Who put the M in Belfast?

I've just returned from the Belfast Meets Wales conference, run by Academi in Belfast. It was an stimulating idea juxtaposing Welsh and Irish literature and there was far too much of interest to describe in one go. However, there was one particular highlight.

I'd been looking forward to the tri-lingual poetry reading, despite the name suggesting that I'd only get to appreciate a third of it, for several reasons. Other than the venue (the beautiful Queen's University) those reasons were the poets: primarily Cieran Carson and Gwyneth Lewis, but also the chance to hear a few other names with which I was less familiar.

I was reading and enjoying Cieran Carson's book over the weekend, and he came across well as a likeable, charming and serious character. I had also enjoyed hearing him perform with a band on the previous evening, enthusiastically whooping along to Gaelic singing - and sure enough, the flute was produced again to introduce and play out this event. But these moments of eccentricity and a startling translation aside (a poem in which a human and horse effectively swap eyes because of the human's empathy for the beast), his works didn't grab me as much as I'd expected. He also didn't read from For All We Know, which would have been interesting for me, given that I was reading it.

My other anticipated highlight, Gwyneth Lewis, wasn't able to be there: a more than minor alteration to the bill, whatever the organisers claimed. This left the onus on the other poets performing. Poetical posturing and self-reverence aside (and that's a very generous blind eye, as the conversation in the bar afterward attested), most of the other poets were, I thought, very competent. All managed to get their words across the empty no-man's-land between themselves and the audience both audibly and articulately (and not just when ranting about cling-film, as in one theatrical example). A simple enough challenge, perhaps, but not one universally achieved at the open mic the night before.

So far, so fine - until the true star of the show stepped up. I had an inkling of hope that Sinead Morrissey would be worth hearing, from reputation, but didn't know much about her.

She was dazzling. Deliberately pressing each word into the air with softly spoken assurance, this small figure, hunched inside a pale jacket, had the audience captivated. Her first poem was a fairly slight, if clever, response to the titles of York Mystery Plays and the guilds that supported them. But after that, her writing was inventive and assured, for example when imagining her son's experience of the world as a one-year old. I noticed myself relaxing even when she was heading down an apparently predictable route with images, confident that she would veer away from obviousness and delight me with her fresh descriptions. It made me realise the trepidation that I often feel at readings, suggesting that I don't trust the poets not to stumble through the web that they are weaving. But Sinead Morrissey didn't put a foot wrong - balancing confidently along her lines as if in point shoes. I've rarely been that taken with a poet's work on first hearing and I know that many others there agreed.

I was so forcefully struck with her talent partly because her balance of delight in intelligence, inventive imagery and literary and conceptial subjects particularly appeal to me. Nonetheless, it's hard to see how anyone who likes poetry wouldn't like her work. And more than that, I immediately thought of how much some friends of mine who have a similarly-aged child would love her insights, regardless that they aren't regular poetry readers. This suggests to me that her appeal could be very broad indeed.