The Poetry Cafe,
22 Betterton Street,
London,
WC2H 9BX
Simon Smith, Eleanor Rees, Tamy Yoseloff, Agnieszka Studzinska and Julia Bird will be reading from their work.
On Simon Smith's London Bridge:
The occupants of Simon Smith’s poems are names for contemporary urban detail ratcheted up to experiential intensities that actually open (rather than shut down, as all too customary) the reader’s senses of place and person. The “mesh” is thereby not amiss, nor are these “Great buckets of Reality” hoisted to no purpose. A rare pleasure found so succinctly in the telling. As Smith’s refresher take on Martial has it, “Wouldn’t every man live, if he knew how,/Giving it all away to here and now?” -- Bill Berkson
Robert Browning lived at the foot of Telegraph Hill and Chaucer’s pilgrims went along the Old Kent Road. This is a Londoner’s book, south of the river going east: brick built and bomb-damaged, with Roman remains, Oyster cards, Green Shield stamps, Keats, O’Hara, John James, Apollinaire, and everywhere unforeseen beauty and wit. I think ‘Honeymoon’ is my favourite, but sometimes I like ‘The Table’ best of all, what do you think? -- Tony Lopez
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