a night of performance poetry

So, last night I had arranged a whole night off from Boy 1 and Boy 2 in order to go to a poetry night in Newcastle, which is about an hour away from where I live, in the wild and woolly north.
I was very excited a: because I love going to the theatre; b: I was going with my old mate Jeanie, with whom I bonded over a shared love of fags about 14 years ago (my love of them now being a lovely wispy memory, as there's nowt like finding out you've got cancer to kick the cancer stick habit); c: we were planning to go to a nice little Italian restaurant beforehand (the place where I first met my fella, so nice memories there - and no, he wasn't one of the waiters) and finally d: Newcastle is halfway between my house and his house, so it was a very good excuse to finish the night by going there...
Oh, only four minutes left to write about the poetry. Ooof.
Well, it was interesting. First person was excruciating (sample line, said in a morbid poet's voice with some sort of soundscape playing in the background "The hare, who was the ghost of my dead nana...") but I don't really want to be scathing because it must have been SO difficult to stand up in front of people and read anything. Plus he had his own fanclub and looked very pleased with himself and someone announced that he was running a poetry competition, so he must be very important. I've also seen some of his poems in arty magazines, so what do I know, eh? However, as Jeanie said, any 40 something man who wears a pocket watch to read out obtuse and over-developed metaphors must be a complete p....oet.
Then there were 2 very good people, one of whom was mesmerisingly good looking and a bit of a star in the poetry scene apparently and then there wsa a young lad from Middlesborough who was absolutely superb. He was extremely unassuming and mumbled at the audience in between poems but when he was reading his stuff it was as if he was possessed by the voices in his poetry and you watched him transform into completely different people, icluding an alpha male drunk, spouting opinions at closing time and the pussy cat from the owl and the pussy cat fame, who told her side of the story in a very modern way. It was fab.
And it also made me realise that I would never be a performance poet. Which my fella is quite relieved about, as he had a nasty indcident a few years back, apparently, when he went to watch some very earnest performance poetry "in the round" as they say, got the giggles at a bloke prancing about in a loincloth whilst reading something very intense and had to crawl out of the round, past the great and the good of poetry north east. I'm glad he didn't see the pocket watch...