If this sounds a bit obscure it must be remembered that other cultures afford poets superstar status, and the pleasure is in the mixing of audiences and a sharing in the adulation heaped, quite rightly, on the performers as much as in listening to different cadences and trying to catch the images, think about them as they hang in the air.
Just down the road and around the corner is the Gay's the Word bookshop (how very unlike Daunt's). Prominent in the window at the moment are new editions of some of the books in the Beebo Brinker Chronicles. I cannot vouch for what goes on between the covers, but the covers themselves are very eye-catching in a saturated-colour film poster sort of way. Nice objects - an exotic dash of prurience on one's bookshelf. However, there's nothing new under the sun, and lesbian pulp fiction was an area visited previously by a very different sort of poet to those taking the stage at the BL: Philip Larkin. Knowing what a goat he was, it doesn't come as that much of a surprise. The surprise is that as quite a young man he created the non de plume, almost the persona, of Brunette Coleman. Actually, on reflection, it's not a surprise at all. Sex, sex, sex was the only thing on his mind (apart from death).