Another round of open-micery and lots of great stuff on display. Ann Tannin’s story about the changing face of Dublin struck a chord with me, being a Dubliner of some vintage. Helen Dempsey had a poem bringing back

 the awful memory of Ann Lovett and that Granard tragedy. Eoin Hegarty had another set of ‘microcosmic’ poems in which insects are not just insects and Jim Rooney brought along his octogenarian prostitute again (poetically speaking). Never thought I’d ever meet a greek called Xenophon, but yes the open mic saw him read (no, not the Anabasis) a piece about relationships between mainland Greeks and Islanders. Steve Conway gave us another piece of his book ‘Shiprocked’ and the horrors of becoming

a newsreader at short notice and, a fresh face, Alan Maguire gave a very interesting description of Bangalore, at least from what he saw on while working there. Basically a quite factual piece, it was illuminated with a lot of understated humour. Anne Morgan and Bernie O’Reilly gave their usual short, pithy contributions (though this time Anne had a longer piece on that interesting figure Elizabeth Barret Browning). Ash Fox is back again with some positively volcanic offerings absolutely full of energy and so it was up to Ross Hattaway to come up directly afterwards and calm things down with that great ‘Election Manifesto’ on behalf of his Prose Party (‘tough on rhyme, and the causes of rhyme’). Bob Shakeshaft gave a new poem on ‘Fear’ and Inez Dillon some wry poems about ‘Love’. Eileen Keane finished offf her short story and Karl Parkenson (who guested on ‘Ra’ last evening[Tuesday]) gave a series of accomplished pieces. I really liked his ‘Butterfly Poem’ and thought the accompanying hand gestures were terrific. Oran Ryan gave an unusual take

on Mr Hyde (‘Dear Jeckell…) and Delta O’Hara finished off the evening with another piece from her ‘telephone-sex call-centre’ series (She tells me she is working to pull it together as a one-woman play and I’m glad to hear this). Somewhere in the line-up I

 gave a few poems, including one written shortly afer I came out of hospital recently (‘Bon Secours’) and some off-the-wall haiku. If I’ve left anyone out, sorry and tell me. But what a night!. If you’re not at these last Wednesdays… I pity you.