This collection is a complex, deeply rewarding and spiritually nourishing read.
Rosie Jackson at Ammerdown THIS SATURDAY!
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Next meeting 6 May
No-one could accuse our guest reader, Mark Haworth-Booth, of not being socially engaged! He is a Parish Councillor, District Councillor, Chair of North Devon Green Party, member or Chair of several committees (both cultural and political), activist with Extinction Rebellion, and co-ordinator of North Devon Stanza. Mark is an award-winning poet who writes about his wildlife-rich habitat, but also about large and immediate public issues – from the need to address the Climate Emergency to the need for a ceasefire in Gaza. He believes that poetry is whatever it needs to be. His poems also reflect his long career as a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum where he worked with many notable artists and designers. His reading will explain how his poems came about – sometimes from a chance wildlife encounter, sometimes prompted by the work of another poet.
The meeting will be upstairs at The King’s Head (7pm as usual), on Monday 6th May. The pub is in Wells High Street, conveniently close to the Union Street car park. The food is good. Why not come early and have supper beforehand?
Our April meeting was full of wonderful poems, both from our very engaging guest Tristram Fane Saunders, a great performer of his work, and from regular and visiting poets in the open mic sessions.
I’m sorry to say that the evening of poetry at Quilter Hall on 20th April has been cancelled because the organisers “have unfortunately not managed to secure a big enough audience to proceed with the event.”
Wells Litfest Poetry Competition closes on 30th June. It will be judged by Dr Anthony Joseph, winner of the T.S.Eliot Prize 2022, one of the speakers at last year’s Festival.
Wirral Poetry Festival: thanks to Ewa for sending this link, which will take you to the website where you can book a place on Chester Poets’ next Zoom Session on Tuesday 23rd April. This will include a virtual tour of Ron’s Place and a discussion on Outsider Art.
Swindon Festival of Literature takes place at various venues in Swindon 5-12 May
Open-minded, enthusiastic reading is the first step towards good writing.
–Tristram Fane Saunders
There are so many people who want to see their poetry published but so few who want to buy other people’s work.
– Maytree Press, on ceasing publication, March 2024
Next Meeting 1st April
Despite the horrible weather, eight of us enjoyed a lovely intimate sharing of poems on Monday night at the King’s Head. We started with up-beat poems from Hilary, Mo and Ama, and a many-layered one from Andrew that taught us, among other things, the origin of a word we now use without a second thought, deadline. It was good to see Paul W again after so long. He gave us a couple of great poems, one a rant about the withdrawal of his local bus service, the other gently placing his young granddaughter in the branches of the family tree. Fiona’s poems were a feast for the inner eye and ear, the two Davids took us on imaginative adventures, Ama read her two poems from New Contexts:6, published a couple of days ago, Hilary vividly evoked Vivienne Westwood, and Mo delivered a cri de coeur for women exploited and killed by men. For those (few) of us who were at the screening of “In an Ideal World I’d not be Murdered” on Saturday evening, this was especially poignant.
Our guest reader on 1 April will be Tristram Fane Saunders, who was the poetry judge for the Wells Litfest competition two years ago and came to our first Fringe Binge. His collection, Before we go any Further, was published by Carcanet last summer. I have read his pamphlet The Rake and found it a delight – playful, skilful, original, dark and fascinating.
Talking of Wells Litfest, I have just had an email about this year’s poetry competition. Entry fee £6. Prizes: 1st £1,000, 2nd £500, 3rd £250, Local £100. Any subject, no more than 35 lines. Judge: Anthony Joseph. There is also a Competition for Young Poets, Short Stories and A Book for Children. All the information can be found here.
You are invited to an afternoon of readings from Bath Writers and Artists on
Saturday 16 March, 2 – 5 pm at Widcombe Social Club, Bath BA2 6AA.
Following a morning of discussion and workshops on the theme of Time, there will be a launch of Linda Saunders’s latest poetry collection, The Tall Golden Minute, as well as a concert of performances on the day’s theme, including music and song, from workshop participants, including Fountain poets Claire Coleman, Mo Kiziewicz and Ama Bolton.
Linda Saunders will read from The Tall Golden Minute, in which mysteries of time and mortality receive the same keen attention as a rare butterfly or a child’s first word.
Poetry isn’t a profession, it’s a way of life. It’s an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that. — Mary Oliver
Dithering Chaps
I have received the following information, which is of potential interest to Fountain Poets and other readers of this blog. The photo is from the same source.
We would love to invite you and the members of the Wells Fountains Poets Stanza Group to enter our competition for poetry and flash fiction on the theme of “Lines in the Sand”. (I must suggest to our Stanza Lead that we meet in a pub – your group sounds very vibrant!)
We hope this writing prompt is open enough to allow you and your writing colleagues to let imaginations run free … come up with something to inspire and fire us up!
