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Dònall started the ball rolling, and was followed by Peter Taylor, Ray Pool, Daphne Milne, Dennis Tomlinson and Rod Whitworth. We were very pleased to see Maria O'Brien, who read with us for the first time, on a theme of 'in-between-ness' and Tony Watts read us half a sequence about 'Ainsel Noone' and promised us the other half next month. Ray Pool had been watching old films and also remembering railway journeys. Daphne read a poem that had won a competition 'Instructions for Bottling a ship' and two about cricket, which made us smile. Rod read about a 'Boy with Green Hair'. July 4th is the anniversary of the birth of Robert Desnos, the French poet who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp and murdered by ill treatment and neglect. Timothy Adès, who is the author of Surrealist, Lover, Resistant, a translation of Desnos' collected poems, read his translation of one of Desnos' most powerful resistant poems. Jo Mariner had poems about change and choice. We had three single-poem readers: Rosie Barrett read us a poem published in Dartmoor Unearthed, the catalogue of an exhibition by the Moor Poets and Contemporary Markmakers — as it happened we had seen the exhibition and bought the book in the National Park Visitor Centre the weekend before. Jean Hall and Simon Williams also read poems of very high quality. It was, as always, an evening of good poetry and good company. Next month we meet on August 1st. If you would like to join us, subscribe free to our newsletter and write to us in reply to one of our weekly emails.
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We had a heatwave in June and things in the Monkey house slowed down somewhat to allow for sunbathing and gardening so this blog is posted rather late. We had an unusual number of five-minute readers: 15 in all, owing to Janice's inefficient record of who had asked and been accepted. So it was a packed evening, The heat continued to distract us from the computer for another two weeks, but we have extracts from the readings of four of the readers to show you here: David Punter, Konstandinos Mahoney, Sue Johns and Pauline Sewards. The other readers were: Daphne Milne; Rod Whitworth,; Timothy Adès; Julia Duke,; Ray Pool; Roger Noons; Ranald Barnicot; Anthony Watts; Jeremy Loynes; and Peter Taylor. It was great to welcome Daphne for the first time to the Monkeys, and Pauline who isn't usually free on a Tuesday. In our 'in person' days at the Bar des Arts and the Keep in Guildford, she used to train it down from London and Bristol to read her work as a featured poet.
Our April zoom was on the day after Easter Monday, but we had a good turn-out of readers and listeners, including Sue Rothstein, a new voice to The 1000 Monkeys. Sue read a poem to her mother, whose birthday was on the 4th of April but who died in the 1990s and is still missed. Dónall led us off with some poems from his new book, The Fox, the Whale and the Wardrobe and one from The Smell of Purple, which was reprinted in 2020. Peter Taylor, Julia Duke, Timothy Adès, Anne Symons, Richard Carpenter, Roger Noons, Tony Watts, Ranald Barnicot, Sue Rothstein and Rod Whitworth followed with a great range of poems. You can see and hear a poem from each of them, below. May's meeting of The 1000 Monkeys will be at 7:30pm on Tuesday 2nd May 2023. Contact us by subscribing to our free newsletter if you would like to join us and maybe read one of your poems.
.Our meeting on March 7th 2023 was hosted in rather croaky fashion by Janice, who was recovering from an unfashionably late dose of Covid 19 — she's getting over it now, almost a week later, and still managed to enjoy the poems read by the 'Monkeys'. There was a very high standard again and we're sharing samples from several of them here. The readers were Peter Taylor; Phil Lawder; Timothy Adès; Gerald Killingworth; Jeremy Loynes; Rod Whitworth; Dino Mahoney; Ray Pool; Ranald Barnicot; Heather Moulson; Jean Hall; Joan Michelson; Claudia Court, and Carla Scarano D'Antonio.
We were very distressed to hear a few days after this meeting that Carla had passed away suddenly at home. She read one of her poems, and we had no idea that she was unwell. Carla was an influential member of the poetic community. She had just completed a PhD, had had two collections of her poems published and was a supportive reviewer. She was the Artist in Residence at The High Window and co-host of WriteOut Loud Woking, a face-to-face reading event in Surrey. Our thoughts go out to her family at this sad time.
