The Golden Hour + Forest Chapbooks

Kirsty read at The Golden Hour on Monday, playing at The Green Note in Camden as part of their nationwide tour. It was great to see the place packed out, particularly when it was competing with the second Faber New Poets launch event, which is sure to have drawn a healthy tranche of the London poetry crowd. Then again, The Golden Hour isn't just poetry - there's music and prose too, much like Declan Ryan's monthly Days of Roses event. I arrived a little late but every act I saw was intimidatingly good, from Sam Taradash's beguiling boxing story to Jonny Berliner's super spoof blues/folk songs. Berliner also teamed up with host Ryan van Winkle for a witty hybrid poem/tune entitled 'Toast'.

It's also worth mentioning the Forest chapbook series, published by the same people who run The Golden Hour. Chapbooks are always cheap but at £2 each, no recession-based excuse will do for not investigating this series. We traded a copy of Coin Opera for three of 'em, and each one is radically different from the next.