While running a Merlin’s Cauldron stall at and arts and craft display in Thornaby Town hall, we were invited to do some events at the Waiting Room, Vegetarian restaurant in Eaglescliffe. We had had it in mind to approach them but synchronicity resulted in us being invited.
We held a mixed media session of poets and music on the Sunday afternoon and then on Sunday evening it was Poetry in the spirit of Jazz. with the Pocket Orchestra. There was much talk of poets needing to take weeks / month revising poems for publication. I was reading Alan Watts – the way of Zen and the quote ‘trust the natural man’. Jazz is largely improvisational and has links with Zen so we combined poetry and Jazz. We invited some of the top local poets who typically took weeks / months to process a poem to getup in front of the jazz band and create a spontaneous.There were doubts about this and if it would work but they all bravely got up and working with the band came up up with a poem. No doubt they took that and revised it afterwards but they all did well.