My usual Wednesday night is whatever the arts centre puts on but tonight’s performance had been canceled due to injury.

The Norwich Poetry Collective have been on my radar for a little while. They host an open mic every other month (soon to be monthly) at the Bird Cage.

The audience skewed female, with a mix of student-types and middle aged folks. There seems to be a core group of regulars but I was told I wasn’t not the only new face here tonight. I got in early so have a seat by a wall. Perfect for invisibility¹I find my note taking makes me less noticable and lessens my self consciousness. I often get odd looks when writing in other settings but here there … Continue reading.

An organiser arrives, apologising for the late set up as she has only just finished work. Implying the a late start is abnormal.  An hour after the listed start time a host gets on stage to welcome us. I’ve finished my lemonade. He announces plans for a publication and that the open mic is going to happen more often. It’s clearly popular with 40 odd people squished together in the room.

Poerty is another art form I know little about. I know I like word-play and absurdist stuff over flowery language.

The first performer, Patrick Widdess, made me smile with a short poem about cycling “Murder going uphill, RedRum going down” but kinda alienated me with a longer one about poets reading their work off their phones. His paper was fine to use but “Phones are for talking; not the spoken word.” A cute line but just got an eye roll from this technosexual youth.

The first round showed me that I couldn’t really take notes about lines I liked so put my pen away to listen properly, that’s why there are quotes for any other the other acts. Of those I saw Sophie Essex stood out to me with her nerves and her tiny personal poems. She ran them together with barely a pause for breath between them and I liked that. Combined they only made a couple of minutes, even with moments to explain concepts like platinum lesbian²Imagine a goldstar lesbian but even more restrictive and more space for elitism.

Yes or no?

For me the most interesting thing said on stage was a warning about how posting your poems on facebook would put them in the public domain and therefore make them ineligible for most poetry competitions.

I like a few poets³I really like Tim Key. John Cooper Clarke (obviously) and that Luke Wright one is ok. I saw Ross Sutherland live last year. That was a brilliant mix … Continue reading but I guess I don’t like these ones as much. I left during the drinks break.

Attending was about trying new things. I tried. I confirmed my suspicions that this wasn’t for me. Also, the Bird Cage ran out of hot chocolate the day before so my night was ruined⁴It was cold and I didn’t really want to cool my insides with more than one refrigerated lemonade before it started.