Word Command at Epicentre Book Cafe

It was a really good night at the Word Command spoken word evening held at the Epicentre Book Cafe, hosted by Bryce Dumont. We were headlining, and so did something ambitious - i.e. tried to showcase a whole range of different genres and styles that we did. Well, when Bryce chose publicity images, he chose one of each! So we started off with storytelling, doing one of our trademark tales for an adult audience, with cloaks, helm, staff, tricorn hat etc., and then followed with a narrative poem of mine. For our second set, we mixed contemporary American fiction as monologue, Stand Up Philosophy and performance poetry. The Stand Up Philosopher doing Marx, followed by a new piece from the forthcoming 'Book of Convictions' (by me) then an early geometric poem (both referring obliquely to the pieces before and after - as the first Philosophy piece referred to Martin Luther, and the poem to Martin Luther King, and the second piece was from Spinoza, and so written as geometric proofs!). And finally condensed axioms from Ethics by the said Spinoza. Having started off with a contemporary American story (see a previous blog on 'Performing Contemporary American Fiction') performed by myself as a monologue, to begin with. So were showcasing; storytelling, stand up philosophy, monologue, and three types of poetry - narrative/monologue/confessional (though I don't exactly like that term, but it conveys something) speech style, satire/declamatory and literary/geometric. All performed, the last with movement as part of the poem. Several different 'heads' were involved! which I always find strangely difficult, but it paid off, they all went down well, and we got a lot of laughs for the storytelling and prose fiction, and many kind compliments. 'Beautiful', 'wonderful', 'fantastic' and 'brilliant' mainly, which made it feel definitely worth the effort!

   Also performing were the excellent Susan Taylor with a new collection concerning Pixies! Simon Williams being very witty, and the fluid Jennie Osborne with a mixture of compelling words and movement, among others. Bryce served hot soup, coffee and cakes, and the Epicentre Book Cafe is a lovely venue - full of books of course, knitted cakes (!), pictures, it's bright, airy and friendly. Bryce got everyone to contribute to a group sound poem, which once finished, he performed really well to both laughter and acclaim. Also tributes to poets whom he had admired and who had recently passed away.
   I had to buy a lovely travel journal with a cover of antique maps, and all in all it was a really good night.
   Huge thanks to Bryce, for inviting us and hosting the evening with such aplomb, and cooking for everyone! and to Susan, Simon and Jennie for being so good to perform with - long live the Epicentre Book Cafe! It deserves the rave reviews which its gathering.

Check out the website at;
http://www.epicentrebookcafe.org.uk/books.htm