Owen Townend - Speak Easy 23/02/10

The Saga Lout might be a hard act to follow but he might not so poor Owen Townend would seem to have his work cut out for him. Fortunately he does a thoroughly excellent job with four very short but very good poems. He opens with a poem about why Twilight sucks (get it?) and how bloody irritating it is that Hollywood is cashing in on the vampire epidemic at the minute. We were all thinking it. He then epitomises the idea that you can find inspiration for poetry absolutely anywhere, reading a poem called Bloodaxe, which he tells us is about some graffiti on the train tracks between Sheffield and Huddersfield. Interesting fact which Im sure you all already know - Bloodaxe is also a poetry publisher, famous for their anthologies of contemporary poetry. Pretty apt, dont you think?

Owen proves what an eclectic young man he is moving from vampires and graffiti to Pac Man and then love songs, with a pretty disturbing take on the video game classic, and then, only a week after Valentines Day, Owen treats us to an incredibly clever poem comprised entirely of love song titles, which is really rather excellent.