Wordplay: Devilry at the Good Ship

Something to kick off the new year - both Kirsty and I will be reading at wordPLAY on Tuesday 5th January in the new year. It's at The Good Ship, 289 Kilburn High Road, £4.50 (£3.50 for concessions) from 7pm. Really neat venue - the readings take place in a sort of sunken pit area with rows of leather sits within it and extra chairs around the edge, so that lots of people can get a clear view of the stage - good job as Facebook claims that 80+ people are planning on turning up.

Other readers include Chris Horton - who has a splendid poem in Fuselit: Mars and whose work turns up more and more regularly in the big national poetry competitions - and Joshua Idehen. I saw Idehen perform at the Fling festival this year and he actually - I'm not even joking or exaggerating - seemed to magnetically draw people towards the poetry tent. He got up on stage and people started to flood in from all directions, beyond the range of the speaker system. He is undoubtedly responsible for most of those 80 who've already put the date in their diaries. Is it just that he's astonishingly tall? Is it the easy-going charisma he exudes? I dunno. But if it means more people are coming to see poetry events, that must be a good thing.

There's also going to be some stories and music, keeping things nice n' eclectic. And I'm going to bring a CD with some music from Sonic 2 in it, which I am going to incorporate into my set. Also some Caligula poems. In fact, I'm going to be mostly doing Caligula poems.