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
ways with words in the city of Wells 