Book Club Boutique, 5th November

Lovers of spoken word! Bibliophiles! Where were you November 5th? I'll tell you where I was - lounging in the intimate and cosy Vout O Reenees club, listening to Salena Godden and her fellow chums published by Unbound deliver some very fine prose. And you should have been too! There was certainly room for more - in fact, without my Meetup group, I think everyone else there would have been one of the speakers or their nearest and dearest. Which is ludicrous, for it was an excellent event. It even managed to convert some un-poetry-minded people to the love of spoken word.

Vout O Reenees

We had about seven different artistes, who were celebrating the fact that they had recently had their poetry published by Burning Books. They were all 'label mates' if you will. And there wasn't a dud among them, although Dan Cockerill's pieces (who runs Bang said the Gun) were a little too child-centric for me. I'm sure you would have appreciated it more if you had children of your own.

All were very different - from the geek-chic poetry of Dan Simpson, musing on the unfortunate pseudonyms of the orange pac-man around the world, to the sublimely surreal Rob Auton, pondering what heaven might be like. Are chickens there? Do they get eaten? Do they mind?

We had Alice Furse reading an excerpt from her novel (the only non-poet of the night), about her first job and we had the wonderfully funny Mab Jones who, among other things, treated us to a touching poem to her hot young boyfriend about why she loves him.

Probably the most spine-tingling was Joelle Taylor, who I had seen before at Bang, but was no less affecting for that. As someone who works with young people, her poetry about a misused woman had a particular impact. 

And I haven't even mentioned A F Harrold, cohost Michelle Madsen or Salena Godden herself, who were all equally wonderful.

The night bills itself as 'books, booze and boogie-woogie'. It wasn't perhaps the booze-soaked revelry you might expect but it did have a certain rowdiness to it, coming from the fact that all the speakers clearly know and love each other and weren't afraid to show it. And there was a raffle - and I won a prize! Another one on my List to return to.