The competition is listed on the National Poetry Library’s competition page (and as the days tick down, is getting ever closer to the top!) The entry fee is £5 and the deadline for the competition is 29th February.
And, of course, any of your members who also write Flash Fiction are welcome to enter in this category too.
There will be 40 winners and we will be publishing their entries in an anthology. We will then choose one winner to be published in their own dedicated chapbook.
More information can be found here … Poetry & Flash Fiction Competition | Bournemouth WritingFestival
Your support for this competition would be much appreciated.
Thank you.
Kind regards,
David
David Herring – Associate Editor
PS If you have any questions, do get in touch. I’m a member of the Wimborne Stanza Group in Dorset and I know views vary about the value of competitions. Please be assured that all income from this competition will go directly to finance the BWF or the books being published as a result.—
Dithering Chaps
Next meeting March 4th
Due to Pratibha’s very recent illness, her visit to Fountain Poets has been postponed to later in the year (update: June 3rd.) March 4th will be an open-mic meeting.
Pratibha Castle, an Irish born poet living in West Sussex, is widely anthologised and published in journals and ezines including Agenda, High Window, Orbis, Spelt, Stand, Tears in The Fence, The Friday Poem and One Hand Clapping. She is a Michael Marks and Pushcart nominee. Shortlisted in The Bridport Prize 2023, her work has additionally been highly commended and shortlisted in numerous poetry competitions including Indigo Press, Repton, King Lear Award and the Welsh Poetry Competition. Her award winning debut pamphlet A Triptych of Birds & A Few Loose Feathers (Hedgehog Press 2022) is joined by Miniskirts in The Waste Land (Hedgehog Press 2023), a Poetry Book Society Winter Selection 2023, and gives the reader a glimpse of life in Notting Hill and India in the late 60s/early 70s. Pratibha performs her poetry internationally on zoom and at live events, including The Cheltenham and also Gloucester Poetry Festivals. She is currently working towards a full collection.
We welcome Pratibha on Monday 4 March, in the upstairs room at the King’s Head in Wells High Street, starting promptly at 7pm. As usual there will be open mic slots.
Thirteen of us were lucky enough to hear a spellbinding reading by Gram Joel Davies last Monday, as well as some pretty wonderful offerings in the open mic section.
I am sure no-one will forget I Used to Think my Body was Mine, I am a Cold Shoulder, Elsie, or The Journey for which no-one wants a ticket. They went straight to the heart.
On the more light-hearted side, we were entertained by Silent Letters, Sonata for Remington and Alliteration, and For the Pips on their 100th Birthday.
Poetry can tell us what human beings are. It can tell us why we stumble and fall and how, miraculously, we can stand up. — Maya Angelou
Next meeting 5 February
Our guest reader on 5th February will be Gram Joel Davies, whose second full length collection Not Enough Rage was published last autumn by V. Press.
“Like a series of controlled explosions” – Bobby Parker
“… leaps and flies through the world with dark exuberance” – Peter Oswald
We’ll be meeting upstairs at the King’s Head in Wells High Street, starting promptly at 7pm. Come early if you’d like to have a meal. I have booked the upstairs room for the first Monday of every month. Put them in your diary now! We may or may not meet at the beginning of November, depending on the dates of Wells Litfest. I’ll keep you posted.
In other news …
Alex Corrin-Tachibana writes:
In case you fancy booking in something creative for those yawny days towards the end of January, The Writing School have invited me back to rerun my Japan-inspired ‘Writing the Gaijin: outside person looking in’ workshop. I had a blast last time connecting with writers of all different stages and aspirations, and it is booking up fast. Thursday 18 January, 10am-2.30pm https://www.eventbrite.com/…/writing-the-gaijin-poetry
Fountain Poet Mo Kiziewicz will be the guest poet at Silver Street Poets in central Bristol on Friday 26 Jan, 12.30-2pm. They are a friendly crowd. Do come if you’re free.
Teignmouth Poetry Festival Competitions, judged by Malika Booker and Graeme Ryan, now open for entries until midnight on 31st January. Full details here: https://www.poetryteignmouth.com/competition-2024.html
Bath Writers and Artists‘ next event is on the theme of Time, at the Widcombe Social Club on Saturday March 16th. For full details contact me, amabolton(at)hotmail(dot)com. There are a few places left for the morning feedback workshop, and all are welcome to attend the afternoon concert, which will include readings and songs. Full day £20, afternoon only £5, buffet lunch (optional) £8.
