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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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