Merlin Betts
My mind goes back to Winter last year, the wind and the rain along the seafront, making my way from St Leonards, the lights in Bottle Alley, the waves shifting between the shadows. The storm whipping my coat as I turn to head up Robertson Street and then scamper over and around the puddles to St Andrews Mews, where I’d at last reach sanctuary in a cellar-like room, which was then Ripley’s Bizarre But True (now Hot Tap Theatre) and the venue for Flight Feathers.
This year, 30 August. It was the last gasps of summer and the fresh, early start of Autumn. It was light. But it was windy, and it was raining in a mist. I don’t want to say Flight Feathers always has this kind of pathetic fallacy going on, the young and old birds, the poets, battered by the wind before they make landing in their nest. I know some people don’t like stormy or damp weather and will therefore feel like it means something bad. For me though, especially when you’re only enduring it to get to a cozy venue, it’s the best weather. And for me, horrifically anxious about doing any kind of performance, it’s very appropriate weather. But then you arrive, and things change.
There’s not a typical Flight Feathers evening, but there is a structure. You reach the door, sometimes anonymous and quiet in the night-time grotto version of St Andrews Mews. Pull it open and be greeted by a warm crowd. You get drinks. Say hi to anyone you know, grab a seat in the corner to cower from all the people you don’t know (or maybe that’s just me?), and then Lucas gives a bit of an introduction.
This time he was opening the new season, remembering the early open mic nights that first believed in him, how inspiring they were and how they helped him see what he was capable of. How he wants Flight Feathers to provide that for Hastings folk, whether they immediately realise they’re poets and wordsmiths or not. And he was introducing his mum, a yogi, to guide us in a half-chant, half-meditation, preparing vocal chords, charging hearts.
Lucas then says it’s a positive environment, because it is, and this means we support everyone who performs. If I go up on stage, I don’t have to worry about being booed off and having bottles thrown at me. Unless I do something horrific like set fire to myself, I can rest assured that I will get applause and smiles (who knows, maybe even if I did set fire to myself… at least for a while?). More practically, if I fluff a line, lose hope mid sentence and change poems, or just plain give up because the panic is too strong – I know I’ll be alright.
The crowd will back you up, not judge you. This is very cool for a habitually anxious poet, or for someone starting out. Sometimes it even makes me wonder if I won’t need to drink that bottle of red just to go up on stage, and then I remember the grubbily gilded cage I’ve crafted for myself – the image of the refined poet drinking vin rouge in the candle-lit cellar, hearing the distant pitter-patter and rumble of a storm, wisely stroking his beard. “Yes,” he says. About nothing in particular.
Next, the order of business. The first part of the evening will be a non-competitive (fledgling) open mic. The second part will be a competitive (falcon) open mic. The final part will be feature poets – the hosts, the veterans, the big visiting names, or just the people who the organisers wanted to give some time and space to perform. Neither open mic event gives you time to do a long set, so the feature slots can really let someone spread their wings, so to speak.
In between each part, the bar is open, the pathway to the toilet is cleared (one of the toilets is behind the stage) and smokers rush out into the cold night for warmth. People generally get friendlier, whether through growing familiarity or alcohol; some people leave, some people arrive.
A new public service announcement on top of the usual brief, is that Curtis – warrior poet and now Flight Feathers co-host – will offer you a lapel microphone if you want to be videoed and recorded for social media. Which is amazing. I mean it doesn’t suit everyone, but getting a recording of your performance and a platform from which to distribute it? Brilliant. Excellent. Highly useful resource. Here’s an example, with the lovely Will Adolphy reading.
If you follow that last link you can also follow/bookmark the Instagram feed so you can watch everyone else as they’re uploaded. You won’t get the full Flight Feathers experience, sure, but you’ll get a good dose of some quality local poets. And then you can follow them to hear/read more!
I’ve been going to Flight Feathers nights for a good while now. Not as much as some of the core crew, who were organisers and regulars at the Nest in the old town hall (just realised – feathers, birds, nest), but I’ve seen it change and grow, and the poets change and grow with it. Flight Feathers is not just a poetry slam or an open mic, it’s not just a chance to share your latest work. It’s a community, it’s poets listening to each other, helping each other, supporting one another’s creativity and performance.
And, if I put the press badge back in the band of my fedora for a minute, that’s what we’re all about at the Hastings Examiner (Hex). Now, Lucas and Curtis were kind enough to agree, and they asked me to come by and cover the night instead of having anyone at Hastings Independent (HIP) look at it. There’s an important story behind this.
