Essay – Poetry and Coffee

I wrote an essay called Poetry and Coffee for the Mechanics’ Institute Review:

Al Avarez’s New Poetry, The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry, Donald Hall’s Contemporary American Poetry and the PN Review’s Some Contemporary Poets of Britain and Ireland were our introduction to poetry’s possibilities. Peter arranged readings at the Art Gallery, upstairs at the Zetland, the backroom of the Albert, and we sat wide-eyed as national and international poets such as Carol Anne Duffy, Gillian Clark, Michael Schmidt, Kenneth Koch, Jeffrey Wainwright read from their collections and talked about their writing. They drank with us afterwards and we got to quiz them about the specifics of their poems. Our love for the form knew no bounds. We were geeks.