One of the many things I love about Brick Lane is the random nature of it. A woman can wander into a side street and break into song or a man who weaves you a wire flower while reciting a blessing pleasantly accosts you. Or perhaps a busker who writes improvised prose.
Hunched over an antique typewriter, tapping out a melodic metallic beat, Kaile Glick brings a literal meaning to ‘poetry of the streets’. With an air of funky wit, Kaile is a welcome guest on the ever-changing landscape of The Lane.She came to Shoreditch on the advice of random people she bumped into from her travels around the world. In fact, she brought a smile to my face when she told me she found out about my favourite coffee shop in Brick Lane, Café 1001 from someone she met in Tel Aviv. She ventured here from Toronto, Canada to set up The Spontaneous Prose Store in London. Having been turned away from Covent Garden, because she ‘didn’t have a license to stand still’, The Lane seemed to be a more welcoming place.
‘I wish I had come here first and had more time to explore the streets around here. There is all kind of weird here, but it’s a great place to set up the Store.’
Kaile has managed to busk her way to the Bristol Street Art Festival, in the hopes of making enough to head northward to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. With a rollie hanging out of the corner of her mouth and a floppy brown cloche hat pulled down over her glasses, Kaile dishes out her beatnik brand of cathartic literature to the whims of passing pedestrians.
‘It can be a little depressing at times. People just sit down and pour out their saddest stories. It’s a bit like being a busking psychiatrist.’ smiles Kaile.
I didn’t pour my heart out, but I did ask her to wrote something on the most iconic area in East London:
Brick Lane
and just in the nick of time i
found you, narrow road where
any old lunatic can transpose to
furniture without any of the
freaks batting an eye. its good
to find strangers you know so
well uncanny and grimey and
all good things.
