Jackie Kay was billed as one of the UK's most compelling performers, and she did not disappoint in the Burgage Hall on Friday.

She is totally captivating on stage, sharing poems and stories as though they are delicious confidences between old friends.But Kay is far more than a performance artist. She has the rare gift of pith and explains something in one line that may require pages and pages from weaker talents.She says of mutually entranced lovers, "they don't remember who they've been".An elderly Scottish lady knits to keep death away. She's knitted "through the wee small hours...casting on, casting off, like the north sea."Kay tells us, "mobile phones are tiny gods".

With such a power for concision, one might expect Kay to be a minimalist.

But she makes plenty of room for people. People lie at the centre of her life.Issues of gender and identity are important to her, because she loves the individual.Above all, Kay is amusing.An old lady having colonic irrigation decides it looks easy. She might try a DIY job but reflects, "I'm my own worst enema."For all her marvellous good humour, sadness never seems to be far away. Only when Kay looks away from an audience, to reflect or choose a poem, does she seem distant and alone.The audience loved her. Her performance was a total delight and she must have the warmest personality in modern English poetry.The Ledbury Poetry Festival was indeed fortunate to have Jackie Kay as the 2008 writer in residence.