An interesting evening at the Melville Centre in Abergavenny yesterday. Ric Hool - who has done so much for poetry in the area, running the popular Poetry Upstairs for years, encouraging new writers and bringing together very diverse voices to great effect - was launching his new collection, "Shook up!" (Red Squirrel Press). A very prolific poet over the years, this is his thirteenth collection and a sizeable audience came to celebrate it. The evening got off to a cheerful start with music by The Grizzly Bears, with some great retro songs, before Ric was introduced by the writer Ian Brinton.
A proud Northumbrian lad (although he's lived in Wales longer than anywhere else in his life), much of Ric's poetry is influenced by his roots. I particularly enjoyed his rendition of his dialect poem about the myth behind the creation of the Farne Islands and North Star, his poem arranged around a Sat Nav's interminable instructions as he heads northwards towards Tyneside. His poems have such energy, such vitality. There are no long ones in this collection, but even the shortest of them - just four or five lines - repays reading and rereading. Brevity in no way means superficiality.
