into the zone

On Thursday night the Veg Box Café in Canterbury held the first of the Zone series of readings featuring Kelvin Corcoran (vox) and Sam Bailey (piano). There was a good crowd for this event. The venue worked well and there was a clublike sense of camaraderie (we all felt proud to have located the secret fire-escape entrance). Sam Bailey started things off in style with some Messiaen-like piano improvisations, then Kelvin read from recent work, notably Words Through a Hole Where Once There Was a Chimpanzee’s Face. The acoustics were fine in the café interior with only the odd howl from alcoholically challenged East Kent youth coming up from the lane below. It’s a good thing that poetry needn’t always necessitate a trip to London.