Bilston Voices: June 2010

I missed last month's Bilston Voices because of a problem with my foot and I'll miss the next one because I'll be away working so I wanted to go to this one. Instead of the usual five performers it had seven performing slightly shorter sets. This was to accommodate a group of sets from members of the City of Wolverhampton College Creative Writing Course.

First, though, we had the briefest of cameo appearances from Geoff Stevens who has performed at the venue before and has been around on the poetry circuit for forty years. That's why he was there, to read only a couple of his poems from his "Islands in the Blood" collection, and to invite us to a poetry event on the following evening at the Villiers Arms, the place where he did his very first reading. His two pieces were from the more serious and evocative end of his range and were very good indeed. The brevity of his appearance meant that we weren't treated to any of his popular Black Country poetry.

He was followed by Yvette Rose who followed a short prose memoir about working in Woolworths' with a group of gentle and wistful poems that were accomplished enough with strong rhythmic structures and good rhyming (both end rhymes and internal rhymes being used effectively.) The subject matter wasn't really to my taste but it was well enough done.

Then we were into the Creative Writing Course sets. The first was from Roxy Lal, a young writer reading for her first time. The works she read were very personal and evocative memoirs that at times clearly affected her emotionally but she completed the set well and has great promise as a writer. 

She was followed by Marion Cockin. She is very good poet that I have seen a few times. As I've said before I don't always like all of her material and this time felt that it wasn't as good as her previous sombre performance at Bilston Voices. It was nevertheless an entertaining and wide ranging set. Works included an amusing piece about choosing paint from the plethora of available shades, a love poem with some word play on multiple meanings and a serious poem inspired by the armistice day two minutes silence.

After the Break Lucy Nickholds, another writer from the Creative Writing Course, read us an interesting and original, if slightly macabre, fantasy story. She was followed by Michelle Moore who started with a short and rather bleak poem describing part of Wolverhampton and went on to a very good monologue in the character of a teaching assistant. It was well-written, well-read and quite accurate about how teaching assistants can often be viewed by teachers.

The evening was rounded out by a set from Jane Seabourne, the organiser of the writing course that had provided so much of our entertainment. Her poems were a mixed bag of styles, some funny and some very serious but all excellent. I was particularly amused by her description of a college open day in which the organisers had tried to make an essentially dull event into something more entertaining. I laughed out loud at the line "It's rumoured there'll be Morris Dancing". It perhaps wasn't the dramatic finale that we've seen at some previous Bilston Voices but it was, in a lower key way, a very satisfying end to the evening.