Another great night at The Tongue Box at The Cobblestone Pub in Smithfield, with Raven and

CAH44 (aka Cliff Horseman) doing the honours as co-hosts. The line-up included Dave Rock with his distinctive love poetry and Aoife Ni Cochlain’s self-reflective poetry and Conor Kelly helping out with both music and poetry, and more, much more. Raven gave several of his memorable pieces, including ‘Moving Cities’ (‘If we are lucky / we will / pull our bodies in time from the wreckage of architecture…’) and ‘Midway ‘(‘This was the conceit of our youth:/ a barker’s testfiying from sideshow pulpits…’). Both of these poems appeared in ‘Census’, The Seven Towers Anthology 2008 , still available at Chapters Bookshop or

direct from seventowers.ie. Karl Parkinson (published in ‘Census’ the Second Seven Towers Anthology 2009) gave that poem of his which is basically a run-down of the grim final days  which await creative artists, particularly poets. (You have been warned). Cliff Horseman had something to say about the treatment of immigrants in this country. He also did a poem called ‘Rain Again, Rain Again’ in which there was some terrific mimicking of the sound of car wipers– a kind onomatopoeia which is not easy to do. I read some from my book ‘And Suddenly the Sun Again’, first that grim poem (which makes everyone laugh: not sure why) ‘The LifeaChrist’.  Then I aired some poems I wrote after a visit to Japan some years ago, where I discovered the wonderful post-war photographic work of Tadahiko Hayashi. I think it was in Kyoto I saw his exhibition, which marked me for life. Afterwards I did my best to salute his work in my poem ‘Kasutori Jidai’ (‘The Days of Cheap Liquor’). And then because Cliff had brought up the subject of immigrants I read my ‘Immigrati’ poem which talks about recent immigrant labour exploitation and some in the not-so-distant Irish past. I finished with my ‘When People Say…’ so that I could end on a lighter note. Pamela Brown of the Poetry Chicks finished off the evening with a strong performance, including a poem called (I think) ‘The Beautiful Madness’, helped out by Conor Kelly on electric keyboard. The Tongue Box (aka The Black Stage) always has a great line-up and is well worth a visit every last Tuesday of the month. And I must say it’s great to see the start time pulled back to 8.00pm, which gets things going early and is a big help to last-bus people and (possibly) those those who have to GET UP early next morning.