There is no way to succeed in poetry. There is no way to fail. There is only poetry. Everything else is noise off-stage. – Joelle Taylor
“Despite the rain”
Five poets contacted me on Monday, a day of unremitting rain and widespread flooding, to let me know they would not be coming to the December meeting. I pulled on my waterproofs and set off, wondering if I’d be the only one. I was not! We were nine in the room, including our guest Dawn Gorman, and her daughter who braved the floods leaving four-month-old twins at home. She deserves a medal. So does Rebecca, a courageous first-time reader who I hope will come again and find that reading her work is less of an ordeal the second time.
Dawn’s reading was a treat, a mixture of published and new poems. Her latest book, the Bird Room, is a deeply felt and beautifully expressed tribute to a birdwatching-obsessed father, seen sometimes at an emotional distance as if through binoculars. One of the poems in this collection (a posthumous collaboration in which poems are paired with her father’s photographs) has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. No-one in the room was quite clear what this prize actually is! But clearly, nomination is a great accolade.
We had some excellent poems during the two open mic sessions, too. It was a lovely evening, apart from the weather.
I was sad to hear today about the death of Benjamin Zephaniah, poet, actor, activist. There was a lovely tribute to him by Lemn Sissay on the radio today – 31.48 minutes in. (Thank you Clare!) And he was on Poetry Please a couple of weeks ago. It was delightful! Whether or not you need cheering up, do listen. “Where there’s doom and gloom, I bring you poetry.” Roger McGough is the perfect host for this programme. I knew him in the 70s when I lived in Liverpool. At the Armadillo Tea Rooms we employed his son Nathan, then a teenager; when he left we gave him an alarm clock …
The King’s Head closes two days in the year, and as New Year’s Day is one of them, there will be no meeting on January 1st. Our next meeting will therefore be on Monday 5th February, when Gram Joel Davies will pay us a second visit, to read from his new book, Not Enough Rage. This is subject to confirmation, when the King’s Head has a 2024 diary! For dates further into the new year, please look at this page.
Fountain poet/storyteller Beth Webb will be doing Christmas music and storytelling on 10th December: ‘Follow, Follow, Follow’ – A creative re-telling of the Christmas story with songs, stories, swords, and spiders! A tapestry of folk tale and song, telling the birth of Christ from Mary’s point of view with storyteller Beth Webb and singer-songwriter Fiona Simpson.
St John’s Church Glastonbury, December 10th 3.00pm.
Tickets are free but need to be booked here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1278161556176374/?ref=newsfeed
“Despite the rain/ Despite the falling rain.” – Robert Graves
Next meeting 4 December
We had a second successful Fringe Binge in late October, welcoming four newcomers including Miranda Moore, winner of the Children’s Book category in the Wells Festival competition. Our guest poet, Alex Corrin-Tachibana, gave a delightfully warm and informal reading of some poems from her 2022 book Sing me Down from the Dark, and some newer ones including a Zuihitsu that was recently placed fourth in the Winchester competition. Her work is notable for its emotional honesty and for the sparks of humour that illuminate it. Graeme Ryan and I gave a short reading of some ‘Angrams’, including some by Annie Fisher who was sadly unable to be with us on the day. As always there was an interesting mix of writing in the open mic sessions.
Our next meeting will be on 4th December, upstairs in the King’s Head in Wells High Street at the usual time of 7pm, but please come early (6pm-ish) if you’d like to join us for supper. The menu is here. Our guest will be Dawn Gorman of the Poetry Place on West Wilts Radio. Her latest pamphlet, The Bird Room, is a very satisfying read. I thoroughly recommend it.
As well as presenting West Wilts Radio’s The Poetry Place, Dawn is poetry editor of Caduceus, is a creative writing mentor and workshop leader, and works with poetry in a variety of therapeutic contexts. She collaborates widely with artists, musicians, film-makers and other writers: her work has been turned into a symphony, film poems and sculptures, and she is currently co-producing the third in a series of collaborative pamphlets between writers and photographers. Her own poetry publications include This Meeting of Tracks (Toadlily Press, 2013) and Aloneness is a Many-Headed Bird (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2020, with Rosie Jackson), which were both Pushcart Prize-nominated, and Instead Let Us Say (Dempsey & Windle, 2019), which won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Award. Her latest pamphlet, The Bird Room, was published by Hedgehog in July this year.
Martin Malone says of her work: ‘This a sensual, tender-hearted poetry, aglow with its own humanity. There is, throughout, an intensely felt oneness with the natural world, rendered by a true poet in possession of impressive technical gifts.’
The prestigious Troubador International Poetry Competition closes soon, on Sunday Dec 10th.
Fountain poet/storyteller Beth Webb will be doing Christmas music and storytelling in December: ‘Follow, Follow, Follow’ – A creative re-telling of the Christmas story with songs, stories, swords, and spiders!
Bubwith Chapel, Chamberlain Street, Wells, December 9th at 7.00 pm.
