Bilston Voices

It was an unusually subdued evening at Bilston Voices last night. I don't know whether it was the political debate that kept half the audience away or the football or the nice weather but something certainly did so that half the seats in the already quite compact venue were empty. It flattened the atmosphere a little but the performers still managed to give us another night of good entertainment. First up was Eileen Foy whose set fell a little between two stools. Her poems were well-crafted but occasionally had the feel of writing exercises - albeit very well done writing exercises - poems about poetry often do, nevertheless she entertained us solidly for fifteen minutes before handing over the stage to Rory Kelly. Rory was one of the occasional series of young performers that Emma is encouraging with slots at the venue and he treated us to a spirited and enthusiastic performance of short humorous poems delivered with a great deal of gusto. Considering that he had to rush off home immediately afterwards to revise for an exam today it was an especially bravura showing. He was also the only poet to perform there so far complete with a visual aid - a photograph of a meditating policeman on every table - to accompany one of his pieces.

The half was rounded out by Marcia Calame. Her poetry was rhythmic and with what was almost, though not exactly, a rapping style. While I found some of her pieces to be rather metaphor heavy, her reading of a longer piece which she described as a "work in progress" was really very impressive. She asked for our comments and I'm happy to comply. My comment is that if that is a work in progress I hope I get the chance to hear it when it's finished as I was quite taken with it even in its current form.

After the break the atmosphere picked up thanks to the style of poetry favoured by Mike Tinsley. His poems are funny and clever and with seaside postcard sense of humour and mostly written in a Black Country dialect. Dialect poetry can go horribly wrong but not last night. The trick is to have a poem that would be good without the dialect and then the dialect adds another layer. Mike managed the trick admirably. It made him a hard act to follow but Dave Finchett gave it an excellent try. His  poems were a mix of nostalgia and humour with a dash of anger thrown into the blend. He pulled off tricky rhyme schemes and rhythms with skill as he gave us pieces about his memories of "Spot The Ball" and his feelings about the credit crunch and the modern sound bite culture among others.

And then it was over for another month, a quieter night than some perhaps but still an entertaining one.