Bath Literary Festival launched its nine-day verbal jamboree on Friday with Voices in the City, a full day and evening of so many free events it was impossible to go to them all - I know, because I tried. My poetry-crawl began with Bath Poetry Cafe at the library, a day-long programme of excellent readings. This isn't pub verse, these are poems that make you go mmm... - deeply thoughtful pieces, inset with occasional phrases that startle you as they catch the light. From Liz Brownlee's true tales of Animal Magic - did you know the Madagascan robber moth sucks from the eyes of rainforest birds while they sleep? - to Sue Boyle's clear-eyed views of Rome, there were many appreciative mmms. Here even the open mic readers have previous publications to be taken into consideration: among them Frome's Rosie Jackson, and Claire Coleman who prefaced her colourful street theatre poem by scarf-juggling. Organiser Nikki Kenna kept timings tight, ensuring varied voices and quick breaks for a coffee or a dash to the sales table. During one of these I popped over the road to St Michaels Without to hear readings from David Copperfield, luckily catching the Barkis-is-Willing episode.
Next on my list was 'sensational spoken word from young performers' promised at the Egg but disappointingly the promised sizzle had fizzled out, so it was on to St Swithins Church where Wendy Cope was reading and talking about her poems. Wendy is renowned for her rotweiller attitude to copyright infringement, even as promotion from adulating fans, so I went predisposed to be annoyed by her and swiftly had to upwardly-adjust my opinion. She's droll, grumpy, sharp, and very funny and I found it impossible not to warm to her. Family Values was one theme, dipping into her latest collection of disconcertingly simple ditties, and Wendy also revisited that famous "Bloody men are like bloody buses" responsible for her 'national treasure' status and now in textbooks with analytic questions like - Wendy swears she didn't make this up - "What adjective would you use to describe the poet and the men she meets?"
Time now to dash to The Raven where ex-Bard of Bath Jenny Walter was opening the first of the night's five pub poetry events: Poems in Pubs also seemed to be going for the Guinness Book of Records for how many audience members can sit, squat, and stand in a bar listening to 15 fresh-faced young poets sharing their lifetime's learnings - mostly about other bars. This is on the other side of the lyrical galaxy from the elegant intoning of the library: self-revelatory, provocative, and loath to settle for any line without a laugh - it's slick and refreshingly entertaining. Laurie Bolger showed how to do it with a tour through Shoreditch (the bars, mostly) and was my highlight of the night.
No time to stay for more than a third of the team, sadly, as we were due at the Assembly Inn for Poetry and a Pint - yet another tribe of poets here, with hippy strumming and druid chanting in the stone-floor cellar bar. Among familiar faces was Kevan Manwaring, and Rosie Finnegan and I added our names to the performance list, just to be part of this day of voices.
So I'd call the whole event a big success and a credit to Bath, upending that common perception of slightly snobby staidness with a Spoken Word marathon that was varied, stimulating, entertaining... and exhausting.

Niamh led this month's Library Writers' Group with some canny thoughts on 'Don't get it right get it written' - how to deal with deadlines and discipline and what Zoe calls the 'inner wallpaper' of self-judgement. Learn to love editing, Niamh advises, and don't be deterred by lack of experience. "Make it a strength to come to your subject as an interested ingenue - we have enough experts."

To say that Cube's modernised version of Hamlet has been controversial round here is a like saying The Satanic Verses raised a few eyebrows. I really enjoyed it. It's true the actor taking the title role was tiresomely twitchy, and Gertrude and Horatio seemed to have wandered in from Abigail's Party, but this is a stunning interpretation of a play so full of quotations as to be almost impossible to make fresh and vivid. From the opening (Streets) track onwards, the music added energy, and the set - a silver wall variously claustrophobic, Big-Brother-intrusive, and screen for memories & nightmares - was brilliant. I loved the unexpected, sometimes outrageous, liberties taken with the script: letters as mobile texts, tequila shots and happy-slapping, that famous soliloquy sharded into dialogue. A terrific way to remind us the essential elements of Hamlet are timeless: dysfunctional families, violent passions, love, loss, and loneliness.

Serious bit this week - and I've chosen this picture because the well-known author of 'Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis' is stroppy about website exposure, even though googling Wendy Cope gives 145,000 references. But I'm going to talk about her anyway.
What do you do if you want a smart quote, maybe a few lines of verse perhaps already half-remembered? You look on the web, right? Wendy Cope thinks: wrong. “It isn’t ok – you have to fork out for the book” she asserts, in an article on copyright which is reprinted – obviously by repayment to the author – in the current issue of ALCS news. It’s a Grumpy Old Woman rant, and I don’t know how seriously Ms Cope intends it to be taken since she admits it even annoys her that her words will still be making money after she’s too dead to spend it, but it does raise serious questions about this new world of wider access to literature. And I disagree with her at just about every level.
For one thing, I don’t agree there’s a direct & discouraging correlation between downloading and book-buying. I’d suggest that those who find and enjoy poems on the web are more, not less, likely to buy poetry collections - just as musicians recognise that initial interest from downloading & copying encourages word-of-mouth promotion and hence CD sales. "If poetry was only available to book owners we wouldn’t have our rich popular culture", Emily points out as we discuss these issues over coffee. And as it’s this accessibility to light verse that makes her the ‘good money' she so desires, what is her problem? It’s like an artist, having sold a painting to one buyer, griping that others will enjoy sight of it too. These enriching glimpses create the buyers of the future, in every area of the arts.
Another bee in Ms Cope’s bonnet – her cliché not mine – is literary festivals presenting readings of other people’s work without clearing permissions. I’ll stand up here and admit it: I am Spartacus. Arts festivals – ours anyway – work on budgets that make shoestrings look tough as towlines, and no-one makes big money out of poetry events. Clearing permissions is incredibly time-consuming and can be prohibitively costly. Last year I organised an event called Desert Island Reads at which writer Steve Voake read from a little-known collection of stories by American writer Frank Huyler. Neither Steve nor any other contributor was paid, but five of the audience went away and bought that book. And we were within our legal rights in introducing this author to a new audience, as the law is luckily not always an ass: ‘Fair comment’ specifically allows such use of material still in copyright as long as there’s no libellous intent.
So I have no sympathy with Ms Cope’s stance. There’s a lot of us out here working hard to make a world where her verse, and the poetry of others, will be more widely known and appreciated. We use real events and we use the web too. The internet has impacted our world – she’s a beneficiary, not a victim.

And finally... On 29th March, Luke "The best young performance poet around" Wright comes to Frome's Merlin Theatre. Book soon (01373 465949), bring friends - I promise you this is a knock-your-socks-off show. Appraisal above from The Observer - here's a few more reviewers' verdicts: "A rip-roaring raconteur..." "This man is a genius." "...electrifying." "Britain's brightest young bard ... hugely engaging performer, without a trace of pretension" "..genuinely funny and charming.. quick wit and blinding talent... a born performer."
Perhaps best not wear any socks...