This Sunday, watch the best live poetry with a daiquiri in hand.
In a past life, Peggy’s Skylight bar was one of the city’s leading plant shops - hence, we assume, the skylight. These days it’s a jazz bar, and you’re more likely to see a saxophone there than a Scotch Thistle. It’s also, rather crucially for the purposes of this article, the home of Bad Betty Live, a series of events which first launched in 2023, run by the outstanding indie publisher of the same name.
Sunday the 4th of May marks their first gig this year, and it’s a tantalising grab bag of some of the country’s best poets: Nottingham’s slam-winning, UNESCO-backed Cara Thompson; the breakdancing, world-touring John Berkavitch, who’s been featured on Radio 1; GOBS Collective’s ‘nerdy as they come’ gamer Robbert Van Dongen; outstanding poet Luke Kennard, the youngest writer ever to be shortlisted for the Forward Prize; and Bad Betty’s own Amy Acre, a nationally regarded versifier in her own right, whose first collection was published by Bloomsbury and listed as a Book of the Year by the Telegraph and Financial Times. In other words, don’t expect anyone to rhyme ‘the moon’ with ‘June’. Or if they do, they’ll somehow make it the best thing you've ever heard.
We’re late converts to live poetry, but even back in our cynical days we were blown away by this series of gigs - you can read our reviews here, or even here. So we reckon it’s well worth booking a ticket if it’s something you’ve always wondered about, especially as this is the only Bad Betty gig on the calendar until they hear back from the Arts Council. Listen to beautiful language under the skylight, knock back a Sin City Fizz cocktail, become a spoken-word believer. But you’ll have to buy your plants elsewhere.
You can buy tickets from Peggy's Skylight here. The gig's on Sunday the 4th, and doors open at 6pm.
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