Poetry was a pretty good excuse to spend time together in McGregor. Cute, reinvigorated (for some) village with earnest groupies and actual poets striding up and down Voortrekker Street (no oxen, no big beards) turning maps upside down and competing for tables at cafes between doses of verse. Some (ahem!) established poets and then a herd/tribe/clan/gaggle/wordgloop of the rest of us, basking in the pleasure of being heard with respect or at least calm tolerance and oh yes doing the real work of listening. Not to mention (which I’m mentioning anyway – which isn’t a poem but at least some form of rhetoric probably with a Greek name) the good cheer, good chat and relays of good food in a stone cottage on the outskirts of the dust-blown village. And a group of teenagers hanging out on a street-corner was delighted with the donation of the remains of Lerato’s popcorn stash. Called me ‘oom’, too.