St John’s Church Glastonbury, December 10th 3.00pm
‘Follow, Follow, Follow’ is a tapestry of folk tale and song, telling the birth of Christ from Mary’s point of view with storyteller Beth Webb and singer-songwriter Fiona Simpson.
The performance weaves folk tales and songs from across the world to fill in some of the gaps in the Christmas story, how did Mary feel when she realised she was pregnant? Who was the baby’s midwife? How do spiders help the family escape from Herod’s soldiers?
Manchester-based singer-songwriter Fiona Simpson sings wonderful versions of old carols as well as some of her own new songs. The thrilling narratives are woven together and told by Somerset storyteller and author, Beth Webb.
Please note: NOT SUITABLE for children.
Tickets are free, but we’d like to suggest a donation of £10.00 at the door, some of which will go towards raising funds for the two venues.
Almshouses tickets are available here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/follow-follow-follow-tickets-737886848427
St John’s Church Glastonbury, Dec 10th tickets here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1278161556176374/?ref=newsfeed
Poets watch their lines of thought fall apart and are as amazed as anyone to see a poem start to emerge from that wreckage. — Beau Beausoleil
Posted by Ama Bolton.
Limerick Competition
Closing soon! 31st October!
The Oxfam Limerick Quest: make us laugh and help Oxfam at the same time!
If you fancy yourself as a poet – or even if you don’t – book in now.
Email owf.wells@gmail.com.
After all, what do you have to lose, apart from your literary reputation? There will be cash prizes for the three entries our poet-judge considers the most poetic, the most droll, the most outrageous.
For just £5 the Limerick you are just going to write may earn you a pitifully small cash prize. Ama Bolton, convener of Wells Fountain Poets, will judge the entries, and we shall then be rewarding the authors of the top three.
To accept the challenge you need to do two things.
1 Send your entry fee to the Mid Somerset Oxfam Group, £5 for each Limerick you submit. You may do this:
• by cheque – make it out to Mid Somerset Oxfam Group and send it to the MSOG Treasurer, Richard Corp, Strawberry Cottage, Church Street, Cheddar BS27 3RA,
• or by bank transfer – Mid Somerset Oxfam Group; sort code 60 23 06; a/c number 75130289; reference Limericks.
2 Email your Limerick(s) to owf.wells@gmail.com. Job done!
Your five-line Limerick(s) should follow the traditional rhyme and rhythm patterns, for example
There was a young fellow from Spain
who fell down a fifty-foot drain.
The police said ‘Don’t mope,
for we have this long rope,
and tomorrow they’ll bring us the crane.’
There are no rules about subject matter, other than that it should not be libellous. Hilarious? Of course. Provocative? OK. Saucy, fine. Sexy, careful. Pornographic, no! no! Practice tells us that having established your theme, rhyming pattern and first line, you would do well to nail the last line before filling in the middle.
The deadline for entries is 31st October. All entries will be judged by a local published poet, then MSOG will allocate 20% of the entry fee total for three prizes. One of them could be yours. Oh yes!
Send an extra £2, to cover p. & p., and we’ll send you a copy of The MSOG Limerick Quest published in 2021. This is an anthology of Limericks written by over 50 budding poets, and may be safely described as a mosaic of sublime verse, terrible gibberish and much else in between.
We may feel moved to share hilarity by occasionally including a limerick on the MSOG website or in local newspapers; please say if you don’t want yours to be published, or if you don’t want your name to be published.
Thank you for joining us in a bit of honest fun – and all in a good cause. Every penny we make from this modest venture will go to Oxfam to help and support the poorest communities in the world as they face up to the challenges of their lives.
Next Meeting 30 October
Our Fringe Poetry Binge is coming up very soon, on Monday October 30th at the earlier time of 6pm, upstairs at the King’s Head in Wells High Street, right after the Wells Litfest prizegiving event at the Cathedral School. Our main attraction will be Alex Corrin-Tachibana, with a side-order of ‘Angrams’ from Annie Fisher, Graeme Ryan and me, Ama Bolton. The Angram is a new literary form invented by Graeme Ryan at this year’s Langport Moot. It’s a fun and frivolous form of word-play and highly habit-forming. Open mic spots available; no need to book in advance.
I met Alex last year at the Tears in the Fence festival. Her reading was spellbinding. Her style is lively and punchy. Her subject is often the messier aspects of relationship. I’m really looking forward to hearing her again. Her debut collection, Sing me Down from the Dark, is published by Salt.
There will be no meeting on the first Monday of November, but read on …
A couple of events in the Wells Litfest may be of interest; both are on Saturday 4th November. At 2pm, Sonnets for Albert by Anthony Joseph, and at 3.45pm, The Waste Land – a Biography of a Poem, by Matthew Hollis.
Poetry is not a luxury – Audre Lorde
ways with words in the city of Wells 