Bilston Voices

Bilston Voices last night went for a Black Country themed evening and it gave the proceedings a consistency of tone that is sometimes lacking in the more diverse selections usually on offer. This time round I had seen all of the performers before and was looking forward to hearing more of their work. Jill Tromans, from Scribblers, kicked off with a couple of good poems and a very funny story about a man taking his pet chicken to the vet. It was her best performance so far. She performed, rather than read, the two poems and gave a very expressive and animated reading of the story. She also introduced them well and had the audience laughing out loud at the links as well as the writing.

Eileen Ward-Birch followed with a reading of a selection of her poems and a nicely observed, if rather slight, memoir of a childhood visit, in winter, to see relatives in Aldridge. She fitted quite a lot of short, diverse poems into her set ranging from one about the renovation of St Leonard's Church in Bilston to one about internet shopping via one about the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano eruption.

The three remaining performers for the evening had something in common. Much of their poetry would have been utterly incomprehensible to anyone who wasn't born within about five miles of the venue but achingly funny to anyone who was. So, from Geoff Stevens, we got a poem about pigeons, one called "Why am Darlaston blokes so slow?", another about a Black Country dialect sex chat line and so on all delivered in a heavy Black Country dialect that really engaged the audience. Dialect poetry has to be very well done to succeed and Geoff's is very well done indeed.

After the break Mike Tinsley took over and things took a turn for the prurient. This being Mike, we had expected no less.  He included poems about sex, death, Christmas and carrots (in sick) in his very enjoyable set. One of Mike's tricks is to take jokes, usually dirty jokes, that are so old they are creaking, and give them a new lease of life as poems. It works well, though the groans from the audience are as loud as the laughs. He's a thoroughly entertaining performer who included more dialect stuff to confuse any visitors from out of the district.

We finished off the evening with Brendan Hawthorne whose poems were just as good though perhaps (a little)  less seamy. He covered the way that pubs have changed their character over the years, health and safety and the wickedly funny idea of a Black Country dialect SatNav among other topics though my favourite was the slightly more thoughtful, though still funny, one about a lifetime of trauma caused by not getting a bright orange space hopper for Christmas in 1969.

Another great night for five excellent performances. Bilston Voices just goes on delivering the goods every time.