Just over a year ago I attended the Poetry Book Fair in London as a volunteer. It was such an enjoyable day I volunteered again this year, but that comes later. My real point here was that after the fair I was chatting with Chrissy Williams about poetry events, I was bemoaning the general lack of poetry around the Hampshire area. (Warning number one: beware what you bemoan).

I had already attended a couple of local open mics at this stage and enjoyed the evenings. What I felt I was missing was the opportunity to see poets who made a career out of poetry. Published poets and mainstream poets. Around about this time Matt West in Southampton formed an organisation that he called The Artful Scribe. Over the last year he ran a series of workshops dealing with a range of subjects from different schools of poetry, poetical forms, performing poetry and editing poetry. To complement the workshops he produced a series of poetry showcases which began with a number of open mic slots. Followed by two local acts, followed by one headline act. The audience could vote for one member of the open mic to get a local slot the following month and one member of the local slot to get a paid poetry gig with Apples and Snakes. Over the past year an exciting selection of poets have visited Southampton as part of this program. Matt grouped the workshops, showcases and a number of other events together as a project he named the Archimedes Screw, drawing local talent up.

Personal local highlights from the last year were:

Seeing Rhian Edwards perform and attending a workshop run by her. This was prior to her matching off with every book prize in Wales for her amazing collection Clueless Dogs. Rhian has dual talents of being able to produce exciting, accessible page poetry and to perform her poetry in a way that engages the audience.

Attending Southampton’s festival in the summer and seeing both Luke Wright and Dizreali at the spoken word tent organised by The Artful Scribe. Luke performed a range of poems including some from his forthcoming Essex Lion tour. Disreali entertained us with a mixture of spoken word and song. There was also a local poetry slam and entertainment from the Biscuit Poets. Any poetry event that hands out biscuits to the audience is on to a winner.

Rob Auton‘s visit to bring us the madness of his Yellow Show. I hadn’t laughed so much for a long time, some members of the audience were barely able to walk straight after being overcome by so much merriment. I’m looking forward to his return with the Sky Show at Christmas.

Due to the Archimedes Screw project I finally ended up attending the local Apples and Snakes events 451. Previously I had been put off by my ignorant bias against performance poetry (poetry slams, etc) (Warning number two: don’t form preconceived ideas about forms of poetry that don’t exist on the page).

Through 451 I enjoyed a wonderful evening with Zena Edwards and Johnny Fluffypunk. Zena’s performance was mesmerising bringing a wide variety of characters to life. Among Johnny’s poems was a surprisingly moving one about the demise of dog poo bin.

Move recently at 451 I enjoyed the performance of poet Debris Stevenson. The highlight was Debris’ take on the Jabberwocky. I have occasionally considered ways that poets could ‘remix’ older poems, the Jabberwocky was truly remixed into an exciting piece in the voice of a South American preacher.

A final highlight was last night’s show in Bournemouth Electronic Voice Phenomena produced by Penned in the Margins. Ross Sutherland spent 15 minutes interpreting and re-interpreting the same two minute section of the Crystal Maze. Having had this taster of Ross’ talents I’m looking forward to his visit in Southampton as part of Archimedes Screw part two. Hannah Silva was entrancing in her role as a medium during a poetical cut up and remix. SJ Fowler was very entertaining even when sat in his chair, back to the audience enjoying Frankenstein. An electronic musical interlude was produced by Leafcutter John using a variety of electronic householder implements.

At this point I realise that blogging more regularly would make things easier. Further highlights from the last year follow but first a little more anthology editing.