Poems from the Road

Robin Vaughan-Williams is looking for ‘poems from the road’ for a podcast that'll be made available in July.

It's part of the Apples and Snakes Home Cooking series, and will be broadcast on Basic.fm and then made available for download. Poems from the Road will be a poetic journey down Britain’s A-roads, and will include work by poets from around the country.

Robin explained: "I am looking for poetry that is born from the road, addresses the road, inhabits it, or otherwise explores our experience of the road.

"The road is many things to many people: a place of alienation, danger, abstraction, release, solitude, speed. It takes up vast chunks of much of our lives, yet is often neglected as one of the spaces we inhabit in the rush from A to B. What of the inner world, the landscapes, the journeys, the people that populate them?"

If you’d like to submit (up to three poems), you can contact Robin directly here. Audio recordings of the selected poems will be used, but at this stage Robin only needs the poems in written form. Final selections will be made by June 1st. 

From May Robin will also be collecting poetic tweets from the A-roads, to be edited into an audio collage for the programme. Keep an eye on his Twitter account - @robinrvw - for further details.

Best yet?

Monday night's Nine Arches Press/Crystal Clear Creators Shindig was as good as any reading/open mic I've been to - I'd wondered whether the ongoing deluge and the Leicester holiday fortnight might make keep people away this time, but in fact the Western was packed out.

A great bill helped, obviously. I'm not going to attempt to review the night properly, but Alan Baker, Maria Taylor and Robin Vaughan-Williams are all poets whose work I've known and enjoyed for some time now, and all three gave fine readings, as ever. You can read much more about them here and here.

Kim Moore was a new name to me, though, and closed the night with a really fine set (she was down from Barrow-in-Furness, but has family in Leicester, I think). I bought her Smith/Doorstop pamphlet - If We Could Speak Like Wolves - on the strength of it, and it more than does her justice. I loved her opening poem, The Wolf, in particular, not least because of her declaration that she reads it because she doesn't know what it means. That enquiring sense is there throughout the book.

The open mic slots seem to get better with each reading, and it was nice to see more and more West Midlands poets coming to give it a try. Gary Carr's second poem, a letter to his daughter, was a real highlight for me, Gary Longden, Deborah Tyler-Bennett and Jayne Stanton were as good as always, and Graham Norman and Maria Rooner performed the same poem in English, then German, to good effect. Considering I managed to fail O Level German three times (don't ask), I surprised myself by how much I actually followed when Maria was reading.

Talking to Alan and Robin afterwards, we were trying to work out what makes the Shindigs work so well (aside from the poets, obviously). The size and shape of the room certainly helps, as does the fact that there's always been a nice, relaxed feel at the Western - people wander in from the street or the other bar and dip in and out of the poetry, which you don't get at many places. And last but certainly not least, the laid-back, resolutely uncompetitive atmosphere cultivated by Jane and Matt of Nine Arches and Jonathan Taylor of CCC, makes all the difference.

Readings

Just a quick reminder that I'll be reading, with fellow Nine Arches poets Angela France and Daniel Sluman, at the Cannon Poets event at Moseley Exchange, Alcester Road, Birmingham, tomorrow from 7.30pm. It's part of the Moseley Festival.

On Monday, Nine Arches and Crystal Clear Creators team up for the bi-monthly Shindig at The Western, Western Road, Leicester, from 7.30pm. Featured readers are Robin Vaughan-Williams, Maria Taylor, Kim Moore and Alan Baker, and as usual open mic slots will be available on the night.

Dates for the diary

I'm lucky to have a job I genuinely love, but it has rather got in the way of poetry these last few months., so I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. I have been reading plenty of the stuff, as ever, but I'm being a bit more disciplined about setting aside time to write, and in making sure I can get to readings and open mics.

So, over the next few weeks, I'll be up and down the A42, A38 and A511 (you can tell I read maps for fun, can't you?), starting with Poetry Alight, at the Spark Cafe Bar, Tamworth Street, Lichfield, at 7pm next Tuesday (July 10th).

The following Monday (July 16th), is the bi-monthly Nine Arches Press/Crystal Clear Creators Shindig at The Western, on Western Road, Leicester. As well as the usual open mic, there'll be the launch of Maria Taylor's new Nine Arches collection Melanchrini, plus readings from Alan Baker, Robin Vaughan-Williams, and Kim Moore. Great line-up, great place to read, great evening in store.

Finally, on Tuesday, July 24th, there's The Fizz, at the wonderful venue of Polesworth Abbey Refectory. Featured poet is Terri Jolland, entry is free, open mic slots are available, and it all starts at 7.30pm.

A Night of HappenStance

Six HappenStance poets from as far away as Spain will be gathering for a reading downstairs at Lee Rosy’s in Nottingham (17, Broad Street, NG1 3AJ – opposite the Broadway cinema) on 26th November, from 7.30pm. Entrance is £4, or £3 for concessions.

Helena Nelson (editor of HappenStance Press), Ross Kightly, Marilyn Ricci, Robin Vaughan-Williams, DA Prince, and Matthew Stewart (who will be in the country to launch his new pamphlet, Inventing Truth) are the readers.

That's six really fine poets, and I only wish I could be there to hear them – I'll be away because of work. 

Helena will also be adjudicating the Nottingham Open Poetry Competition at 2.45pm at the Mechanics Institute (at 3 North Sherwood Street, Nottingham, NG1 4AX).