READING’S regular celebration of verse is set to return with a new guest poet.
Poets’ Cafe, run by the Reading Stanza of The Poetry Society, is back, bringing Berkshire’s bards along with its latest guest, Christopher Horton.
Horton has taken the winning spot in the National Poetry Competition and in the Bridport Prize, as well as first place in the South Downs Poetry Festival Competition.
He has also been commended by the Walter Swan Award, and has been featured in The Spectator, Poetry Wales, Poetry London, and The New Welsh Review.
Poet’s Cafe welcomes open mic performers, who give readings of their own poetry, but is open to audience members who do not wish to perform.
Guest poet Gregory Leadbeater gave a reading at the previous event, and said afterwards: “I’d love to think that poetry is finding its way into people’s lives again.”There are so many different platforms which are prominent now: there’s the live plane, the online plane, and the page.”
“The orality of poetry is important to me, though of course I love books as media and as an object, as a piece of technology.
“It’s absolutely not outdated– it has advantages for us as physical beings of a certain shape.”
He explained: “People have prophesised the demise of the book, which just hasn’t come to pass, and likewise there have always been concerns about poetry in that context.
“But I think it will always find a way; I’m concerned, because I’m always concerned, but I’m also quite optimistic.
“Because there’s a spontaneous quality that emerges in the culture of poetry– if everyone forgot everything we’d ever known tomorrow, something would emerge that would recognisably be poetry.”
The event in December followed shortly after the death of celebrated poet Benjamin Zephaniah, who championed accessibility and approachability in poetry.
“There’s lots of market pressures which distort that and that makes it difficult for poetry as an artform.
“Perhaps it’s always been a minoritarian art form and that can also perhaps be a great strength– I’m very interested in everything being available to everybody, however.
“Birmingham’s George Dawson said in the 19th Century ‘It’s time to give everything to everybody’– I think that he meant that the entirety of artistic inheritance is in public ownership.
“I really believe that, and I think Zephaniah did too.”
He explained: “I don’t think Dawson meant talking down to the audience, however, that’s so important.
“False notions of accessibility are around and those are so patronising– I don’t like seeing that.
“Everyone deserves to experience everything that the art form has to offer, you can’t pre-decide what’s good for people.
“For me, that’s something people are confused about, but in the art world as a phenomenon, supply and demand is inverted.
“People don’t know what they want with art until they have it, often, because, by definition, it’s something new and creative.”
It’s also something which drives his own work: “I think flow and meticulousness are really integrated for me; that’s the great pleasure of composing (I like that old fashioned word) the relationships which emerge from holding something in your imagination.
“It grows and begins to speak back to you so you end up having something intimately yours, but which also has its own life outside of the poet, in some way.”
Poet’s Cafe returns to South Street Arts Centre from 8pm on Friday, January 12, with guest poet Christopher Houghton.
Tickets are £5, £4 for readers, available on the door.
Full details of upcoming events are available via: poetscafereading.co.uk
