First Open Mic of 2010 saw all the various shades of open-mikery emerge blinking into the last January dark night of the New Year. Declan McLoughlin in fine form as MC and a full programme of readers. Notable (I thought) was Eoin Hegarty with his unassuming manner (a trait not common among all poets!) and his elegant lines (‘… the hard science of Old Age’). He read a very striking piece on the recent death of his grandmother. Reminded me strongly of Heaney’s ‘Mossbawn’ period.  Another favorite of mine, Karl Parkinson, read an extraordinary piece (didn’t catch the title!) in which he envisaged a future Dublin which was by turns depressing and hilarious. All those thousands of pregnant teenagers marching together demanding ‘Abortion! Abortion! Abortion!’…

Good to see Ash Fox back on the scene, and with a piece she wrote (as she told us) during the Irish ‘Boom’ (remember that?), full of people rushing around trying to choose between (what we now consider) luxuries. Ah yes, them were the days! And Steve Conway gave a prose piece to do with his day spent as a nude model. I thought it was fiction. But no! See his site for full details, if you dare! (http://steveconway.wordpress.com). Bob Shakeshaft’s poem ‘Without Pardon’ was one of his best I thought, and Oran Ryan read a piece to do with the idea that there are some things you should do without thinking toooo much about them or otherwise you might not do them at all, such as proposing marriage. I liked also Helen Dempsey’s clever ‘calendar’ poem ‘The Month’s Mind’ with its epigrams on each month. Lots and lots of other great stuff (Raven, Ross, Edward Lee, Eileen Keane, Dermot McCarty, Ann Tannin, Jim Rooney) ‘too numeros to mention’. But of course I must mention myself (it’s my blog, after all!) just to say that with Blair appearing in front of the Childcott Enquiry his Iraq war was very much on my mind so I read a few pieces from that time. Last thing to say is that if you are a writer and you are NOT coming to this monthly event you are losing out BIG TIME!