Joshua Jaswon’s octet at Pizza Express Dean Street on September 22

POETRY and jazz have been bed mates for decades. Langston Hughes imbued his verse with the rhythms and accents of what, at the time, was Harlem’s favourite music. Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg considered their work rooted in free-form jazz, and the former made a couple of albums with jazz musicians, including Al Cohn and Zoot Sims. Charles Mingus liked to use spoken texts (see his A Modern Symposium of Jazz and Poetry).

The climax of Coltrane’s Love Supreme is a poem “read” by the great man’s saxophone. And I have an album, recorded late in his life, of Chet Baker reading verses that works rather well.

Nor is it a dying art: that most cerebral of superstar jazz singers Kurt Elling (who plays the Union Chapel on October 31, https://union­chapel.org.uk/whats-on/kurt-elling-superblue) has adapted texts by the likes of Rilke and Wallace Stevens.

Kentish Town’s King of noir, crime-writer John Harvey, has a parallel career as a poet, with jazz a favourite subject, and he has performed with the likes of saxman Stan Sulzmann in the past.

Alabaster de Plume and Anthony Joseph have kept the jazz-poetry spoken word flag flying, as have the occasional evening in the east at venues such as Café Oto (www.cafeoto.co.uk/), Dalston Lounge (www.dalstonlounge.com/) and Servants Jazz Quarter (http://servantjazzquarters.com/).

I’ve been rediscovering the much-missed trumpeter Kenny Wheeler’s suite of music based on poems by Stevie Smith, Lewis Carroll and WB Yeats, with the London Vocal Project choir and Norma Winstone (Mirrors, Edition Records, 2013).

I was reminded of the latter when listening to alto player Joshua Jaswon’s octet at Pizza Express Dean Street (www.pizzaexpresslive.com/) last week, which featured Anna Seriese on Winstone-like vocals, mostly in a high, pure register and always captivating, whether producing wordless melody lines or singing lyrics.

Jaswon is London-born, Berlin-based (the clever guy relocated immediately after the Brexit vote) and has two albums under his belt for his octet: Silent Sea, which features settings of British poets such as Maura Dooley and Rachael Boast and, most recently, Polar Waters, which is inspired by and adapted from the contemporary verses of Elsa Hammond, Catherine Faulds, Claire Cox and others. Both are on the Ubuntu label, both recommended.

The themes are generally concerned with the ecological and environmental destruction of our planet, although the music is not as po-faced (or depressing) as that sounds. A little ditty called Extinction, for example, based on work by Jackie Kay, Scotland’s poet laureate, swung like the proverbial clappers (Ms Kay thoroughly approved of the adaptation, saying the music fitted “like a hand in a glove”).

The set was mostly drawn from the second album and live the band really stretched out, with kudos to Anna Serierse’s vocal dynamics, the drumming of Aarón Castrillo, who handled with considerable aplomb the tricky time changes that Jaswon, the composer, likes to throw at his musicians, and to Jan Kaiser on trumpet, who began the set fairly low key before he pulled some blazing solos out of the bag.

But to be honest all on stage had their stand-out moments and the ensemble work was delicious.

None played remotely like men who had just endured two aborted plane landings and a diversion to get to Soho (Anna, who is based in Amsterdam, avoided that delight). Catch them next time, when they’ll probably come by train.

• The next big event on the jazz calendar is the EFG London Jazz Festival in November (efglondonjazz­festival.org.uk), which we’ll be covering in due course.

Meanwhile there is much to enjoy in the weeks to come before that juggernaut arrives.

Jazz at the Parakeet in Kentish Town continues do a grand job of bringing top players to a local venue at local prices.

October opens with a strong trio led by James Owston on bass (Oct 2), followed up by Kasper Rietkerk on sax with his lightly rock-tinged sextet (Oct 9) and there’s a very tasty foursome indeed called “Tomorrow’s Quartet” on the 16th which has Rod Oughton on drums and compositions, Helena Kay on sax, Flo Moore on bass and Deschanel Gordon on piano.

Then come Ofer Landsberg (guitar), Paul Sikivie (bass), Islington’s very own and very talented Alex Bryson on piano and the exciting Robbie Ellison on drums on the 23rd.

The month ends with the sublime Barry Green on piano, ably underpinned by Conor Chaplin on bass and Vinnie Sperraza on drums. You’re spoilt for choice there, with the highest quality instrumentalists at work – the list of top musicians they have played with between them is mind blowing.

You just might have to go and see all of them. Details and tickets: www.jazzattheparakeet.com