poetry live @ aspex – in Portsmouth, UK. We’re hosting a night of open mic readings at the gallery in early November, in conjunction with ExpressFM. The current date, tbc, is 8 Nov – but this might change as there’s a lot happening about the city that night. Those who wish to read should checkout our website – aspex.org.uk – or visit the gallery, where info about the event will become available, or email poetrylive@aspex.org.uk . You don’t have to read, you can make up the audience. Those wanting to perform may read their own work, or a favourite poem by another poet. There’ll be a mix of experienced, unexperienced poets on the night – we aim to encourage people to write poetry and develop it through performance and a direct connection to the response of a sympathetic audience. The show will be recorded for use in a radio show, a pilot for a potential series.
Okay, here are recent reworkings of two poems that’ve appeared previously on the site, one Pompey-inspired, the other Scummer’s Town driven:
The Spinnaker-based poem is one I’ll not submit anywhere, it’s what it is – if it survives, it’ll be as a particle of some other poem. ‘Way to Go Home’ will get a submission outing – a test-drive about the editors of various magazines. I’m building up to some fresh, new work – I’ve some time off – by revisiting those poems, some near-misses, that have been rejected over the last year. No poem is ever finished, until it has gone beyond you, where you can not further or relegate it – the poems to bin are those you ‘finish with’, that sit about but are never returned to. Every new work is like learning to dance to a new tune – sometimes, re-learning to dance altogether.
