Zooming June 2022

We enjoyed poems from a total of 16 poets on 7th June 2022, including a new face: Alex Corrin-Tachibana, who read two poems, both on a Japanese theme, from her upcoming collection, Sing me down from the Dark (Salt, October 2022). 

Peter Taylor read a love poem to his 'Dearly Beloved' and then celebrated Gardeners.

Ray Pool revealed himself a fervent monarchist with his poem in praise of the Jubilee,  had an affectionate poem for his Grandma, and rewrote Brighton Rock, making Pinkie much more of a success than Greene did, and saving the life of Pinkie's fictional victim in the process.

David Punter took us for a tour of the sights of Central London and then had a touching poem called 'Early Onset'.

Pratibha Castle read two poems from her debut collection  A Triptych of Birds and a few Loose Feathers (Hedgehog).

Sue Johns read from her 2021 booklet, Track Record: poems about trains that ranged from the last train carrying Jewish prisoners from Holland to Auschwitz to itinerants riding the rails to the dustbowls of the USA in the 1920s.

Rod Whitworth had been inspired to write about particle, quantum and wave theory in poems about the building-blocks of matter and of poems (I couldn't describe his set any better than this so Ive included it among a bumper crop of clips from the event!)

Julia Duke took us round three churchyards.

Jeremy Loynes brought his nature poems — the Mendip Hills and 'Not everything in nature has a name'.

David Bleiman ruminated on the Fall of Icarus after W H Auden, springtime in Chicago, dinosaur socks and the frightful spectre of a return to using imperial weights and measures in the UK.

David Punter took us on a trip around the sights of Central London so that we could 'C. London, and gave us a sympathetic portrait of a sufferer from 'Early Onset'

Carla Scarano, Ranald Barnicot and Marilyn Daish completed an evening of excellent poetry with single poems at the end of the evening

And finally we include a clip of Timothy Adès reading his lipogram poem THE EXCELLENT WESSEX EVENT (WHEN SHE WEDDED ME) which was recently published in Long Poem Magazine. Timothy has helpfully provided us with a link to the text, with his notes and background explanation to this extraordinary piece --
https://www.timothyades.com/excellent-wessex-event-timothy-ades/

The next Zooming with the 1000 Monkeys is on Tuesday 5th July 2022.
In future there will be 10 (not 12) five-minute slots and 3 two-minute late-booked readings, as we want to keep our events to no longer than one hour if possible. For a 5-minute slot, subscribe to our weekly newsletter and reply to one of them with your request, no more than three weeks before the event that you would like to attend, either as a reader or in the audience. You will then receive the event link each month. We welcome new as well as regular readers.