One of the most generous and consistent supporters of the festival, Latvian Literature, once again allowed us to host three visiting Latvian poets, this time at Kingston University, where I teach, for a packed out event in the award winning town house building. This was a special night not just for the brilliant collabs made by the Latvians and myself, and two Kingston Uni graduates, Kayona Daley and Maria Celina Val, but also for the first meeting of the entire Popogrou collective. This collective has grown up around some of my courses in the lockdown and some further workshops since then. Members are uniformly talented and kind people, and they brought their people, and it was such a generous, interesting evening. Two book launches marked the night too, Vicki Kaye’s Fractured Light and Simon Tyrrell’s presently.

For my own part I collaborated for the third time with Krisjanis Zelgis, who has become a friend and one of my favourite performance partners. We discussed a lot but planned little, until the day itself, when we met and it all came together so smoothly. Our first work involved drinking water and shampooing hair, our second was wrestling. The third closed the circle of our rituals, with brotherhood evoked in closeness, carrying and grooming. Or something like that. So wonderful that Alban Low was also on hand to make these drawings too.