Poetry Café
22 Betterton St.
WC2H 9BX
tel:020 7420 9888
Nearest Tube Covert Garden
http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/cafe/cafeind.htm
£3.50/£2.50
Every Tuesday, 7.30pm (sign up before 7)
Rating 1/5
Oh yes, 1/5. It’s that bad. But let’s start with the few pros.
The venue is cosy and clean, there’s a bar, there’s always a big crowd, a semi-famous poet often shows up, you get 5 minutes if you sign up, and Carl Dhiman the compere is solid and keeps the show going. And now the cons-
It costs the better half of a fiver, it’s in the basement of the café so you can only really get drinks at the one interval, the staff aren’t friendly and the beers expensive, it gets really hot and sweaty, you don’t always get a seat, the crowd is three-quarters made up of the other poets that paid to hear their own voices first (and others second) that leave after the interval if they performed in the first half anyway and that one semi-famous poet that turns up just highlights even more how unbelievably atrocious the majority of the readers, rotting on display, are.
Poor Carl does his best. He always comes up with some witty retort to the last poem of each 5 minute/eternity-seeming set, but you can see the strain and tiredness in his eyes. Understandably so, he has to sit and listen to every single wannabe poet, bad singer, unfunny comedian, and the one idiot that comes on and says he’s a ‘classicist’ and bores the audience with poems more dry and dusty than Homer's ashes. Oh, but Carl has the last laugh – he didn’t pay to get in.
There are exceptions to the trite. Honourable mentions go to John Paul’s bluesy set, AF ‘Semi-Famous Poet of the Night’ Harold’s fantastic poem in the verse form of the Owl and Pussycat (set around some 1930s food fight and orgy featuring Churchill, Coward and Shaw), Susan’s lesbian-cosmo/Tony Hart dream poem, Abraham Gibson’s wonderfully performed duologue of two elderly ladies, and Will Homes eccentric OAP rhymed craziness.
And there were as few alrighters, but they get swamped by the 4 or 5 wannabe poets/singers/comedians/’classicists’ mingled in between each one of them. That translates, into any dead or otherwise tongue, as 4-5 bad poets every 30 minutes; at worst, only 1/6th of the night is worth it. If you go to a gig, and the band, out of twelve songs, had 2 ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’s and 10 ‘Little James’ (or Helter Shelter vs. Octopuses Garden, Scientist vs. One I Love, Waterfall vs. Straight to the Man – take your musical pick) – would you fork out for another ticket to see them again?
I really don’t see how Poetry Unplugged can honestly label itself as ‘London’s premier open mic’ without some quality control. But then, with the term ‘open mic’ you have to grudgingly accept there is no control. You can argue turning up for the Aladdins, but when there are free open mics across London; weekly at the Foundry, monthly at Borders, a dozen throughout each month – hell, anytime of day on a bloody street corner, why do people pay to get into the Poetry Cafe? Is it the label, the delusion of prestige of having ‘performed at the Poetry Café’? Is it wanting to pay people to listen? The guaranteed five minutes? Or is it the comfort of knowing you’ll get a back slap from the friends that are too nice to tell you how much you suck and a polite applause from the other poets that are just waiting their turn to bore you instead?
Whatever the reasons, it sure isn’t for the poetry. I'll be going again, because you have to accept that shit happens and I truly, deeply want to believe that the first time I went - it was just a bad night. It really would be lovely to see this review updated with the promise of better things to come. But right now it looks pretty dark.
So go if you want your 5 minutes of fame, and don’t mind paying for it. But, if right now you want an answer – then avoid Poetry Unplugged like the writer’s block.
Reviewed disappointedly Candace Orchard