James Wilkes, called into the fray at the last moment as substitute for the ill stricken Glyn Maxwell, got proceedings going accordingly. His work was introduced as being, not really poems at all, but as municipal scraps, more like reviews than poems, and it was these review poems that James opened with.

These poems had an amorphous personality, which made them slightly inaccessible when read aloud. There was, also, a hint of nervousness in the reading initially, but as he continued with the captivating 'Cycle Couriers’;

‘Also bike couriers are interesting because they shuttle
desirable items through smog and danger. Such as
contracts, deeds of sale, blackmail demands, blood…’

Penned in the Margins' own Octimus Prime, Tom Chivers followed, filling the remaining proverbial boot left in Glyn’s absence. His poems were delightfully crafted, imaginative and wholly enjoyable. However it was his reading of ‘Iconic’, which really seized the audience's attention. A tortuous, and superbly conducted reading which bubbled and simmered before threatening to boil over completely with scathing wit and humour, disemboweling the accepted stereotypes of iconic design, lifestyle and taste as it went. ‘A Guide to Email Etiquette’ was another wit-laden escapade, which led seamlessly into ‘2 Undisclosed Recipients. Subject; Style Stalker’ which showed off his imaginative faculty. Mixing 18th century language into the medium of email.

After a short and buzzing break, Kate Kilalea limped (due to a slightly bizarre injury) up to the microphone. Reading from her debut full length collection, One Eyed Leigh, she explained that these poems were written for sound, they were held together by sound and a feeling of fear, the uncertainty that something imminent was about to happen and you couldn’t say for certain if it was good or bad.

She opened with the near-death tale of a mountainside drive, which explored the exaltment of such an experience. The short poems, 'Amazement' and 'My Name Changed' explored deliciously controlled and limited use of meter. The evening's finest moment came in the form of the four-part drama, 'The boy with a fire in his boot.' A dolorous and tragic story of a small boy running fascinated headlong into a blazing forest fire. It dripped with sublime descriptions and metaphor.

'The boy looked at the fire.
It was bigger than him
and he didn't know it yet,

but it was so frightening
that he grew older just from looking at it.
And the fire, equally inquisitive, lifted its own lantern...'

It was a spellbinding reading, most of which was recited, impressively, from memory. And based on this performance she would be a good bet to land the 2009 Costa Poetry Prize.

Hats off to Penned in the Margins for another superb evening of Poetry.

...when it was discovered that the microphone was having a tantrum, refusing to work as an output device, whilst being completely willing to record most strange.

The delightful Heather Phillipson got proceedings underway, albeit a cappella, - fortunately the cosy setting of 188 Westbourne Grove is more than suited for the non-amplified - by announcing that her sister was in labour and that this may have left her seeming a little distracted. She carefully introduced each poem, occasionally - and oh-so Englishly - apologising for being pretentious in her titling. Her delivery was both deliberate and eloquent. Her rendering of subjects, frightfully intelligent and viciously humorous. And she was equally charming and reverable. Reading from her Faber New Poets Pamphlet, her creativity was most candescent in the poems, Relational Epistemology, (the loving and brilliant view of an overwhelmingly philosophical and eccentric family life) and The Distance Between England and America, (detailing the fleeting, forced relationship undergone with a fellow passenger on a transatlantic flight). Personally, the centre of Nuts and the Invention of Aspiration, where the third stanza suddenly halts, before launching hilariously into the fourth, was by far the poetic high point of the evening.

Reading from his debut collection for Faber, Look We Have Coming to Dover, Daljit Nagra brimmed with confidence and was animated from the off, bobbing and gesticulating as he performed, each offering imbuing his performance with more and more charisma. The tales of multicultural tribulations and aspirations were compelling, heart warming and most often, outrightly hilarious. The poems, Singh Song! and Darling & Me, - written to be performed with an Indian accent - were ultimately the performance highlights of the evening, caught somewhere between poetry, comedy and theatre. The generational difference between the older, traditional Muslims and westernised British born Muslims was delicately portrayed in Sajid Naqvi. The waspish but heartfelt tale of a University friend’s funeral, where the family’s traditions, from the author’s point of view, negated the living persona of their Saj.

'...He’d sit nocturnally,
crunching his way through Maths equations with The Smiths.
Instead, someone croaked endless hymns from the Koran.'

The poems were easier for the audience to digest than Heather’s, due to a deliberately less clinquant use of vocabulary. Yet, undoubtedly on reflection, the evening was balanced by two very different styles of brilliance, and with both poets staying to chat and sign books (Heather, understandably not staying quite as long), it was a sparkling success.

armchair setting Neil shared his thoroughly engaging view of the world, his unflinchingly provocative prose intertwining science, sex and poetry. In ‘My Wives’ his playful and wonderfully original ideas romanticised the everyday tube commute as he dreamed of all the women around London who could have been, should have been his lovers, given another time and place.

With his chosen section of his novel, Jacob Polley carefully pitched the audience straight into a dark field outside of Carlisle in the dead of summer night and into the young mind of central character Chris. When he broke the spell to take a break, the images left in the minds of the audience were so vivid that several commented that it should be made into a film. His reply? Watch this space.

Neil returned to the floor with a further selection of his passionate prose, extolling the pleasures of pasta and lauding the humble cauliflower, explaining with a shake of his head that again some of his favourite themes of food and sex had become inseparable in poetry. The guests left both ravenous and satisfied by the evenings poetic sensibilities.

Next up, Luke Kennard brought his trademark style and surrealism to the stage. Sipping red wine with genuine gusto throughout his set, Luke performed some of his most popular works including his series of dangerously clever Wolf poems, and a hilarious prose sequence which imagines that the narrator's heart has literally broken ('The fourth time my heart broke was when I swept up the shards of my frozen heart and carried them in a coolbox to a nearby gallery'). Both poets entertained and challenged an audience of invited guests. Glasses were raised, books were sold, words were spoken. Penned in the Margins returns to Aubin & Wills on December 3rd with acclaimed poet Daljit Nagra and Faber & Faber stablemate Heather Phillipson.