It’s not often reviews come in poetry form. Yesterday Anthony Toner and I did a little event together, a ‘lazy Sunday afternoon’ in Chapters coffee and book shop in Sturry (near Canterbury), combining Anthony’s beautiful, laid back songs and my poetry. This morning the event organiser Maurice Kinkead has sent me a marvellous review written by a poet in the audience. Andy Robert’s review in poetry is below, straight off the WhatsApp. Very many thanks, Andy!

A Chapters’ One

How do I write joy?*

May I relay my

May Bank Holiday matinee marvel?

Under dappled sunlight spotlights,

Booked in and brilliant,

We are introduced to

The Emerald Isle

entertainment Rosie and Anthony,

Bard meets balladeer

In rhythmic rhapsody,

Refreshing our souls

Through music and poetry

Marinaded in memories.

Cedar and mahogany

Stretch in the heat

And Toner tunes

Because he cares,

Then feeds us finger pickings

wrapped in riddle and rhyme,

A smorgasbord of

Chords and clef hangers

As time past sweeps into time present;

We are both rapt and

unwrapped.

Then Rosie rises to the cause;

She’s arrived in the right place

Via all the wrong roads

To share her life’s work

Of putting the right words

in the right order,

Urging us to ‘be bolder for

tomorrow we’re older.’

Her words weave their spell

As they percolate deep

Into our sunny day

subconscious.

We pause for digestion…

Beer, wine, coffee, teas, pees anyone?

Then, hungry for more,

Once more we turn to the

finely tuned Toner

As he wonders whether we are

Too far east for Louise,

While the breeze

Wafts his melodic rhetoric

Further east.

Rosie desserts us with

sumptuous 17-syllable truffles;

Words melt delicately in our minds;

(By now we are full as Babette’s feasters.)

Then,

Suddenly:

Feck me! It’s finished!

But, like Belfast’s shipyard’s finest,

We were alright when we left there,

Sated and eager for new chapters

To be written (and crooned)

In Chapters

Soonest please.

Wonderful! If you’d like to find out more about Maurice’s events in Chapters Coffee and Books, you can follow Chapters Unplugged on Facebook or ask at Chapters.

*You’ve probably guessed that Andy (poet-reviewer) has knitted phrases and thoughts from our event through the poem. For example, his first line cleverly comes from this of mine from Safe Ground (Mica Press) published just over a year ago. I read it in answer to Anthony’s song The Road to Fivemiletown…

In the Cool of This Hottest Day

Another day closes its
sunset eye.
At least it watched me writing.

How do I write joy? Peg
phrases
on pages, spun laundry in the sun.

Tonight, I will wear party black,
celebrate
the death of past ordeals.

Turn over any heart. Count
nicks, scars.
Admire the flinty shine. The weight.

We hew more truth with our pieces than
wreckers
ever wreak in breaking.

Blackbird threads notes through this frayed
evening’s quilt,
stitches the day together.

In the cool of the close of this
hottest day,
I sense my life begin