July meeting

We don’t usually meet in July, but as we missed last month we’re going to have our usual ‘end-of-term’ get-together with readings from our in-house poets plus sales of any books, pamphlets or magazines you have spare.  Usual time, usual place (check on the ‘meetings’ link in the top bar).

Saturday 17th July 11am-1pm

Refreshments provided £1 donation welcomed to cover costs

 

June Abroad

  There will be no meeting in June as the third weekend coincides with Manchester’s Poetry Garden Party and a key member is playing a supporting role. Regulars may be interested in a day out on the Sunday instead:

“Sunday 20 June
the Poetry Garden Party 2-6pm

Poets & Players are hosting a fantastic day of poetry, music, delicious food, strawberries, wine, home-made lemonade, a poetry book stall and auction of poetry skills.  We cordially invite you to come along and enjoy yourselves at our only fund-raising event of the year. Please put the date in your diaries now! 

Poets who will read during the afternoon are: Carol Ann Duffy, Clare Shaw, Jon Glover, Graham Mort, Carola Luther, Evan Jones, Chirs Woods, Janine Pinion and Julia Deakin. 

where: in the garden of 163 Palatine Road, M20 2GH

cost:  £2.50 entrance

the weather: perfect

http://www.poetsandplayers.co.uk/“

 

Desert Island Poems

  Here’s hoping all our regulars check in here, because the laptop in the WOTwater office has gone snoozeabyes (now there’s a word…).  Somewhere in a deep lagoon of its RAM, ROM or whatever is the WOTwater mailing list.

Onwards – our next meeting is on Saturday 15th May 11am-1pm in Room A, Bebington Central Library (Refreshments provided, £1 donation welcomed to cover all costs).  It’s a bring-a-poem month and the theme is… Desert Island Poems: if you have a list of ten, great, but pick out one to bring and discuss (bring your list too, and copies for everyone, plus a copy each of numbers 2/3 on your list in case there is time).  Otherwise just come along and enjoy, put your hammock up and sip a imaginary pina colada…

 

Love That Dog – April Meeting

Something completely different for our April meeting  Sat 17^th 11am-1pm Room A Bebington Library:

LOVE THAT DOG – An outstanding novel extolling the pleasures of poetry as seen through the eyes of one young boy.  Slowly Jack learns the pleasures of writing poetry as Miss Stretchberry encourages him to tell his own story through verse. What emerges is a moving and memorable story about a boy and his dog and his growing passion for poetry.

Lesley Johnson has offered to introduce us to this entertaining book by Sharon Creech, which in turn reminds us of poets and poems we’ve read, or have yet to read… (see extract and review below).  Lesley will talk about what inspired her to recommend this book and provide copies of poems connected to it.  This should be an enjoyable and lively discussion!  I have already ordered my copy and am sending this in good time for you to order yours, if you wish:

Available to buy at Amazon for £3.36  Ctrl+click here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-That-Dog-Sharon-Creech/dp/0747557497/ref=sr_1_1/280-3971178-8511260?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270134091&sr=8-1 

REVIEW by BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH Poet & author – Sharon Creech has written a book that is delightful, funny and poetic. That would have been a good enough accomplishment in itself, but this book goes further than that. It illustrates in a thoughtful and accessible way how our lives can be enriched once we open up and recognise that communication is cool. Is it a diary? Is it poetry? Is it a novel? Who cares? It’s simply the most original book I’ve read for years, and now I see it as my duty to tell the world that the book that cannot be pigeonholed has been written. Long live the author, may her imagination touch us all. This is a book that reminds us all that poetry is about exploring every corner of our language, and that storytelling is the first art. When they come together it is magical.

EXTRACT FROM ‘LOVE THAT DOG’ –

SEPTEMBER 13 I don’t want to because boys don’t write poetry. Girls do. SEPTEMBER 21 I tried. Can’t do it. Brain’s empty. SEPTEMBER 27 I don’t understand the poem about the red wheelbarrow and the white chickens and why so much depends upon them. If that is a poem about the red wheelbarrow and the white chickens then any words can be a poem You’ve just got to make short lines. OCTOBER 4 Do you promise not to read it out loud? Do you promise not to put it on the board? Okay, here it is, but I don’t like it. So much depends upon a blue car splattered with mud speeding down the road. OCTOBER 10 What do you mean — Why does so much depend upon a blue car? You didn’t say before that I had to tell why. The wheelbarrow guy didn’t tell why. OCTOBER 17 What was up with the snowy woods poem you read today? Why doesn’t the person just keep going if he’s got so many miles to go before he sleeps? And why do I have to tell more about the blue car splattered with mud speeding down the road? I don’t want to write about that blue car that had miles to go before it slept, so many miles to go in such a hurry. OCTOBER 24 I am sorry to say I did not really understand the tiger tiger burning bright poem but at least it sounded good in my ears Here is the blue car with tiger sounds: Blue car, blue car, shining bright in the darkness of the night who could see you speeding by like a comet in the sky? I could see you speeding by blue car, blue car, shining bright. I could see you speeding by like a comet in the sky. Some of the tiger sounds are still in my ears like drums beat-beat-beating © Sharon Creech

 

Mellow in March: Saturday 20th

…. or rather – YELLOW!  Interpret that however you like, and bring along a poem from the last 80 years (plus about 8 copies)  11am-1pm Room A Bebington Central Library.  Everyone welcome.  Refreshments provided. £1 donation welcomed to cover costs.

