Releasing the Valve

Valve’s coming out party was a taster evening in Mono in Glasgow, with readings from all the participants, on 21 April, and it’ll have its full proper launch on 16 June in Waterstones Sauchiehall Street. I attended the taster evening to see what was happening, and found the place packed with people eager to hear these new writers read. The evening was more than ably hosted by one of the writers, Fraser Bruce, who kept the audience thoroughly entertained as a compère, and who described his approach to me afterwards as “building on the friendships, and the character traits that I know. What I wanted to do was simply let the audience know a little bit about the readers.” And he did. First to actually read was Richard Hampton, who confided that “I’m well known for getting too pished to continue – it’s what split up my band. So it made sense that I went first.” He’s being hard on himself, because he was pished when I asked him about it. 

Readings then proceeded apace and, after some sound trouble, with great success. “I thought after the sound difficulties I’d have to step up my game to bring people into it,” said Matthew Lynas, “but I felt pretty comfortable.” Libby McInnes got a great ovation, telling me that “I’ve nine brothers and sisters and four of them were missing. That’s because one lives in London and the other three are underage,” which explains why. “It was good to have everyone here that I wanted, and it was a comfortable atmosphere.” True, there was a fantastic community feeling formed by the readers themselves that rubbed off on the audience. Lynsey Cameron, one of the earliest readers, told me: “My friends had made me rehearse today. Once I was up there it was fine. I hadn’t read before – I haven’t even written poems before this year,” which is pretty good going, given the results.

Many of the readers were keen to stress that the atmosphere and reception in Mono that night was a great sign. Cameron Steel told me: “This is one of the best attended and most enthusiastic events I’ve ever heard of, and I’m just proud to be a reader at it." Samuel Best said: “I was really pleased with it, the audience were really good, a great turnout and a nice vibe.” About the magazine itself, Chris Beattie said “I’m very excited. Not just because my work is in print, but because everybody involved has worked together to get it in print and see the mag published.”

The student’s democratically elected project leader was Catherine Baird. “Knowing that I was responsible for guiding the project was daunting, but I was confident that I could lead it in the right direction,” she says. And how would she sum up her feelings on the project? “Totally chuffed," she replies. “Chuffed that everybody put in as much effort as they could.” Another reader, Martin Schauss seemed a bit stunned: “It feels a bit weird that it’s in print before Uni ends,” he said. “I hadn’t expected that.”

The last reader was Gabriella Bennett, who told me: “I’m glad I was on last – I’ve got the best tights [Note: no she hadn’t]. I was supposed to be the penultimate act, but either way it gave me a chance to enjoy the night. It’s been amazing, the atmosphere was really chilled out and it was busy.” And so, yes, again, it was a great atmosphere. But what of the writing itself, the very core that produced this feeling? You’ll have to get the magazine to find out.