Made In Roath 2012

I managed to participate, on a vague level, in Cardiff’s Made In Roath 2012 Arts festival, with one of my short mash-up films (“The Great Longing”) taking its place in an exhibit at the SHO Gallery, and another (“Farewell, Farewell”) part of an entertaining “Roathbud” screening, hosted by filmmaker Tom Betts upstairs at the Gower Pub. And wandering about the area over the weekend, one did manage to catch sight of the occasional work of art.

On the final evening, I attended an evening of spoken-word entertainment at the Coffi House. Curated and hosted by the genial and amusing Mark Blayney, it was labelled “Octopoet”, with eight poets each doing eight minutes. Inevitably it over-ran, but it was none the less diverting for that. A wide range of both performance and writing styles: the venerable Betty Lane with her legendary Dylan Thomas reminiscence; Stephen Quantick’s dark comic monologues; Clare Potter’s musically-inflected lyricism; the professorial elegance of Philip Gross; Mike Greenhough’s playful cleverness; the densely contemplative tragi-comedy of Clare Ferguson-Walker; Nicholas Whitehead’s slickly amusing take on righteous indignation (his ode to Jimmy Savile was especially well-received); topped off with the witty, crowd-pleasing social commentary of Mab Jones. Excellent. Nice cake as well.