Review of Poetry Street Party

It is easy to feel some trepidation when faced with the words "local" and "young" on a Flier. Will we be faced with a bunch of students reading truisms into sheaves of paper? Or worse, reading with the glow of true belief, about the truly extraordinary nature of their cat Barney? We need not have feared. With Rosen as ringmaster it was foolish to expect anything less than a night of good entertainment.

The four voices which made up Poem In Between People displayed a surprising range in content and style from a rabble rousing tribute to London, to an account of the natural progression and loosening of a childhood friendship. Particular praise must be given to a poem seeming at first to celebrate a 25th wedding anniversary only to go on to show the twofold nature of such culturally enshrined bonds with the image of two young people separated by traditions dictating the rules of marriage within tribes.

Annie Freud then read from her collection The Best Man That Ever Was; an event that lead the audience from the kitchens of the inventor of the individual fruit pie, into the upper stories where we sat at the bedside of a distressingly Dead Bat. The night was finished by Adisa's carefully crafted sound-collage of music and words. A truly enjoyable experience.

Review by Holly Hopkins