Sender	Lina Zuppke	Back to Inbox
Subject	Heartwarming Heart Beats

Dear Liverpool excursion group,

Do you know the feeling when you are excited about something, but still don’t really know what to expect?

On Friday Katja, Marina, Johanna and I met up at the Albert Docks to go to the “Heart Beats” poetry reading festival. Katja and Marina talked about it in their presentation and coincidentally the partner for my job shadowing gave me the tip in one of her e-mails.

We were freezing, but bravely we started our walk to the Café Arlington, which should be around the corner from the Cains brewery. Of course, we got lost. Of course, we asked some drunken guy at a pub. A few minutes later, we found this huge industrial manufacturing building, which appeared to contain not only the room for the reading, but also a restaurant, a cinema and a theatre. Nobody believed it when we were standing indecisively in front of it. Of course, we were too early.

Entering the hall, I immediately felt the kindness that I experienced in every square metre of Liverpool during our entire stay. The cashier, a poet herself, sold us “tickets” and we got no elaborate stamp on our hands, just a hand-drawn cross.

Before, during and after the sound check the girls and I were checking out whether someone was present who would turn out to be my job shadowing partner on Monday. In the end we bet on someone who actually was one of the poets.

So the cross-drawing ticket girl turned out to be the organiser and first poet to read out her poems. They mostly were about love and people. Next on stage was a hip young girl from London (Tamsin Kendrick) who captivated us with her distinctive way of combining London’s high-class night life with lyrics of the Pussy Cat Dolls in her sometimes onomatopoeic texts. She was really entertaining. Afterwards a more mature poet (Jo Bell) read out her poems full of advice, reprimands and jokes for her ex-husband - just cleverly funny, no annoying divorce fighting. She was followed by the electronic rock’n’roll trio Sex Education, so there was a little break from pure poetry by guitar sounds and a synthesizer. I liked the songs with the synthesizer; the other ones were a little stuffy. Before we had to leave to catch the last train to Salisbury Hall, we smiled at the last two guys (The Ex-Men) that were combining their poems with electro beats. It was a nice idea and was an amusing performance with a guy in an ochre-coloured suit dancing ridiculously as if the audience was not there.

Unfortunately, we could not listen to the people participating in the “open mic” session, during which members of the audience had the chance to read out their personal works. Still, it was a nice experience that showed the social cohesion and friendship-based network of open-minded, funny and talented contemporary British artists. As the audience, we did not feel isolated from them. On the contrary, we were warmly welcomed.

Lina Zuppke