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excellent poetry at affordable prices
To receive the link to join The 1000 Monkeys each month, subscribe to our newsletter and email us with your request to go on our list of readers and listeners, and join in.
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If the quality had not been so high, I'd be criticising the quantity! 14 poets read on 2nd July. To them and to those who tuned in just to listen — thank you, all of you. The range of topics, from gardens and birds, through football to Gaza and the upcoming British general election day, kept the pace lively.
We were very pleased to see Tim Waller, now in Chicago, listening in (we met in London workshops before Covid) and a new reader, Aaron Barschak, whom Dónall has met at live gigs in London. Aaron has a poem in our Spring Anthology, Green Fuses. This evening he read an absolute show-stopper about Gaza, which made me sorry I hadn't videoed the proceedings this time. We hope he'll come back and give us more. An actor as well as a poet, Aaron's preferred reading environment is probably the live stage, but his words are equally powerful on the screen. Christine Vial's big poem about big events and London's crowds conflated the recent England Football Team's matches in Germany with the London Gay Pride celebrations and memories evoked by the upcoming 9th anniversary of the 7/7 London Transport bombings by terrorists in central London. Derek Sellen's readings of three poems from the Collected Poems of Hubert Moore were also on a London theme: observations of smaller incidents on streets, including '|To the Man who Picked my Pocket on the 149'. Hubert Moore died recently and we're inspired to find out more about him. Clive Donovan followed with an appeal to 'Carol' to understand why he turned down her offer of a job spying 'for sex and doughnuts', and a lovely tongue-twister of a poem about ten-minutes' timed free-writing in a poetry workshop! Gill Learner returned to the theme of football for her spirited elegy for George Best, and also read her poem 'The Lucombe Oak' from Green Fuses. Timothy Adès read his translation of 'Memories of the Circus' by López Velarde who wrote the Mexican National Poem. You can read the original and Timothy's translation here. Timothy's translation was published in Artes de México, No. 83, CIRCO ARTE Y POESÍA (April 2007). Peter Taylor 's poem about a musical, dancing garden was read beautifully by Claire Taylor, as Peter's Parkinson's condition has advanced to a stage where he's no longer able to read his poetry aloud. The joint activity gives pleasure to them both, Peter has told us. Tony Watts gave us poems on a baby's initiation into the poetry reading community, birds and the joys of a 'proper' fire. Liv Johannesson read a poem from her recent book,What Good Could Grow, which is available on Amazon, and two new poems. Birds — the hunting and shooting of them — was the theme of a graphic poem by Greg Smith, who also explored the meaning and purpose of potatoes. and opened our eyes to their lyrical possibilities even beyond cookery books! Ray Pool was in serious mode this month, with 'Horses Bolting', a poem looking back to his childhood trauma during WW2. Dennis Tomlinson, fresh back from a visit to Wexford in Ireland, read the short poem that the visit had inspired. Jenna Plewes read from her latest book, Holding the Light, published by Hedgehog Press. The proceeds from it go to Medicins Sans Frontières. And after Aaron's poem 'Jews Don't Count', Ruth Butler read another topical poem, 'Denial' — with the British General Election on July 4th, she took a suitably cynical approach to the situation. Our next get-together will be on Tuesday 6th August. Keep a look-out in our weekly newsletter for the 'Call-out for Readers' at the end of July.
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We had a great hour of poetry on Tuesday 4th June, with 12 readers, in spite of the fine weather and the bank holiday /half-term week. We heard some brilliant readings of their own poems by Mantz Yorke, Anne Symons, Derek Sellen, Clive Donovan, Timothy Adès, Claire for Peter Taylor, Christine Vial, Tony Watts, Julia Duke, Ray Pool and Peter Kennedy. Only three videos to show you this week — Janice is taking a break from video editing. So do come along on July 2nd when we'll be meeting up again. The next call-out for readers will be in our newsletter soon. Sign up to receive it free, in your inbox at 8o'clock each Monday morning. https://mailchi.mp/f02fd1467bd7/dempseyandwindle
On May 7th we gathered again on Zoom, with a full programme of 13 readers including Dónall, and a good number of listeners too. It was great to see Belinda Singleton, Mantz Yorke, Cherrie Taylor, Audrey Ardern-Jones and other friendly familiar faces in the audience. Iris Lewis read but didn't want us to publish her new poems on YouTube, and Carolyn O'Connell read but her video could not be edited. One person whom we were expecting to welcome as a new reader couldn't make it after all but may join us next month. As always, everyone contributed high quality poems, and as always we very much enjoyed the variety of themes and moods our poet friends brought to a well-spent hour of poetry. We're back on Tuesday June 4th for more.
We only have time to share videos from our Zoom on 2nd April 2024 —our publishing commitments have been fairly heavy this month, as we've been publishing the Spring Competition Anthology, Green Fuses, as well as our weekly Newsletter. and taking on new collections to publish later in the year Anyway, here are some of the excellent poems from the 13 readers for you to enjoy. We next meet on May 7th — see you there if you are on our mailing list to receive the link. (just email Janice at [email protected] if you'd like to join the Monkeys Mailing List.)
The last 1000 Monkeys of 2023
These video clips will give you a taste of the poems we heard on Tuesday 5th December. As far as their subject matter's concerned, among them you'll find a dog of complex ancestry verging on the monstrous, a selection of trees, hopscotch in Canterbury, a declaration of love, noises in the night, mermaid socks, a letter to Santa pleading for the stars, age(ing) concern, a dream of Thumbelina children, a demobbed soldier father, a request to London to slow down a bit, a beautiful night landscape and a lane whose hedges have little to say for themselves....
And there's more to come next year, beginning on January 2nd, 2024. November 7th 2023
We had a great time on the first Tuesday of October 2023, after our summer break. It was a quality evening of excellent poetry from 15 readers, including 'regulars' and some new or infrequent readers. I wrote a detailed report of the evening on here this week, then pressed 'Publish' and the whole thing disappeared, so this replacement is shortened to the videos of the readers (to whom 'thanks' for your wonderful readings) and a heartfelt 'thank you' to the non-readers who also came to listen and applaud, including Belinda and Jean. The readers speak for themselves in the video clips we publish below. Only one poem couldn't be published here — Simon Williams' new poem about the problem of ecological activists objecting to the Dartmoor ponies (who have roamed the moor for centuries) depleting the moor's plant life. ZOOMING IN NOVEMBER WITH THE 1000 MONKEYS is at 7:30 on November 7th. We'll begin compiling the list of readers through replies to our newsletters in the last two weeks of October.
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