Thank you

I'd like to thank all the people who made it along to my readings last week in Coventry and Uppingham. You all contributed to making the evenings so enjoyable. Special thanks are particularly due to Antony Owen for organising Nightblue Fruit and to Matt Merritt for helping me out with all the two-voiced poems in Uppingham. As the latter mentions in his kind review on Polyolbion, it was a pretty unusual poetry reading!

The Coventry event was held at a lovely venue (Taylor John's house) at the city's Canal Basin. It showed off much of what's so special about the U.K.'s thriving live poetry scene: everyone engaged throughout the open mic slots, before giving me a great welcome for my reading. I even sold a good number of books!

As for Uppingham, it was lovely to combine poetry with wine in such an unpretentious way. Ben and Emma from Bat and Bottle Wine Merchants provided the ideal platform and audience. All of them were so open to the poems in spite of not being regular readers of verse! I was delighted to discover "in situ" that Tasting Notes does hit the mark in this respect. Its aim is to be accessible without being facile, to engage with people and surprise them. Suffice to say, the after-event wine tasting also went on well into the night!

Nightblue Fruit

Tuesday 2nd October will find me sent to Coventry, where I'll be reading at Nightblue Fruit (now that's a superb name!). Many thanks are due to Antony Owen for organising it all.

The event will be taking place at Taylor John's House, Coal Vaults, Canal Basin, Coventry, CV1 4LY. Doors will open at 8 pm and admission is free. What's more, Antony will have 5-minute open-mic slots available for you on the night. I won't be taking the wines along this time, but that's only because there's a bar at the venue for refreshments throughout.

This is the sort of reading I love giving, where people really focus on the poetry and everyone has the chance to get involved. I'll be reading from both Inventing Truth and Tasting Notes, with a few copies of both for sale on the night. I do hope any readers of Rogue Strands in the Coventry area will try to make it along. Here's the poster for the event: