Hearing Voices this evening

No, I’m not mad. No, it wasn’t really my thing. But neither of these opinions is important.

What is important is that on a rainy Monday evening in January, without very much in the way of publicity, it was possible to get 70-80 people to a pub in Leicester to attend a poetry event. I only found out about it a couple of hours before it happened – the event was Hearing Voices and here’s the Facebook notification I got. There’s almost nothing about it on the web yet (pages still being developed) but the overall one-year project is for three issues of a magazine, of which the first is now out (at least I think it was the first, in which case their stated timetable appears to have slipped?). Hence the event which was a kind of launch party.

The event included scheduled poetry readings, some open-mic poetry and a few short stories though poetry dominated the event.

Two quick thoughts.

First, massive congratulations to the organisers, the not-for-profit group Crystal Clear Creators, on a really successful event.

Second, given the evident popularity of poetry and the fact I’m struggling away writing horror and SF and ‘urban’ and ‘alternative’ stories, I’m obviously in the wrong game. I shall have to study this poetry thing more carefully!