First on the stage was Carol Ann Duffy who read us four beautiful poems, my favourite being War Photographer, It had something so heavy and bittersweet about it, and I loved the hidden metaphor in the first stanza, and the last line “and they do not care” gave me chills. Daljit Nagra was the next on stage– his poetry revolved more around humour and his Indian culture. The poem he performed was “Singh Song” about a young Indian shop owner who was meant to be focusing on running his father’s shop, but would much rather spend time with his “newly bride”. He also gave us a snippet from another poem about ancient Indian gods– but with a modern twist… a section of the poem contained modern slang! For example, one of the gods said to the main hero of the poem “Don’t side-eye me you roadman, you skibidi rizzler!” Although unconventional, his humor and use of modern slang makes him one of the most popular poets in England. The rest of the poets were quite interesting, and I enjoyed Owen Sheers especially, Mametz Wood had so much enjoyable imagery and The last stanza was so sensational “As if the notes they had sung have only now, with this unearthing, slipped from their absent tongues.” The definite, all-time BEST poet to come on stage, (for me, and for literally every other person in the room, considering the deafening whoops and applause), was John Agard. His poetry was amazing. It was inclusive, witty and unique. He used patua instead of Standard-English, which gave a very rough but equally charming effect to his poems.

I thoroughly enjoyed Poetry live!. It was an exciting, enlightening (in some cases hilarious) time. It was very well set up, with well-placed breaks and a nice lunch period. The theatre it was held in was not built to hold so many people at the same time, however, and it was difficult to find space. There was also a lot of inconvenience when it came to finding places to sit and getting back to our places after the break periods. It was sometimes hard to focus on the event as some of the children (who’d come as a school group) could be a little disruptive at times.