Keeping busy

I spent the weekend zipping up and down the M42, or rather down and up.

On Saturday, I was at the Pow Wow Litfest 2011, at the Prince of Wales, Moseley, Birmingham, for a reading. It's a terrific venue - an old-fashioned and roomy pub with a good beer garden - and there was an excellent audience for the various performances (I particularly liked the capoeira demonstration).

Joel Lane also went down well, reading one of the pieces from his new Nine Arches Press short story chapbook Do Not Pass Go, as well as a number of poems that built on some of the themes from his last poetry collection, The Autumn Myth.

I had to leave earlier than I'd have liked, but the organisers ought to be proud of such a wide-ranging and well-attended event.

Yesterday, I headed north instead, for the latest LeftLion/Nine Arches Shindig, at the Jam Cafe in Nottingham. It's a superb venue, too, just about the perfect size and comfortable, and as ever the open mic readers were very varied and pretty much uniformly excellent. Wayne Burrows' poem, Zeropolis (I might have got that wrong) was a highlight for me, and Aly Stoneman's The General's Horse, but there was plenty more to enjoy. I read a couple of poems - Azul, and a new (I wrote it on Friday) untitled one that takes its lead from a line from The Sopranos (from Patsy Parisi, in fact), and they seemed to go down well.

Joel Lane again read well, and I bought his chapbook. I've only had time to read the first story so far, but it's excellent - noir-ish crime stories with a West Midlands setting.

Angela France's reading, from her new Nine Arches chapbook Lessons In Mallemaroking, highlighted all her poetry's strengths. She's interested in seeing where unusual words or phrases take her, and in creating back stories to them. She's also, I'm pretty sure, the only poet ever published in the Sunday Sport - the poem in question, Hide And Seek Champion Found Dead In Cupboard - was a highlight here.

Tom Warner already has a really fine chapbook out as part of the Faber New Poets series, but his reading also suggested that there are great things to come. He was back on home turf, effectively (he lives in Norwich, but is from Mansfield originally), and poems that touched on subjects such as the Miners' Strike struck plenty of chords, especially after last week's tragedy in South Wales. I wish I'd had longer to talk to him afterwards, but I'll be keeping an eye out for future work from him.

It was a lovely way to round off the weekend, anyway - the carrot cake and Bundaberg ginger beer helped, too.

I declare this collection well and truly launched

Being late to your own launch isn't a good start, but I badly misjudged the A42 and A453's ability to produce delays at any time of the day or night. Add to that a problem finding parking close to the Jam Cafe (I gave up and went over to the Playhouse), and I walked in halfway through Jane Holland's open mic slot. A shame, too, because the sci-fi-themed poem she was reading fairly fizzed with energy.

There were loads of good open mic-ers, in fact, leading into Robin Vaughan-Williams' reading, which included plenty from his HappenStance chapbook, The Manager, as well as some new material. Having lived in Iceland, he's now based in Nottingham, so I look forward to hearing more from him soon.

The same goes for Sarah Jackson, who gave a really poised reading that highlighted the taut, tense atmospheres of her poems. I bought her chapbook, Milk, and it's terrific. Really nicely produced, too (by Pighog), in a large format that gives the poems space to breathe.

After the musical interlude, and more open mic, David Morley read from his forthcoming Carcanet collection, Enchantment. It's the final part of a trilogy of books (the others were Scientific Papers and The Invisible Kings) that explore both Romany culture and the role of story-telling in all our lives. It's another handsome volume in physical terms, too, with two great drawings by Peter Blegvad (yes, that Peter Blegvad), and I can't wait to get stuck into it.

I read a set entirely drawn from the new book, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's strange how, even though you've spent months seeing first drafts and proofs and so on, to the extent that you don't think anything about it can surprise you, the actual book in your hand looks entirely new, fresh and exhilirating. For that, thanks are due to Jane Commane and Matt Nunn at Nine Arches Press, who are utterly unflagging in their effort.

A word, too, for LeftLion Magazine, who co-hosted the reading. It does a great job for Nottingham and the East Midlands in general, and long may that continue. Great venue, too, with an attentive and appreciative audience (which included an Amazon Parrot*). Oh, and they sang Happy Birthday for me at the end - how nice is that?!

More information on how to buy hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica is here, or you can email me for more details.

My set-list was:

Prelude for Glass Harmonica
Uchronie
The American version
Worst Case Scenario
Fantasia for Glass Harmonica
Variations on a Theme by J. A. Baker
Drinking With Godberd
Warning Against Using These Poems As A Map
West Leicester Lullaby
Cahoots
Nocturne for Glass Harmonica

* The parrot was an excellent listener. But on Saturday, I'd been doing a quick run-through my reading while watching a small flock of Lapwings and a Curlew about 100 yards away. The Lapwings hunkered down and stuck it out, but the Curlew gave up and flew away, calling loudly, about halfway through.