Thursday, 12 June 2008

READING AT NEEDLEMAKERS, LEWES

What a brilliant occasion. Yesterday evening's readings in The Needlemakers' Cafe, Lewes (Janet Sutherland, Catherine Smith and me) performed to a sell out audience.

The cafe is a wonderful space, high brick ceiling, heavy wooden pillars. A massive curved back wall that we stood against to read.

Janet went first, reading her work with quiet authority. She read many poems from her recent collection Burning The Heartwood, and others from magazines previously published. There was gentleness, humour, poignancy, all woven into words I wanted to catch hold of and read myself. So I will!

Catherine came next. Her collection, Lip was the source of her readings - funny, witty and thought-provoking in equal measure. Another one to read later as well!

We then had a break, with drinks and tapas served by the cafe. And I read after the break, choosing the title story from Words From A Glass Bubble. It seemed to go down fine, people were very generous with their commments and natter afterwards. Lovely to see so many writers in the audience, and lovely to talk to writers before and after. Like the cafe was feeding us on all different levels!

Thanks to Matt at Skylark for organising this, for compering so well.

3 comments:

Nik Perring said...

Fantastic. Glad to hear it went well.

Nik

Vanessa Gebbie said...

Interesting... the tickets cost £4.00. Short Fuse charges too, a fiver, and all the times Ive been there, it's been packed. And likewise, Tales of the Decongested. A fiver.

I wonder if things are free, there's no real value sometimes?

Nik Perring said...

Yes, yes and thrice yes. Absolutely. It's definitely got a heck of a lot to do with percieved value, I think. The thing with putting things on for free (which I've done with reasonable success) is that people suspect there's no such thing as a free lunch, or that it's going to be amateurish. If it's good enough to pay for then, I think people think, it'll be good. It's getting the balance right though, isn't it? Can't be too cheap, too expensive, too long, too short...

Nik

PS I found that picture I mentioned in response to your comment on my blog and have posted it. Is that one more familiar?