I’d like to mention, again, that I don’t spend all my time dancing in clubs. I do other things. I do poetry for example. So I was delighted to discover a poetry reading to go to. I think I arrived (wearing a brown jacket with leather patches on the elbows, of course) with a few misconceptions though – for example that they would actually read my poem to the crowd – so my oeuvre about an agile, partly nocturnal, quadruple carnivorous animal with smooth fur and retractile claws that was reclining on a piece of coarse, woven material used as a protective covering for floors went unheard.
At the start I also failed to realize that the poems were being read over voice chat so I was a bit confused about all the applauding going on, but not really: Poets = Substance Abuse (see pic to the left as proof: Those were the people at the reading).
Having figured that out I proceeded to sit through a number of well read but slightly confusing poems. I was also a bit annoyed that they were reading poems from avatars who weren’t even present at the event – and I couldn’t find D.H. Lawrence’s or Margaret Atwood’s profile in search either! But I still hoped I’d hear the presenter saying “And now a poem from someone here. This is from Eaton and it’s called ‘The cat sat on the mat’”. But nope, she went on to read something called Clovis by Klannex Northmead – who was actually there and got two of his or her poems read. One was about being a Clovis arrow tip, if I remember correctly.
For being such a poetically inclined crowd the people there weren’t really that eloquent. “Applause!!!” and “Applauds!” seemed to be what any poem merited. I asked if we actually discussed the poems and was told that we didn’t, just listened. That’s poetic license for “shut the f**k up”, I guess. But they did talk a bit about ampersands for a while – which I personally believe should be read aloud as their ASCII number, but I guess I’m the minority view on that.
With a last poem from the presenter things closed down. I wanted to go away with everybody to a nice pub to discuss the poems – and maybe quickly tell them my own. But my suggestion fell on deaf ears. Snotty, snub poet lovers!
