IMG_0299An excited audience filled the Big Comfy Bookshop in April. As the bustle faded, the night kicked off with powerful and sinister imagery of an autopsy, an incision in the skin of the earth. Following that, an amusing and rhythmic performance addressed the feeling of being a middle-aged woman and the relatable feeling of blending into the many people on the street.

 

Friendship on the verge of more than that creates difficulties, but it is much easier when you know how you feel about it. The audience listened to the powerful certainty as the third poet stated that her body is hers alone and that if a friendship comes at a price, she wants no part of it. Emotion then flooded the room at the explanation of the death of a much loved father, now a missing cog, with the last sentence of his book unwritten.

 

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The topic then looped back towards relationships, as the audience fell down the rabbit hole with Alice into a world of madness. Pain and pleasure are simultaneously felt during the use of acid and opium. Even darker subjects were then adopted as an honour killing was described from the perspective of someone going through it.

 

IMG_0314Headliner Emilie Lauren Jones then took the stage. Coventry is alive with songs of peace. She spoke about the many stars in the night sky, the smiling sun, and the laughing ocean waves. She referred to her years at Coventry University, and shared her early poem about her bedroom. She explored the misery around the treatment of those who are physically unable. Reflections about growth and life dazzled the audience.

 

Nature, regret and the hardship of reality followed Emilie’s performance. A black cat in the moonlight and an elephant; dirty, blue, broken. Nostalgia was felt around a family holiday by the sea and then a field of light, a wall of stars. A fusion of different cultures through food looked at the excitement of diversity. The night finished with dynamic words of the Cathedral, an ancient city’s nucleus.