Bold and beautiful: the cover of Reactions 5
At last night's launch of Reactions 5, the latest anthology of new poetry from the University of East Anglia's Pen & Inc press, there was abundant evidence of the rosy health of the contemporary poetry scene – and, alas, the general public's colossal indifference to it. Held in a downstairs room in a bar in Farringdon's uber-hip Exmouth Market, the atmosphere was one of pleasingly slipshod bonhomie, and the poets, who stuck to a very restrained two poems each, were diffidently brilliant. Hannah Sullivan's precise, poignant 'Mechanical Reproduction', the story of a summer in Berlin, in which "Schubert just cranked out angrily and there was nearly/birdsong", deserved to be singled out; John McCollough's 'Reading Frank O'Hara on the Brighton Express' was a heartfelt and worthy tribute to the great man.

But this was splendour in adversity. The room was stifling, the poets competing with music and chatter from upstairs, and the constant stream of people ducking in front of the poets to get to the loos was a gallingly effective hubris-buster. "You know how it feels to drift from the focus," read Gareth Jones, as a mobile phone beeped with perfect timing.

And at the end of the day, there was no getting away from the fact that an assembly of a dozen or so of the clearest voices in new poetry were reading to an audience of some 40 people. Frankly, it's a crying shame that so few people get to hear work of such high calibre. So we decided to take matters into our own hands, and bring the poetry to you. Read a poem from each of the anthologised poets, reprinted by kind permission of the editor, Clare Pollard, here.