There have been so many poetry events in the last couple of weeks. On Thursday 26th April I read in York, at the lovely wood-panelled York Explore library, with Harry Gallager and Cherie Taylor-Battiste. It was great to catch up briefly with Carole Bromley. On Friday 27th I read from Deborah Alma’s #MeToo Anthology at Gill Lambert and Mark Connors’ Word Club in Leeds, where I also said hi to Zelda Chappell and met Lesley Quayle for the first time in real life. Those two events are why I couldn’t spend more time at the T-Junction festival, where the pamphlet was officially launched, at MIMA in Middlesbrough. The bits of the the festival I did get to were inspiring. Then yesterday, in tropical Hexham, I was delighted to read with the Vane Women as part of the Hexham Book Festival. I was dreading a hot, stuffy reading, but was delighted to find we were reading in a cellar bar; The Vault, on Hallgate. Although the venue was packed, it stayed cool, and allowed us to make jokes about Underground Poetry. The photo above is of the amazing Gillian Allnutt, reading as a guest of the Vane Women.

Now I’ve got all that excitement over with, I really have to think about writing some more poems. But first I think I should read some of the pile of poetry books on my bedside table.