“Pop Up Poetry” at Culture Night 2013
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~POETRCULTURE NIGHT IN TULLAMORE, IRELAND ~~~~~~~We had in Tullamore Rhymers Club, for the Culture Night event, what we called “Pop Up Poetry”, where we posed as coffee shop clients, and then rang a bell, introduced ourselves, and read a poem a piece.
It got mixed reactions, the coffee shop in Birr Castle was very good, Emmas Cafe in Birr was a good response, and the engagement of the crowd in Chocolate Brown in Tullamore was second to none.
Tullamore Rhymers Club is a group of writers who live around Tullamore, and is a revival of the Tullamore Writers Group that used to be ran by Vincent Wynter. The name change came from and in tribute to William Butler Yeats’s original Rhymers Club who used to meet in London.
We first went to Birr Castle coffee shop, and were met by Roslalind Fanning, and the coffee shop propieter, a lovely lady, who gave us strong coffees to strenghten the nerves!!!
Introduced by Camillus Boland, the group got a reading off to a small but appreciative audience in the outside seating area of the coffee shop, and had to do a second round. I read both “Give to Me an Angry Sea” and “Walking by Swans at Lough Sallagh, after which we went to “Emmas Café” in the town, and then to Tullamore from whence we came to a very appreciative audience in the Chocolate Brown coffee shop, where we were joined by another writer, and a photographer as well. Ah, fame, but wheres the money???
A planned further reading at Coffee Club in the town was alas beyond us – all having commitments of our own, and the group is now planning the next chapbook “Under the Fading Lamp”.