With the weather warming up, it felt as if spring was finally with us at last, poets jumping and the cotton high. A simply perfick scenario for another selection of verse from the eclectic collective that is DIY Poets.

Doors opened at 8:00 on Thursday 15th May, 2014 and a trickle of punters made their way into the Maze. At eight thirty, DIY Poets’ founder member and compere, Frank McMahon leapt on stage to inform us that, due to the delayed arrival of a couple of poets, the running order was to be changed. Seasoned campaigner John Humphries stepped into the breach. John is well known for lengthy intros to his poems and tonight was no different. He regaled us all with a tale of a recent visit to Speech Therapy, a regular poetry night in Nottingham. On that particular occasion, he told us he’d gone down there with the intention of delivering the darkest and most doom-laden verse he could, but as the evening progressed his plan was undone by the other poets delivering verse so dark he thought he must have fallen down a manhole. Not to be deterred, he upped the ante by prowling around the audience area of the venue reading his lines of verse directly into people’s faces and ended up rolling around on the floor, gibbering into a microphone whilst thrashing around like a one man literary apocalypse. It sounded amazing and I only wished I’d seen it at first hand. John opened his set with ‘Homespun’, a neatly sculpted piece about longing for a less complicated life. A great poem, which I’ve also had the privilege of seeing on the page – its simplicity belies the cleverness of its ‘hidden rhymes’ and countersunk wordplay. A great opening, thought-provoking as always.

He set the scene for what was to come . . .

Joel is a recent newcomer to the collective. His material was themed around borders and occupied a political space in very much a personal sense. It was a confident and compelling debut, with a short set delivering constructions which clicked together like the pieces of a brand new lego set. There was a fragility, combined with heartfelt honesty, and Joel’s performance was well-received, a terrific first appearance.

A Sole opened his set with a terrace style chant of his own name, and then kicked off with a selection of poems from yet another newly published poetry collection. Sole simply has to be the most prolific poet on the planet in a publishing sense. His verse skewers deep into the heart of the paradoxes and absurdities of present day life. He read with power and precision and was, as ever, uncompromisingly direct at times.  I was reminded of a discussion we were involved in at the last DIY Poets meeting when I was attempting to explain and justify a veiled reference to testicles in one of my pieces – Sole commented, ‘I’m always writing about my balls, man.’ Check out A Sole’s website for his published works.

Orla’s selection, delivered with fiery intensity and clinical precision resulted in an almost surgical experience as poems with titles like ‘Hate Filled Poem’ and ‘Bike Brakes’ cut through the candle-lit, leather sofa clad atmosphere of a venue where an audience sat enthralled. She drops lyrical bombs.

Well, the cat flap was pushed open early when Lytisha arrived onstage to entrance an audience already held captive by the, at times, unhinged range of rhythmic recital already read out. Her elegant feline purr flowed, always voluptuous. With poems such as ‘Swans Have Been Seen on Radar at 21ooo Feet’ in her repertoire, there was always an intrigue.

‘A Lefty Must Do What a Lefty Must Do’ insisted Martin Grey (aka @towelintherain), and proceeded to pour forth on the pains experienced by people who are left hand dominant, with plenty of support from a smattering of left handers in the audience. Martin’s delivery punched with the weight of a Carl Froch left jab – always hitting the target. The audience lapped it up, and the injections of comedy between rounds of lyrical sparring made for a heavyweight performance. He concluded his set by dipping into some extended punnery with ‘That’s Enough of That’. A top performance, fresh towels please!

Fully aware that not everyone is a football fan, I nonetheless opened my set with ‘Kevin Keegan Perm’ and ‘When the Sheepskin Coat Was King’, reminiscences of days gone by. Then, I diverged into my current commentary on the Ukraine crisis with ‘Olympians Ski Down Russian Slopes While Kyiv Burns’, concluding with ‘Vladimir Putin Sings Eurovision’. Certainly a cathartic evening for me!

A ‘Grey Squirrel’ appeared to keep the cats company, as Clare Stewart dug out several silvery sweet nuts for the audience to chew on. A commanding presence, Clare’s voice is always compelling, her material thoughtful. She concluded with a ‘found’ poem, an overheard exchange between a mother and child:’I DON’T CARE! I DON’T CARE! I DON’T CARE!’

North Korean dictators never ever attend DIY Poets performances, but Frank McMahon does his best to represent them, mainly by over-obsessing over his bike lights, making sure they’re in his jacket pocket when he arrives on stage. The bike lights are used to signal when a poet has reached the end of his/her allotted time on stage – the ‘White Light of Enlightenment’ signals a minute to go, and the ‘Red Light of Shame’ needs no further explanation. Frank’s set focussed on music and included poems about Syd Barrett, Slade and the Pogues, plenty of social commentary and observations delivered in his usual understated tones. Excellent.

As the featured poet, Jim Willis played it loose, certainly from the point of view of locations – we woke up in Venice, and also found ourselves needing sustenance in ‘Cafe Ingles’. We got lucky in the sense that Jim’s promise to recite poems about cats came alive, but unfortunately not nine times. We heard ‘Snow Cats’ and ‘Rock Cats’, but there was something more . . . Jim revealed  a plan: to release a collection of cat poems entitled ‘Furry Tales’. Jim even managed to engage the audience towards the end of his set, we all sang along to the chorus of ‘Wet Welly Weather No Cricket Blues’. A grand performance.

The evening was concluded with music from Jezz Hall. Mellow grooves.