It was a hugely enjoyable evening. I hadn’t really sussed that the excellent Sugar Club is the old Irish Film Theatre. I remember, as a schoolboy, the excitement when the new IFT programme arrived, and getting in on my student card to see so many classic films there, Jarmusch, Fassbinder, Tarkovsky…I doubt if a cabaret club with a bar was ever more silent or respectful to performers than last night – you could have heard the proverbial pin drop in the packed house. Images of Ginsberg were flashed up on the stage during the evening – naked, young, old, comic, haunting. People took real pains to read the poems well, and I was struck by the fierce concentration of the (mostly) young men who lined the steps on the aisles, foreheads buried in their hands, letting Ginsberg’s words sink in. He is a poet who has to be read aloud.

A few highlights – BP Fallon was mesmeric, short but sweet, Hazel O’Connor was great, singing about cancer and surviving and bereavement and, for me, she was the perfect complement to all that male energy going on around her. She did sing “Will You?” – with a harp and whistle instead of sax, and it was gorgeous. Gabriel Rosenstock was hilarious, translating Ginsberg’s haikus to Irish as he went – we learnt the Irish for hard-on and fuck (adharc and feis, for the record.) The otherwise admirable Theo Dorgan, who bought the Irish tweed suit that Ginsberg loved so much he was buried in it, spoiled his rendition of the stunning Kaddish with a jibe at the current Justice Minister. A poem that speaks of the fears of an early 20th Century Jewish woman of Hitler is defiled if that mass-murdering genocidal despot is compared to a democratic, if conservative, 21st Century Irish politician. Perspective, please.

I thorougly enjoyed bringing some sex to the proceedings with Please, Master – the reception was fantastic, and people kept on coming up and saying they enjoyed it afterwards, although apparently one fifteen-year-old told his mother that he felt “sick” afterwards. “He’ll remember it, though!” she said, happily.

Tommy Tiernan gave a tour de force reading Howl – funny, passionate, at times a bit all over the place and hysterical, but, when needed, he was right on the money. Jubilation at the end. Hazel O’Connor sang us out and it was all great fun. Excellent organisation by Anthony Casey, who should do these sorts of gigs regularly.

Update: Two reports of the night, at Confessions of an Orangutang and glumphaboo.