Blog #7: Gelynion in London - June 5th 2015

A bash to finish. All the core poets together for one last time (this time around anyway) as well as a host of people travelling from Wales and new collaborations from London based poets too. Still fresh of course, though in just a week it felt as thought the time in Wales itself has been long ago, it was lovely to feel the closeness of the tour exactly where we had left it in Hay. Real bonds have been made.

The first half of the night was dedicated to those we had met on the tour and those specifically asked to present new works for the night, who lived in London. It was a seismic split between quite lyrical poetry, some beautiful works from Sampurna Chatterji & Sharon Morris, David Berridge & Steven Hitchins, and some far wilder, more performance orientated work. I almost had to tackle Cris Paul for setting fire to the Conservative manifesto almost directly below a smoke alarm during his performance with Josh Robinson and this was very much the spirit we had allowed to be present in Gelynion, if people wanted it to be. 

The final part of the night saw Joe, Eurig, Nia, Rhys, Zoe and I do another showcase, roundrobin, where we read excerpts of our longer collaborations in quick succession. It was the best of what we'd done, which was always gratifying and of a high standard. Such brilliant writers and such generous people, if I am to have other experiences as rich and memorable as Gelynion I should live to be a lucky man.

visit www.theenemiesproject.com/gelynion for all the vids