Hit The Ode

When I decided to take one of the open mic slots at last night's second Hit The Ode poetry event, in the Victoria pub in Birmingham, it's probably just as well that I hadn't been to the first one at the end of last year. Had I seen the standard of performance I would probably have felt too intimidated to join in. As it is I was asked as I entered if I wanted to perform or just watch and I said, "perform", which at least got me in without paying.

They started with four open mic slots, of which I was third. The two performers before me were both terrific and I must admit to feeling a bit of fraud following them. As I watched them, I contemplated switching my planned poems for something else a bit more challenging but I wasn’t all that sure I’d be able to remember anything else well enough so I stuck with the plan and did On Being Joined In The Pub By Two Female Colleagues Whose Limited Range Of Conversational Gambits Had Previously Been Remarked Upon and its companion piece Dave. It went down well enough but next time I’ll be raising my game a bit. The poet after me lifted the bar again for the open mics and then we were into the actual featured performers with Italian poet Sergio Garau. It was a stunning performance ,in multiple languages, with computer presentations and music and was delivered with breathtaking style and energy. It was more like watching a rock star than a poet and the poem that was performed in German (luckily in easy enough German for me to understand it all) reminded me of listening to some of Rammstein’s lyrics. (It had some stylistic similarities, for example, to one of my favourite Rammstein songs Los.) An excellent performance which was greatly appreciated by the packed audience and must have terrified the open mic poets who were to open up the second half.

If it did, they didn’t show it putting in another group of fine performances to the delight of the audience – though Gary Longdon’s choice of performance piece was definitely brave, being a lengthy poem about why women like crap music.

Then we were back to the featured acts for Emma Purshouse’s excellent set. She is an entertaining poet and performer, always a treat to watch and never disappoints. Last night was no exception. A couple of poems I hadn’t heard before were mixed in with a bunch of old favourites and very good it was too.

The evening finished with Ross Sutherland, whose quirky performance was hilarious. He featured a lengthy and bizarre retelling of Little Red Riding Hood – complete with a cartoon of the story running behind him, an equally bizarre poem dedicated to a random member of the audience and the same trivial anecdote about shopping in Spa repeated multiple times in different styles. Unusual and vastly entertaining.

I should also add a note that, while not appearing as a performer, Bohdan Piasecki did an absolutely marvellous job as the MC with an easy going style that was as entertaining as the acts and that made the whole evening seem a very friendly affair.

A great night out.