HYMN GASH’ For her effort, she won a mystery cup of tea. The winner was Fran with ‘PANG BACK LYNX FOOK DAYZ BUT HEY WHY WHO’ and she won a hand-painted canvas by Keri.
Beautiful and talented!
So yes, that was our night. Let’s move on to the part where my brain starts to crumble fall away like jelly-fish tentacles on a winter tide.
Here is a poem. The prompt today was Keri’s birthday. I wrote a little poem in her card.
You have a face.
A face that has graced
my days for days and days.
Your face radiates through
my days
as a Grecian vase and
intricate renaissance laces
radiate through days gone by.
Your face is mine for the ages,
radiating and gracing my days
for all of time.
You have a face.
I fucking adore it.
Only one for tonight. We had a meeting with an accountant tonight. He started using numbers and talking about tax. These are things I do not like. I can see frozen strings of my brain being washed out to sea. I must away to bed.
