The best way to celebrate National Poetry Day

On Thursday (2nd October) it was National Poetry day in the UK and this year I've made sure to acknowledge it in all its glory.

Check out the beautiful Alnwick Gardens

I started the day by completing another toiled over job application and getting that sent off, so I could forget about it and get on with enjoying life. Finishing that off literally took all morning. Then it was time to head to Preston train station, to start what became a 6 hour cross country journey to the beautiful town of Alnwick (where the castle grounds were used for the quidditch scenes in Harry Potter).

The actual moving from one point to another in a moving vehicle isn't that long its just the waiting around at one station after another.  I caught 3 different trains and a bus before I got to the Bailiffgate Museum, where one of my close friends was hosting an evening of open mic poetry.   We hadn't seen each other for a year and I managed to pluck up the courage to do my first performance of one of my own poems. It was an amazing evening, jammed packed with adrenalin highs, good company and good beer.  

The massive sense of achievement after sharing my piece with the lovely audience, in a beautiful venue, was unreal.  I felt like I was flying!  My nerves were definitely present with me on stage, but I managed to protect my voice from them. I felt like I managed to get almost every bit of intonation and expression into my act, just as I had envisioned when I'd played it through in my head a million times before. 

In fact you could even say my nerves added an extra element of comedy to the poem.  Imagine the hands that are holding the piece of paper containing the all important words shaking like someone planted jumping beans in my fingers and the paper is the heat source that gets then going.  As I read the line 'But it all seems so fear tremblingly impossible!' in a poem about the fears of speaking out loud, one cant help but smile.

As if the emotional high from all that wasn't enough I also got to bust out 3 covers of songs with a guitar at a local pub open mic night,  once the poetry session was over.  

Did any of you guys do anything exciting for National Poetry Day?