The Mysterious Everyday

On a rather damp Monday evening we met in Jinny’s lovely salon in Glastonbury to hear  the wonderful Tom Sastry:

 

“After losing the ability not to see things we discover the secret life of the laundrette. We witness death and resurrection on the Bakerloo Line. An old dictator illustrates the principle of uncertainty whilst a country sliding towards tyranny distracts itself by watching Emmerdale and Premiership football. The familiar is continually disrupted by the sudden shock of alienation until we find a home where we are not alien.” That sums it up pretty well!

And after an interesting conversation on poetics and politics in the interval, we shared our poems on and off the topic of “Stars”. David Ketelby and Phil Genoux read with us for the first time and we are hoping to hear more from them. It was one of our best evenings yet, and we look forward to more sessions in this venue. David will be one of the selected performers, along with Jane Williams our founder, at the Wells Litfest event “Write up! Speak up!” on Sunday 15th October at 7pm – tickets available here.

Congratulations to Jinny, who has a poem in The Broadsheet (launched last week in Exeter) and to Morag who was short-listed. Jinny’s poem “The Art of Staying Dry” appeared on Amaryllis on Monday morning. Also to Michelle who is on the short-list for the Mere Prize and Rachael, who is on the short-list for the Wells Prize. The Mere award ceremony will be at 3pm on Sunday 15th October and the Wells reading and prizegiving  will be at the same time on the same day in the Bishop’s Palace. Booklets containing all the short listed poems are now for sale at Waterstones and in the Bishop’s Palace Shop.

Ama was short-listed for the Bradford-on-Avon prize and the Poetry Space competition, and has once again been placed 3rd in Swindon Poetry Festival’s Battered Moons competition.

Tom will be helping to launch “One for the Road”, an anthology from Smith/Doorstop, at a free event in Cheltenham on Saturday 6th October. Also next weekend is Swindon Poetry Festival: look out for Jinny and the Poetry Pram!

Please join us for a Poetry Picnic at Wells Food Festival, Sunday 8th October from 11am onwards in and around the Market Place, beside the Palace moat and in the Recreation Ground/Bishop’s Barn area. There will be a peripatetic Poetry Picnic-hamper full of our new anthology “Feast”!

Next month we shall be meeting at  the Cheeseyard Cafe, West Horrington, Wells BA5 3ED, on Monday November 6th, 7.45 for 8pm start. This is a really delightful place a couple of miles north of Wells on the old Bath road. Coming from Wells, turn left opposite Horrington School and then turn right into the Cheeseyard. There is plenty of parking, and Lindsay will be serving hot and cold drinks and cake. Please make it worth her while by not just asking for a glass of water! There will not be any other customers, just us. The guest poet on this occasion will be Rosie Jackson..

 Rosie’s particular passions are exploring the links between writing and visual arts, and the role of the creative arts in health. Her pamphlet What the Ground Holds was published by Poetry Salzburg in 2014 and her full collection, The Light Box, and a memoir, The Glass Mother, both came out last year. She is a member of Bath’s Knucklebone poets and has performed her work widely. She runs writing workshops both in UK and abroad.
Rosie recently won 1st AND 2nd prizes in the Berkshire Poetry Competition, and has even more recently won first prize in the prestigious Stanley Spencer Poetry Competition.

 

“A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the – not always greatly hopeful – belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps.” –  Paul Celan

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