Putney’s poetry night got its birthday cake five weeks late

Putney’s poetry night got its first birthday cake five weeks late. The party should have happened in June, and was called off when temperatures were forecast to pass 35°C — the week London was under its first red heat alert in four years.

So it was that on Thursday 30 July, in Putney Library Hall, Poets in Putney turned one. Komal Samsaria performed Krishna’s ultimatum to a king on the eve of war. Tony Collingwood read a poem in which the planets gather round a feverish Earth and work out what is wrong with her. Then everybody sang Happy Birthday and ate the cake.

The night also had a stand-in. For only the second time since the open mic began in June 2025, organiser Becx was not the one behind the microphone. She was in Cornwall. Collingwood, a regular and a witty poet in his own right, stepped in to host.

Themes at Poets in Putney are always optional — some readers prefer to bring their own words, some like working to a prompt. July’s were Summer Fest and South Asian Heritage Month. The singing is on the @poetsinputney Instagram page.

Komal Samsaria

Komal Samsaria brought a piece of epic Hindi literature into the hall for her South Asian Heritage Month set: a section of Ramdhari Singh Dinkar’s Rashmirathi known as Krishna Ki Chetawani, or “Krishna’s Warning”. She performed it as a solo theatrical recitation, leaning fully into the rhythm and intensity of Dinkar’s verse.

“It’s one of the most iconic passages in modern Hindi poetry,” she says, “a dramatic retelling of Lord Krishna’s peace mission before the war of the Mahabharata. In it, Krishna arrives at Hastinapur as an envoy for the Pandavas, offering Duryodhana a modest compromise of just five villages to avoid war. When Duryodhana refuses and moves to have him seized, Krishna answers by revealing his cosmic form, declaring that the sky, the wind and the whole universe are contained within him, creation and destruction both.”

Komal is a London-based Hindi theatre performer and classical recitation artist. She specialises in dramatic recitations from Dinkar’s Rashmirathi and has performed at open mics and cultural events across London. She says she won a national award at the All India University Theatre Competition, contested across 134 universities.

A Hindi version of the poem with an English translation can be read here.

Tony Collingwood

Tony Collingwood spent around thirty years writing and directing animation for television before turning his attention to other creative pursuits.

He had always written verse, usually tucked inside scripts or as song lyrics, but it was only when he found the poetry open mic scene a year and a half ago that poetry became something he did in front of a room rather than behind a screen.

Television could take months or years to turn an idea into something an audience actually saw. Poetry gave him something almost immediate: write it, perform it, get the reaction, refine it. That speed, and the direct connection with an audience, has kept him coming back.

His years writing for children still shape how he writes for adults. He likes to draw an audience in with humour before getting to whatever truth or feeling is sitting underneath — a habit he puts down to holding the attention of people with very short attention spans. Most of his poems start with something ordinary and wander off somewhere unexpected. Some are built for the page, others for performance; he likes all of them to leave people smiling, thinking, or both.

At the anniversary night he read About the Earth, in which the planets gather round an ailing Earth, trade theories about what ails her, and arrive silently at the answer.

He wrote the next one the day after sharing the first birthday cake. It is called, fittingly, cake.

Tony performs regularly at spoken word nights around London and MCs a monthly poetry night at the Metronome Café in Morden, usually the first Thursday of the month. Alongside the poetry he is writing short stories and a couple of plays — for grown-ups this time. His poems and illustrations are on Instagram at @drawn_to_verse, a handle that covers both halves of what he does.

Coming up: Thursday 27 August

The next night is on Thursday 27 August, with Becx back in the host’s chair. The theme is Summer’s End / Back to School, but themes are optional and performers can read anything they like in their five-minute slot.

Tickets are on Eventbrite, and the full event listing is here.

Poets in Putney meets on the last Thursday of each month at Putney Library Hall, SW15 2DR.