Well, no mic, but not needed in the room we have now at the ‘Twisted Pepper’ cafe in Abbey

Street in Dublin. Smallish, but acoustically very good. I got to start off the evening and launched into my ‘To The Memory of Edward Tenison‘ poem (included in my ‘And Suddenly the Sun Again’ collection from Seven Towers, 2010). This poem was written some time ago when St.Mary’s Church (just up the road in Mary Street) had been resurrected as a DIY store and I wrote it after reading a great deal of John Betjeman, so there are the usual traces of influence that stays in the mind after reading a master craftsman. I’m not particularly interested in old churches, certainly not as interested as Betjeman, but there was something poignant about the way the magnificence of St Mary’s internal architecture (old plaques and all) had been made to vie with modern DIY merchandise that caught at the heart.

Great fare tonight. Very impressed with Tony Gilmore‘s analysis of comedy and  Ann Tannam’s poem on Irish attitudes towards the weather, which was both comic and rueful. And so much more good stuff. Also it seems to me that there is not so much doom and gloom poetry around as there once was. I think the recession is cheering us up?