Poets. They have big hair, big eyes, and plaid shirts. Also quiet voices. And lots of feelings. They’re often quite shy and self-deprecating as they spill their guts to an audience. Poetry readings can be a distraction from the words themselves – the personality of the poet risks getting in the way of the writing. But on the other hand, they restore the immediacy of the voice, humanizing the poetry. The Poet-with-a-capital-P becomes a person.

Rowan Evans, the first reader of the night, finishes his poems in unexpected ways – ‘my nails and beard/as garlic, as bluebell’ – and the way he reads them brings out this inconclusiveness beautifully. Felix Bazalgette read among others the poem ‘Afterglow’, featured in Varsity last week – which works even better in performance. Balzagette’s poem about sticking his finger up a girl’s arse and being amazed at the complete lack of, um, smell – was a highlight of the night. Don’t laugh. Although most of us did, a lot, because he put it so endearingly.

Sophie Seita read the un-manifesto for the un-titled poetry magazine that she and Luke McMullan are setting up: “embrace the perhaps”, she said, and “if we say this enough we can kill it”. But almost all the writing here was fresh and intriguing. Isabella Shaw was sublime, reading her poem that won last year’s Benjamin Zephaniah prize, and an excerpt from a novel-in-progress, a fantasy saga gorgeous prose – something like Game of Thrones if it were written by Florence + the Machine. Published writers André Mangeot and Jane Monson were excellent – who knew poems named after cocktails could be so good? Tim Shaw – head of the English Society, for those recalcitrant English students who didn’t know – had written some of his poems that morning – but they were polished and precise, and you wouldn’t have known. This reading renewed my faith in student writing, in creative process as process, in performance as collaboration – and not because of the free wine. Margaret Atwood, mocking the excessive angst cultivated by ‘The Poet’, wonders, “do poets really suffer more than other people?” These poets, however, seemed like they were having a damn good time of it.