poetry in motion

This isn't my car, this is Buzz's car. My car went off for its MOT today.

In this strange new land
We name the hills as we pass;
Our feet mark the map.

Well, what with it being LGBT History month, the monthly Bristol Poetry Can event at the Central Library was on-topic, with a reading by Andi Langford-Woods, and a talk on Thom Gunn by a gay bloke who whose name I can't be bothered to remember because his talk was rather dull and he twice referred to "Lesbian Gay and Bisexual Month" despite being outnumbered on the omitted oppressed minority front in that particular event. Bloomin' gays, I dunno...


It was a good event, some rather moving stuff. I threw in a couple of haikus which could be read in an on-topic sort of way, as the pertinent work-in-progress from the Marland pen is on a poetic hard shoulder somewhere waiting for the AA man.

There were also a couple of (presumably) 'normal' people, one of whom announced that "I don't do clever poems." He was right, unfortunately. And a woman who said that she hadn't realised that there was a theme, as though it was something she'd just trodden in. Poets, eh? -mad, bad and dangerous to know. Apparently.

I watched a spoddy boy who spotted Andi reading her stuff and became theatrically amused by it, and took a seat just outside the reading and sniggered to his girlfriend. He was there as I left at the end, and did a weaselly little wolf whistle, just audible; I was last to go, along with Alan Summers, who was telling me about his new gig as poet-in-residence riding the mobile libraries of Herefordshire (I was v envious). I wish I'd gone back and given the spod a good talking to, rather than merely being disdainful... o well, too late now. It'll just take him longer to work out for himself what his issues are. Or not, as the case may be.