Click HERE for a podcast of another fruitful event for Seven Towers at the Hammersmith Ram in London on Sunday July 31. Not so much an Open Mic as a ’round-table’ reading. Declan Dempsey, Janice Windle,

Serena Van Sickle and myself trading poems and discussing them. Serena’s poetry really remarkable: her ‘The Empty Field‘ full of  anguish and regret. Also she read ‘The Old Spring Wall’ and ‘Merge’ , this last also remarkable for the way a ‘landscape’ poem can become more than just a ‘landscape’ poem when the writer manages to enter into the landscape herself. Donal, in ‘Adagio‘ provided a poetic account of a rather different type of workshop he attended recently. Yes, there’s a need for something of a new departure for ‘workshops’. Too many of them lack the ‘hands on’ element (or maybe I have had more than the usual share of empty experiences?) Janice Windle came up with a poems about gravity (‘Anti-Gravity’) and, …er … nail-biting.  I read ‘When I am Become Again’ and ‘At the Museum of Occupation, Riga’ from my book ‘And Suddenly the Sun Again’ (avaialble from http://www.seventowers.ie or from amazon or from me eamonnlynskey12@gmail.com). Still some copies left…

All in all a very entertaining and enjoyable session which, hopefully, we can repeat in the future. There is scope for this kind of relaxed event where one doesn’t have to keep up with the (often) frenetic pace of content in an Open Mic and in which one can pause a little and examine at some leisure what has just then been read. PLUS the poet is on hand to’ answer for themselves’. So, not so much an Open Mic as an Inquisition …

Listen in to the podcast (above) for 20 mins entertainment…