The Poet's Lounge

The Poet's Lounge

19 June, 2009
by: Lowri

It's true what Bex says about poetry nights, everyone expresses interest, fancies themselves as the type of person who enjoys spoken word, but then when it comes to the crunch, you just don't go. Other things to do, the time is never now. Until now.

Dusted off like a prehistoric relic, I find it. My poetry obsession. Sprawling and rusty but glowing untidily beneath the neglect. Etched with the careworn scars of favourite lines, poems grown soft and tattered with use, like a fiver that's been through the wash. My soul bears the lattice of these lines. And seeing them now, exposed, a skeletal leaf, I know I need to add more.

I've dusted off my poetry obsession thanks to Bex, and, giving myself no room for bailing out of our date for The Poet's Lounge, I'm excited as the mics are racked up like ribs by the busy looking musicians who are signalling each other, meercats nodding across the distinctly uncrowded room.

The Poet's Lounge was displaced from the Proud Galleries by a double booking, and the lovely InSpiral Lounge seized the mantel and is hosting tonight's event. Bex and I bag the best seats in the house, and feel like we're back in Goa as we gaze down the canal; chai lattes with soya and organic lager, dreadlocks, conscious living and the sun calmly setting over Camden before the lyrical storm.

The warm up band headed up by MC Eclipse - and dubbed Eclipse and the Clippers by host Kenny Baraka - are pleasantly chilled as the room rapidly fills, but really we're all waiting for the words.

'Have you ever been chatted up with a line? Ya know, like 'My number would look really good in your phone?'' asks Poetic3dom. A surge of agreement eddies up from the crowd.

'Well, that happened to me outside a club and this is what I wrote about it.'

She proceeds to splice her London twang with majestic imagery about a pupil and a teacher looking out at her from the man with the 'patiently carved chest' who finds her outside a club 'after I'd been busting', and seeing him seeing the woman beneath the woman, really seeing her. She's amazing, and we're looking at each other gasping 'Wow'. Her second details why she cheated on said guy, but the subject of the poem is not as relevant as her impeccable treatment of it - which cannot be done justice here. She's followed up by Alex Quest who speaks his words to music - a rendition of Down On my Knees – which is beautiful, but we're hungry for words. Concentrated words.

Jasmine Cooray steps up after a massive introduction, and silences the crowd with her breathless, incisive poems. 'Porcelain' about her racist grandmother collecting porcelain dolls and getting 'grandchildren with fluffy afros and noise' floors everyone, and then she begins the staggering 'How The Tiger Got His Stripes'.

Describing poetry you don't know the lines of is like attempting to draw a picture of your mother tongue for a foreigner. I don't have the words to paint the feelings drawn out of me by this woman, but tingling goosebumps, a rivulet of unshed tears and a fire reignited by her language jostle for space to express on my face.

She's brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. I want more.

The multi-talented Charlie Dark is also excellent, with his new material crackling like static over looped beats; talk of gangs and kids and fists colliding on street corners 'united in the celebration that we live to meet and greet another day', but it's the women who captivate tonight, who strum my heart strings.

The Poet's Lounge are moving things forward with their mixture of music and words, 'At least we're not standing here talking about angst like we were 20 years ago' says Charlie Dark. And yes, it is forward looking, and vibrant and rippling with movement, texture and creativity but oh the words the words. It's the words which matter the most.

Click here to see more London poetry events.
Click here for all events at the inSpiral Lounge.
Click here for things to do in Camden.

Lowri