What does it say at the top of this page? Brilliant! Our National Poetry Day (Plus One) in Montrose last night was... brilliant!
I will get to a proper report at some point but today we're all very tired so there's just time for a couple of quick amateur photos and a word or two.
First off we had a huge audience! The room was full (and it's a big room...a party function room not a little back room or anything). Sure, there were lots of friends and family but there were lots of people I'd never met or seen before too. We weren't meant to open doors till 7.30 but people started coming in at 7 and we were pretty much full by quarter to eight. People had come from out of town, some had seen it in the local papers. It was great to look out at such a big, attentive audience. Plus we took enough money (on door and with raffle) to be able to pay folk for their labour/expenses and not be out of pocket (and all that with tickets only £3 each). Thanks to our sponsors T. Duncan (sponsorship covered some of our other expenses like room hire).
The room filling up nicely (this doesn't show everybody there by any means)! Thanks to everyone who came along.
Secondly all the performers did a great job. Charlie Williamson (singing and helped out on one song by his young son Kyle on guitar), Raymond Vettese (poetry), Grace Banks (singing) and Hugh McMillan (poetry, photo above) was the order of play with little bits of me in between. It was a great mix and a fantastic evening's entertainment. As it was a National Poetry Day event the poets got longer slots and both were on top form. Much laughter, lots of gulp-that's-sad moments, lots of beautiful observations. These ARE two of Scotland's finest poets...I wasn't just making it up for the press release! They enjoyed each other's sets too, I think. They are very different but have much in common too.
There will be more photos to come (one of the local press photographers was around for much of the first half of the night) but the ones in this post are a couple of ours (thanks Mark). We did some videoing too so that will turn up some time too.
p.s. Charlie has written about this event here.
