Poetry Readings

When I was at school, which was a sink comprehensive in Liverpool, three things were definitely not ‘cool’; supporting Everton F.C., liking poetry and reading books. I was in the challenging position of loving all three.

Poetry, if it was taught at all, consisted of a dead pan rush through Tennyson, Keats, Hughes and maybe one or two other traditional/modern poets.

Nobody had a clue what a ‘Grecian Urn’ was or why it was in any way relevant to Merseyside in the 1970’s. However, there was a glimmer of light in a second- hand bookshop in Liverpool which specialised in Modern First Editions and had a wonderful stock of poetry books. The gentleman who ran the shop was very kind and didn’t seem to mind me going in and reading through the titles and talking to him about the poetry books, even though I had no money to be able to actually buy any.

He would talk about poetry and poets, some of whom he had met when they did book signings in his shop. One day I suggested that perhaps he could organise one of the poets to come to the shop and read his/her work for those who would be interested to hear. He laughed and implied that would be just the two of us then. I did manage to discover a poetry reading in a room in the library and went along excited to see how it would go. The young lady reading was a good, published poet and an accomplished reader, but there were only five people there and apart from me, the rest were her family.

Fast forward forty-five years to today in Blackpool and poetry and poetry readings have a new lease of life. We have the excellent Dead Good Poets’ open mic readings, in Preston there is the Damson Poets open mic readings. There are equivalents in Lancaster, Wigan and now even Merseyside has woken up with readings in Liverpool.

It is a good time to be a poet, but in memory of when it wasn't so good, I have written the following poem;

On giving a poetry reading to an empty hall

The booking was to read for one hour
at the Wittering Community Arts Festival.
I did everything in my power,
I gave it my all
to the empty hall.

The empty chairs gazed up at me in awe.
I caught the eye of a chair in the third row
and it would not let me go.
A redheaded, dumpy chair on the edge,
never once smiled.
The more droll my poems, the more
the back row seemed beguiled.

When I had done and the non-applause
died down, after a pause
the chairman of the committee
scrambled up onto the podium.
He spoke about how it’s much more congenial
to have a small audience, or better still
no audience at all.

‘It’s more intimate’, he sighed, ‘more intimate’
and he blew his nose and cried:
‘To you all a thousand thank yous’.
He turned to me, winked and with the mic turned down,
said: ‘that’s the last poetry reading we’ll have in this town'.

Thank you reading and keep writing and reading poems. 

David Wilkinson