Halfway through the month already and it’s time again for a Chapters Thursday

 Themed reading! Where is my life going? Well, into Chapters last Thursday anyway where a line up of writers read on the theme of ‘setting out’. Anamaria Crowe Serrano read from her collection ‘Femispheres’ and also some new stuff, including ‘Taking Steps’, and ‘The Navigator at Cobh’ which she dedicated to Paul Casey, he of the great ‘O’Bheal’ sessions in Cork. Tim Landers, a Canadian Poet over for a few days with me, also read and his easy style was very appealing and listenable-to. Bob Shakeshaft obliged with a poem

on ‘Varna’, dealing with a visit to that Bulgarian town, and some other poems I haven’t heard before. Karl Parkinson was in his usual dramatic form with a terrific poem about a guy getting out of prison, and lots more. Oran Ryan gave a prose piece in which one of the characters had ‘a cliched smile of great wattage’ and Stephen James Smith gave his own ‘Ticking Clock’ plus a rendition of WBYeats’s ‘Lake Isle of Inishfree’. I gave a few old ones which fitted the theme very well (‘Voyage’, ‘When we go to Bed’, Song of the Wandering Suburbanite’). Old ones? Well, yes. I’ll have to resurrect some DISCPLINE and get down toproducing some new ones, like these other guys. Overall, a very relaxed and enjoyable reading.