Skip to content

Ambit at the Betsey Trotwood

Took Lucy along to an Ambit poetry night yesterday at the Betsey Trotwood pub, a little island of old London tahn amidst the chaos and cacophony of Farringdon Road and on the edge of Clerkenwell Green.

We weren’t prepared for the evening to start on time, but it did, so we missed a little of Kevin Crossley-Holland, and the upstairs room was COSY, but we really enjoyed the evening. Loved Jim Burns. Three headline poets and an entertaining short story from Eley Williams, plus an interesting open mic (with only one woman reading, most unusual).

Lucy did her bit riding the faders and even mopping up someone’s spilt beer (she likes to muck in!) and I bought a copy of Ambit, after hurling all sorts of unveiled hints about when I might hear about my submissions (I should never have had that, um, 2nd glass of wine). With a 9pm end we sauntered back to the station and had a very civilised ride home bypassing Victoria. And I didn’t get rained on. Result!

Published inMags & BlogsReadings

Be First to Comment

  1. […] in London, accompanied by my up-for-anything friend Lucy. It was about this time last year that I persuaded her along to the Betsey Trotwood for an Ambit launch, where I managed to disgrace myself by drinking too much and she did an impromptu guest spot behind […]

  2. […] I met some lovely people, including Shanta Acharya, London poet Tessa Lang and recent Pighog Pamphlet winner Kate White, but didn’t really do any schmoozing. I almost introduced myself to Maurice Riordan, but then what would I have said to him? I actually don’t have a great track record of this sort of thing. Plus I’d had two three glasses of wine by this point and we all know what happens when things get a bit lairy. […]

Leave a Reply to First ‘Poetry Unplugged’ experience | Poetgal Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Robin Houghton 2021