Poetry Breakfast, July 2026

An array of talent, a set of people who can amuse and impart… impart the truth, that particular truth that poetry holds, and only poetry can convey. Grace was the name of one of the morning’s performance poets, grace in all things, not least the poetical. The theme of objects that increase in significance over time served for a poem titled ‘Condensation’ and the argument ran that the form water takes when not vapour is the form that sustains life and yet human society wants always to expand, rather than condense. Not an idea that does well in prose, even less so in summary, but in the mood set, the steady development of the theme and in the deft choice of language, there was great beauty. The audience was rapturous.

There were many other great performances, covering a range of feeling. For headliner Glyn Phillips ‘My Granny’s Teapot’ recalled a life lived through wartime and post-war austerity. In basing the occasion’s theme on this poem I had more or less required Glyn to read it. It had been published some years ago in an earlier collection. Deeply involved in it then, the experience of performance was like seeing it all anew. He’s a poet who makes his work for both page and stage. I’m glad I have both in my memory now; I was so moved.

The energy of this artist. He is funny and melancholic by turns. It is a characteristic of great music, whether Mozart or Bob Dylan, to contain both joy and sorrow in one piece. The poem ‘Light’, about walking above Cardigan Bay, drew in age and eternity but paramount was joy, joy, joy.

We shouldn’t have presumed on the patience of our audience to the extent we did; we were well over time. Presenter Jay Lewis commented that “the length of ‘Side Two’ was as long as a 70s Prog Rock concept album!”

If it over-ran it was because this monthly occasion, the Poetry Breakfast, is suffused with talent. With all respect to Grace, and the notion of condensing rather than expanding, it appears that the old PB is set to break out of the Reading Room’s panelled walls.