(bonus goss) Why not HIP?
First I want to clarify, the Literature lads at HIP are good folk. Pete Donohue is and has always been a great editor for their Literature section (when they let him have a Literature section). I think him and regular book reviewer Tim Barton are the only original HIP writers left from the founding crew, the folk that met at the Tubman and called for a community alternative to the swill that was getting printed in the Observer.
And it’s important to understand, for the rest of the story, that they don’t go to editorial meetings. By longstanding custom, they just do the Literature pages. i.e. they didn’t consent to the offending article I’m about to mention.
I think some others who were at that editorial meeting didn’t consent either, but when you’re there it’s very tempting to be soothed by the idea that “it’s just an opinion piece”.
HIP published this article recently, and it made a lot of people very unhappy. Many moons ago I was an editor at HIP myself, until I went mad, declared myself Grand Inquisitor and eventually left to form Hex. I won’t go into that here, suffice to say “All About Eve” is not the first problematic article they’ve printed. Or the second. Or the third.
As Curtis was riling up the Flight Feathers crowd, saying burn HIP or use it as cat litter (things that people actually do with it anyway, but you get the point), saying “fuck the Hastings Independent”, inviting us to shout “fuck the Hastings Independent”, I remembered when I was that angry. I could see the fire reflecting in my eyes as I burned a pallet full of HIPs, 7,000 copies sat in the driveway, the flames licking up into the night sky. I could hear frantic cackling coming from somewhere, I could smell the lighter fluid and the petrol. The wild blood leaping up the walls of my veins, trying to get out.
But of course, I didn’t burn a pallet of HIPs, I just have a vivid imagination, and my anger has calmed to the point that I now just expect them to periodically do horrible shit and pretend like it’s nothing. They barely offer an “oopsie” afterward. It’s kinda disgusting. It’s very damaging. But whatever. They’ve become what they were set up to oppose. A familiar tale.
So, back to the main point, folks at Flight Feathers are boycotting HIP, getting rid of copies where they find them, and encouraging others to do the same. Because after the Supreme Court overturned maybe 30 years of work on trans rights in one fell swoop, someone at HIP (hi, Kent), thought it’d be good fun to print an ultimately anonymous article from transphobic people, celebrating the fact that our legal system has just slapped the trans community across the face. I mean that’s not a fit enough metaphor really. What metaphor do you use to express something like that?
I’m not strictly here to talk about HIP, I’m here to celebrate Flight Feathers as a regular, welcoming and wonderful poetry night. And describing our shared anger doesn’t exactly fit the usual vibe. You can perform anger, you can feel it, but it’s not an angry crowd, it’s not an angry place. We started and finished this last night on 31 August with yogi-guided sound exercises. We had men opening up about vulnerability and emotions in public (something, in case you haven’t noticed, that men very rarely do). We had people of all ages, various shades of left-leaning political persuasion, different backgrounds, different relationships with alcohol, we had people from across the LGBTQIA+ community, including myself. We had poets doing poetry.
And now a word for the new venue, because it’s the same cellar-like room, but the place is run by Dean Stalham (worth putting into a search engine if you don’t know him) as Hot Tap Theatre. Requiescat in pace, Ripley’s Bizarre But True. I haven’t seen anything there yet, apart from Flight Feathers, but when I mentioned it to a friend, he immediately sang its praises and reminded me of the longstanding lack of independent theatre venues in this town, which Hot Tap is now helping to remedy.
Hastings Independent (cursed be their name) reviewed the Tenant 2 there, back in July. I saw Frances Saunders’ play the Tenant performed at the Stables back in 2023 – it was an excellent and at times scarily honest portrayal of a human in distress, and I can well believe that having its sequel (or reimagining?) at Hot Tap shows they can host a good (and local, and original) show. In fact, I’m going to find what’s on there next and go to it. There’s a recommendation for you. Thanks also to the bar for the booze being humble and affordable.
That’s a strange place to end an article. I can’t overstate how reassuring it is to have a bar be humble and affordable. Bit of a rarity in this day and age.
Flight Feathers is a ticketed night, but I would suggest it’s like the bar, and you get a lot of juicy creativity for your donation to the cause. If you genuinely can’t afford it, I don’t see them stopping you from coming in.
Find out about future nights via Lucas and Curtis’ Instagram feeds: @lucasthepeacefulpoet and @wordsbycurtis, and of course @flightfeatherspoetry.