 

Will you thank me for a Valentine? Find out in February….

 

Aaaah please excuse me while I enjoy a little reverie…  as Louis MacNeice’s crazy pink roses (from last month’s manly set) morph into red. 

But hey!  Doesn’t Love have many faces?  Indeed – and here come the girls: Kate Clanchy, Liz Lochhead, Fleur Adcock, Dorothy Parker, Stevie Smith, Deryn Rees Jones, Jackie Kay and Gillian Allnutt.

Marriage, romance, unrequited love, sensual passion, parting and widowhood are all reflected in an outsize selection of poems, which we’ll savour on Saturday 20th February 11am-1pm in Room A, Bebington Central Library (refreshments provided, £1 suggested donation).

Poems can be downloaded and printed off by clicking here 

Normally we aim for four poems on average, but with such a range of delights on offer, it would be impolite not to extend our appreciation beyond the usual bounds.  Besides – we all LOVE poetry, so let’s spoil ourselves, even if it is a week after V-Day.  Go on – you know you want to….

 

January Snow

Happy New Year!  Our first meeting of the new year takes place Saturday 16th January 11am – 1pm Room A at Bebington Library. 

I can’t believe how quickly the date has come round and how long it is since I’ve seen everyone – thank you for all your messages of support over the past three months.  Let’s start the year with optimism and renewed vigour!  

Snow – I have a great selection of Snow poems by Bai Juyi, Michael Longley, Edward Thomas, Thomas Lux and Billy Collins, but perhaps you are all tired of snow by now…!  On the other hand, as you’ll have come to realise, in poetry the subject becomes irrelevant (or even irreverent, judging by the teasing samples some of you have been sending me lately!) once we look more closely. 

On occasions I’m surprised to come up with something completely different –  in the process of searching on a theme, another one emerges.  But for now,  this month’s selection can be accessed and printed out by clicking here

Everyone welcome, refreshments provided.  A donation of £1 would be appreciated to cover costs.

 

Autumn & Winter – November Meeting

Not all poets had an early start – U.A. Fanthorpe and Joseph Pacheco both published in the Autumn and Winter of their lives. 

We will be looking at their poems at our next meeting on Saturday 21st November 11am-1pm in Room A, Bebington Central Library.  Refreshments available, £1 donation welcome to cover costs.

The poems can be accessed and printed by clicking here .

Joseph Pacheco is a 76 year old Nuyorican, retired NYC school superintendent living on Sanibel Island, Florida. He began writing poetry at 70, was featured on NPR Morning Edition, in Latino USA and at the Cornelia Street Cafe with David Amram. He has published two books of poetry: The First of the Nuyoricans/Sailing to Sanibel and Alligator in the Sky.  You can listen to his poem In Memoriam at http://latinousa.kut.org/842/  (not one of the poems in the printout but worth listening to).

U. A. Fanthorpe (1929 – 2009) is known as a sharp, witty poet equally admired by critics and the public. Many felt that in 1999 she should have become the first woman poet laureate, but she was awarded the Queens Gold Medal for Poetry in 2003, only the fifth woman in 70 years to win it. She also became a CBE for services to literature in 2001, and in 1994 the first woman in 315 years to be nominated as professor of poetry at Oxford University.  Fanthorpe published nothing until 1978, when she was almost 50. She was head of English at Cheltenham Ladies College when she decided on a radical change of career. Her time as a receptionist in a Bristol neurological hospital inspired her first collection, Side Effects.  (You can hear her reading on The Poetry Archive – see Recorded Poetry, below).

 

Heroes & Heroines

The theme for this year’s National Poetry Day was Heroes & Heroines – pictured left is Jo Bell, co-ordinator of NPD and one of Cheshire’s recent Poet Laureates – you can hear her read at http://www.poetcasting.co.uk/.

So we’ve chosen this theme also for our next meeting on Saturday 24th October 11am-1pm in Room A, Bebington Central Library.  For this meeting, readers are bringing poems which they feel are heroic in some way, or written by people in their circle. 

Words Over The Water hears stories every now and then, in the tea break, of unexpected writing from daughters and fathers, friends near and far. Let’s bring it to the table!

Everyone welcome – refreshments provided.  A donation of £1 is welcomed to cover costs.

 

Get Poems by Email

Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre sends out a weekly poem to your email address – click on the link to sign up now!

 http://ah.brookes.ac.uk/poetry/weeklypoem 

Here’s last week’s:

German Phenomenology Makes Me Want to Strip and Run through North London

 

Page seven – I’ve had enough of Being and Time
and of clothing. Many streakers seek quieter locations
and Marlborough Road’s unreasonably quiet tonight.
If it were winter I’d be intellectual,  but it’s Tuesday
and I’d rather be outside, naked,  than learned –
rather lap the tarmac escarpment of Archway Roundabout
wearing only a rucksack. It might come in useful.
I can’t take any more of Heidegger’s Dasein-diction,
I say as I jettison my slippers.

When I speak of my ambition
it is not to be a Doctor of Letters
or to marry Friedrich Nietzsche, it turns out,
or to think better.
It is to give up this fashion for dressing.
It is to drop my robe on the communal stairs
and open the front door onto the commuter hour,
my neighbour, his Labrador, and say nothing
of what I know or do not know, except what my body announces.

by Heather Phillipson