We enjoyed a great start to 2023 on the first Tuesday of the new year. Altogether, 17 poets read their work — we're posting videos of some of their poems here. Audrey Audern-Jones reminded us what visits to the cinema were like back in the 1950s and 60s, celebrated migrating birds and read a 'Testament' to the famous Ukrainean poet Shevchenko; Peter Kennedy had a German story, a cormorant flying over the house, and had achieved top billing as a singer in his local. Gerald Killingworth explored the words for water, colours and gave voices to stones; Rod Whitworth read 'Country' and three poems for his father (including 'Demobbed' which won second prize in our competition in 2021). Timothy Adès read his translation of Thèophile Gautier's 'Symphony in White Major' and Anthony Watts read three Christmas poems. Heather Moulson explained why she hated school trips and a friend who could shed tears at will, and Ray Pool took us to listen to Sibelius, travel to Wales on a train, and create a 'New Year Revolution'. Joan Michelson had a true story of the difficulty a refugee from Ukraine had getting her harp to England for a Christmas concert (it travelled all over Europe). Julia Duke addressed Augustus John on the subject of his portrait of Lady Ottaline Morrell, Richard Carpenter was furious with capitalists' lack of care for the Earth and the poorer people in it. Ranald Barnicot read his translation of a poem by Catullus. Dennis Tomlinson told us a story of 'The Old Rectory' — with a chilling ending. Finally, Peter Taylor remembered a 'Moonwatch'. You can see some of their poems in the video clips below, along with Dónall's introductory poems. So it was another 80 minutes of good poetry and we'll do it all again on 7th February — only different, of course. Subscribe to our newsletter and email us back if you'd like to be informed of the Zoom link each month — and let us know if you would like to read a poem or two on 7th February 2023.
December 6th 2022
November 2022's session of readings was brilliant, with a number of poets we hadn't seen for a while, a new face, and a full audience to appreciate the excellent poems that were read by them. Dónall had been writing new poems and read four of them and an old favourite, and we met Richard Carpenter, one of whose poems we published in our competition anthology, Fireflies & Flames, earlier this year. Richard's poems were remarkable and moving, as you will hear in the video clip we post here.
Many of our readers' contributions can't be shared on video here, because they were new and unpublished so far. Joan Michelson's poems were inspired by Billy Collins and jazz. Phil Lawder was in serious mood, with Larkin and the 'presence of Absence' casting a shadow over his everyday life. Sue Johns' 'Aunt' and 'Fox with Doreen' were poignant pictures — of Auntie Pauline, who lived and died in Hayle in Cornwall (which turned out to be a place that almost all the readers and some of the listeners had some knowledge of and love for) and conversations with Maxine, planning retirement, buying bras online and 'talking shit'. Mantz Yorke read two new poems and one from his book 'Dark Thoughts'.
Anne Symons brought memories of water, from a Cornish childhood and later in Sri Lanka. Rod Whitworth remembered moments from various times in his life, from a political flashpoint in Arkansas on an early TV screen to an outside privy demolished by a local builder's van, and a moving memorial to his mother. Carolyn O'Connell remembered her grand-daughter finding a 'fairy acorn' among autumn leaves. Simon Williams justified a carving in Exeter in 'Not very good at Bears' and took us train-spotting with a number of model railway enthusiasts; finally an 'Inconsequential thought' jolted us out of our complacency in its final cutting line. Ranald read one of his translations of Catallus (from 'Friendship, love and Abuse) and Ray Pool advised 'Parental Guidance'. So it was another great evening, and we'll do it again, only different, on Tuesday December 6th! October's session of The 1000 Monkeys brought readings from 11 poets, including Dónall who led off with three poems for his late brother, Brian, 'Looking just like my photo'; 'Da Vinci's Ghost' and 'Singing the River', one of Janice's favourites among his poems. It was great to see Jenna Plewes, back from her holidays, with poems about her father and mother, both from The Salt and Sweet of Memory, which we published in 2020. Peter Taylor read his rich 'Thoughts of Autumn'. Gerald Killingworth's poems from Emptying Houses reminded us that what will remain of us, 'held in the palm of history' might be something we wouldn't expect ('The Tale of a Turd' explores that possibility seriously and graphically.) Jo Mariner offered friendship in three poems, and Dennis Tomlinson had a new illustrated pamphlet of poems to small treasures. Tony Watts remembered his little daughter's attempts to help in the garden, the late Queen's mourning for her husband, and gave some good advice to aspiring poets. Mantz Yorke had thoughts on the pageantry of the recent funeral of Elizabeth herself, and on the Ukraine war. Ray Pool celebrated the sight of Jupiter as it passed near to us, had been remembering the humiliation of having to wear a knitted balaclava when he was a boy, and was nostalgic for old-time Scots bands on television. Cherrie Taylor had been reading Ray Bradbury stories and identifying with a monster of the deep, and in 'Crossbones' with a young woman reconstructed from bones exhumed from a mediaeval burial ground in London, Rosie Barrett had words for literary critics and gave us an intriguing prompt (thanks to Simon Williams) — 'Every word was once an Animal'. And Ranald Barnicot had edited his poem until it was.the shortest we'd ever heard from him. If you would like to hear more poems, we'll be zooming next month on Monday 1st November between 7.30 and 8.45. We hope you'll come and listen, and maybe read some of your own as well. Just email us for a five-minute slot, and we'll put you on the list for the Zoom link and a reading slot on 1st November if there's one left.
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