Dig the purple.
This was an interesting and refreshing DNO, featuring three of my poet friends (yes, female) on stage at Godfrey’s for my monthly artistic chat. Ah, yes, poets! Ann Michael, Cleveland Wall and Danielle Notaro are wonderful poets; they know how to write and present their works on stage. That’s not always the case. 
Early on, I understood that I should not assume the focus tonight but stumbled upon the idea of my adding some instrumentals to the mix, and that turned out to be a really good thing. I set up stage left and emceed and played from there, and the three ladies took stage center. We proceeded with a round robin that proved entertaining, fairly fast-paced, and made the evening go quickly.
Cleveland, who is an active member of our TALV sessions, was great. She does her poems from memory and she is able to add subtle movement and eye-contact. Danielle is a more aggressive poet and performer who has recently linked her work with some musicians. Ann is a good friend in my small family circle but has a boat-load of thoughtful and introspective poems that I follow with her on her FB.
There was a small crowd, as usual, but pretty hip. Anne prepared a “Poet Quiz” that I used. These folks knew their Ozymandias’s. We talked about extending poetry into other means of cross-pollination: music, movies, video, etc. Each woman shared thoughts about how they write. We talked about songwriters being poets, and on from there.
Ann likes Si Bheag, Si Mhor.
As far as my part, I was comfortable in guiding the evening along. I picked out Fountain Hill Nightmare Rag (theme song from Live from GD radio show), Foxglove (in heavy rotation in my kitchen), and, on the mandolin, my Star of the County Down/Heel and Toe Polka medley. I also snuck in Si Bheag, Si Mhor. on the guitar. I found out later from David, her husband, that it is one of her favorites. I am particularly glad that I could add my ‘finger-voice’ to the show, without it being my masculine voice.
As usual, my friends and the audience thanked me for presenting poetry here at Godfrey’s. Thinking back though, I was probably running out of musical ideas for guests at the time. But that’s between you and me.