Rock Star for a Day

It's been a busy month for poetry performances, with two open-air gigs in the last fortnight, and a third today, at the Tenbury Music Festival. This looked like a bit of a gamble, with spoken word performance (and that means light, accessible performance) trying to nose its way into a programme dominated by music. Fine in principle, but what if the main stage is occupied by an amplified band, at the same time as the minor tent across the same field features a would be poet? Yup, they mainly get drowned out, which is what happened a lot of the time. but we had a loyal huddle of listeners - get close enough, and you do get to hear what's going on - who seemed to enjoy the poems and/or admire our persistence. As I'm reading my Gareth Southgate poem, I can see this guy down below, nodding and smiling. He turns out to be the compere of the whole event. "Great poem", he says afterwards, "but it's wasted here." Thanks a bunch, I think, but it wasn't me that scheduled it. but he goes on. "Would you do it on the main stage?" So twenty minutes later i'm tottering up the steps to the main stage, waiting for an enthusiastic gang of local rockers to complete their explosive finale, so that I can deliver my Southgate eulogy to the assembled masses. Not sure if it's exactly what they were waiting for, but I enjoyed it.