Poetry at the... GRV and a Poetry LoveFest

Another good night at Poetry at the…GRV on Sunday evening. Each poet was distinctive – from Morgan Downie and his island poems (my favourites of his, although I thought his ‘work’ poems were also interesting) to Tessa Ransford, who read a miscellany of work from several decades, to Robert Alan Jamieson, whose commentary on ‘the language question’, illustrated starkly in the poems, made for a thought provoking and memorable set. There were also three ‘3-minute’ poets: Colin Donati (his Scots version of Jabberwocky was astonishing), Jon Zarecki (normally the barman in our room at the GRV) who was reading his poems in public for the first time, and Ross Wilson, who I’d first heard read at an open mic during StAnza – all three did well.

The February date at the GRV would be Valentines Day, 14 February. Rather than doing the usual line-up of three poets, I’m considering holding a kind of Poetry LoveFest. The nascent plan is to get 20-30 poets to write a poem (or a short prose piece) each inspired by a different verse from the Song of Songs, which I would provide for them. On the night, all the poems would be read, mostly by their authors, but some might be written by folk at too much of a distance and I could get skilled readers to read these ones. But would people go for that (and bring their loved ones), or are people going to prefer a quiet, romantic evening for two around the dinner table? Only one way to find out, I suppose…