Portsmouth hosted the first of ten dates on the T.S. Eliot Prize Tour, marking the twentieth anniversary of the prize. The Grammar School library, or one of them, was an opulent setting with its gold chandelier and luxury curtains and my misgivings that my ticket was only number 12 were dispelled when the room was comfortably full with an audience of perhaps 60.
Maggie Sawkins represented Portsmouth impressively. I had forgotten how good she is, actually, and her stock rose further when she mentioned that her favourite pop group in the 70's was the inestimable Darts before resding her poem on the subject, Come Back My Love.
Tim Liardet was engaging and, like all these poets, confirmed that a poetry reading these days is no longer so much the inward-looking self indulgence of distracted nonchalance but an open, entertaining explication of the work. He finished with some new poems on the theme of self-portraits but revealed that his next book was coming soon, meaning Spring 2015 which necessitates it being with his editor by Spring 2014. Good heavens. I thought you put together a Word document, e-mailed it to the printers and the book was ready later in the same week.
W.N. (Bill) Herbert stood in for the indisposed Penelope Shuttle and was animated and generous in performance of poems from Omnesia. Among other things, he will be remembered as the first poet I ever saw reading from an i-pad.
And, in the way of things that you somehow get the impression that the biggest name goes last, George Szirtes was tender and lively, exploring the beauty of words in themselves in his list poem of imaginary colours and other poems from his latest book, Bad Machine, the bad machine being the body that we both delight in and are hostage to.
Portsmouth was glad to see such poets and they were well worth supporting. It would be nice to have similar events here more often but it is, of course, down to those of us who want them to put them on. But one could not have wished to be presented with a more companionable group of poets.