Special Effects Poem

On Monday night I read my first
Special Effects
poem at the Glór sessions. It was well recieved, I don't want to ruin the surprise so I won't elaborate any further in case you ever see me doing it again.... It didn't involve strobe lighting, or blowing bubbles - but these are possibilities for the future... the crowd loves a gimmick, and Victorian style rhymes...

Sitting at our table, was a Canadian lady, who was touring Europe (well Ireland and the UK anyway) with her poems handy for any open mikes she should stumble across, I'm never going on holidays without my poems again (now that I know some of them off, I guess that's the case anyway - hopefully). Weirdly turns out she was at that Christian Bok reading (link here) that I was telling you about all those months ago. A funny, happy little coincidence. She took a picture of her mascot the monk - supping on my pint of Guinness, and I guess you might see that on her blog (link here) sometime.

The excellent Male Poet Colm Keegan was reading as well, wowing everyone as always with his touching and deep poetry. As Stephen James said, he's a great poet, and is one of those who'll be remembered. And I can say I played on the same stage...

Anyway there was also a man called Kalle Ryan, who I have to admire for his audience participation in one of his poems (the crowd do love a gimmick), but it felt a wee bit like a political rallyish with him getting the audience to shout "Bull sh1t!" at the refrain time. He had a very loud voice, much louder than mine will ever be, and had a funny alphabet based poem as well.

The music as ever was class, with Pierce McGloughlin treating us to four of his songs, finishing on the gorgeous "for the birds" - he just gets better every time you listen. I kept wondering, now that I'm a famous dj maybe I could blag some free cds off these acts.... Hmmm. There was another really cool couple Baum & Andrea Samborski from Canada and Switzerland whose music was extremely enrapturing, both seperately and together - and I was sorry to go when John Byrne (of the apollo sessions (sunday night's open mike at the bleeding horse) fame) was singing, his stuff sounded lovely(the 2 that we listened to), very honest, simple, unassuming, kind of real.
Another good one, always inspiring, will be back for more of that.


ALSO:

Anyone around Clondalkland tomorrow evening around 7 pm should wander in to the library there, where ... upstairs... a few of the genius local teen writers will be reading work they have created around the theme of the history and heritage of Clondalkin... Should be a good evening.