Erotic Literary Salon

I am in the dark basement of a bar in East London, staring at a man’s penis. He’s reading a poem in a thick Spanish accent and is wearing nothing but the clipboard he’s using as a fig leaf. At the end of each stanza the clipboard is raised, eyebrows are lifted and the naked poet grins.

This is Velvet Tongue, an erotic literary salon that takes place every three months. The man on stage is Ernesto Sarezale: poet, cabaret performer and Velvet Tongue’s MC. He started the salon a year ago and it now takes place at Bar Kick, a Shoreditch bar filled with world flags and ironic football tables.

Sitting on the chairs and battered leather sofas that crowd the basement floor is an entertainingly diverse collection of spectators and performers, from the gaggle of dental nurses on a girls' night out to the man who - from his tight black trousers up to his waist coat and tie – is dressed in nothing but leather.

This is not the literary equivalent of slipping into a cinema and watching a skin flick with the men in the proverbial macs. Velvet Tongue is the word-spinning sister of the burlesque revival that has stormed London - humorously titillating with tongues very firmly in cheeks.

The salon’s website strongly encourages guests to perform in the open mic slots alongside the more experienced and semi-professional scheduled acts. Those brave enough to stand up and describe their sexual predilections in poetry or prose are rewarded with free entry (everyone else pays a very reasonable £3).

So in the interests of economy and full immersion, I have written my first sexually-charged poem and am sitting nervously, waiting to lose my erotic performance virginity.

Sarezale – chubby and stubbled – begins the night by providing precise definitions for certain terms of sexual slang. A "velvet tongue", the night’s namesake, is a sex act "using hot tea, and honey”. If this is more than you wanted to know, you probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the rest of the night.

Several performers follow who live up to stereotypes of strangers talking about sex: Chris Dangerfield, a poor man’s Russell Brand, delivers relentlessly vulgar tales of drugs, sex and prostitutes in a mockney accent; and poet Ant Smith gives a deranged performance of a poem on necrophilia (an earlier reading in Edinburgh apparently earned him a life ban).

But among the more cringe-inducing performances are poems and stories of such passion and good humour that the night remains more entertaining than skin-crawling. They include a wonderfully witty insight into what really goes through a woman’s mind during sex and a mesmerising attack from a New Yorker on the hypocrisy of the Meat Packing district, contrasting today’s designer stores with the visceral sexual encounters that used to take place in its alleyways.

One of the most unexpected pleasures was Mel Jones, a large vivacious woman in her fifties, who delivers poems as unashamedly raunchy as they are hilarious. From her rousing celebration of homemade porn to her coquettishly brilliant comic timing, Ms Jones is a delight.