Seven Towers Poetry Reading

There's something special about an early afternoon poetry reading especially when the audience is small. A bit like a parallel universe - you step in from the hustle and bustle and sunlight to a dark back room and read strange collections of words and listen to other read similar stuff and applaud and then go back out to the hustle and bustle.

A small audience in the Twisted Pepper yesterday. Thanks to Kate and Eamon who turned up, hope you both enjoyed the poems. I had a good time, tried out some different poems and got good feedback. You know when you finish a poem whether it has gone down well or not. My cafe poems didn't perform well so probably will be dropped from the list. My opener The Truth got a good response so will probably get that slot for the Poetry Ireland Introductions.

I wasn't familiar with the other readers. Roger Hudson uses colloquial speech in a disjointed real way which amuses and intrigues. Bernadette O'Reilly writes about Dublin, her childhood, the difference between Finglas and Foxrock. What I liked about her poems was that she knows when to stop. The temptation in this sort of material is to include too much. She knows that a taster is usually more effective.

And the reading started with the accomplished Liz McSkeane reading from her two collections. She is an accomplished reader as well and held us spellbound with her brilliant use of words and sentences, varying tone and line length and amount of information to draw us in and leave us almost knowing all.

Thanks to Seven Towers for putting the event on and to Oran for making us feel at home.