Berkeley Square Poetry Review

It was wonderful to return to Bristol, where I lived when finishing my first book The Art of Contraception quite a few years back now. I had been invited by Charles and Tim to be the guest feature at the Berkeley Square Poetry Revue at cocktail bar and arts and media hub The Square Club and had planned a tenuously-linked set of Halloween poems – at least I had the Jaws one, and one that mentioned spiders, another blood, and so on – but the audience seemed non-plussed by Halloween so I read the love poems and the house poems and the courgette crisis poems instead.

I was glad I'd only opted for witchy tights rather than a full costume, and for making it in time to also catch the Grayson Perry exhibition at the Arnolfini beforehand, and for the 1:30am train home as the gig finished too late for the 11pm which meant I had to call in to my favourite theatre bar on the way home, the shame.

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Open newslist

Guardian open up their newslist. Helpful and insightful or another step towards the takeover of less-informed citizen journalism and media cost-cutting/ job cuts? Discuss... More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/series/open-newslist?fb=native In other media news... The Times and Sunday Times cut 150 editorial posts More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/oct/20/times-job-cuts?fb=native

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