Jacaranda Records
13th April 2016

Reviewed by Sharon Riley

I’d waited in anticipation for the poetry evening, having already met some of the poets at FACT, and the day finally arrived.

Jacaranda Records on the top floor of the Jacaranda Bar on Slater Street played host to the event, based on the Unfold exhibition at FACT.

A vintage recording studio equipped with a record player and walls covered in vinyl albums was a suitable if somewhat small venue.

A family visiting Liverpool from Edinburgh were already there by chance when I arrived and sat fascinated by the event having just entered the bar for a few cocktails!

The poetry slammer champion from Salford, and who loved Liverpool, excelled in her reading of a poem titled ‘Scouse’ that included everything scouse, and I particularly enjoyed. Her other poems appeared to cater for the young students in the audience.

A confident young female poet introduced the event and described the Unfold exhibition at FACT, and urged anyone in the audience to visit it if they hadn’t already and to give a poetry performance.
All the poets arrived in due course and read some very amusing poems based on the theme of space, especially a female poet who set herself the challenge of reading out fifty poems by the age of 50, which got a round of applause. She focused in one of her poems on the appeal of Professor Brian Cox in relation to space and the universe, to which a few of the females in the audience nodded in agreement. Another female poet focused on the need for space in a relationship! Both of these poems were well received.
George, a mature poet from Wigan, gave a confident reading of a humorous poem about a unisex toilet on the ground floor of the Jacaranda bar which surprised me.

Space and the universe, the themes of Unfold, were explored completely by the male and female poets of all ages which made an enjoyable and lively, albeit long and quite tiring evening standing, due to a shortage of seats that was recorded on film.