I've wanted to write about Friday night since Friday night.
Rachel McKibbons was the feature at First Draft, and she did all new poems. I've heard some of her work on youtube but mostly it was her reputation that preceded her. She is, after all, the reigning Women of the World slam champion.
She's a confessional poet who makes my work seem reticent. She has a delivery of dark things that is beautiful. The way she ends her poems is like no one else I've ever heard. They sound like they end in the middle of a paragraph in the middle of a sentence and her poems are perfect.
After her set there was an open mic. Why the hell anyone would want to read after her is beyond me. What's the point of following that up, we're supposed to get back to work, or retire, but we're poets and we do these things.
It was one of the best open mics I've been to at WB is some time. There were new poets, one who brought a work about a murdered friend that was one of the bravest pieces I've heard in a long while. A couple of virgins. Regulars who stepped up and represented themselves quite well.
I read a new piece I agonized about all day. Wrote, revised, edited, added, subtracted a dick joke and by the time of the open mic I was still crossing things out, adding a couple of lines and still had no confidence in it.
Yet, when the kittens and children blinded by very, very bad people line got a laugh I suspected I was on to something and the room was releasing good noises. And when the ending, which was thought of at a urinal, lines deliberately nicked from Notting Hill were coming I still was not sure how'd they go over.
I asked, and they loved me.
No comments:
Post a Comment