POST 2020 ZOOMING with the 1000 MONKEYS No 1 — FEBRUARY 2022

NEW SERIES: No 1 — Zooming with the 1000 Monkeys in February 2022

On February 1st we had a great time and enjoyed some excellent poetry despite a delayed start — our Zoom URL link had somehow got deactivated in the process of going out on Mailchimp. (Memo to self: stick to old-fashioned gmail in future!) We were especially glad to welcome back some old friends who hadn't been able to make it on Tuesday evenings because of courses or illness. It was good to see Lara, who is recovering from Covid, and Hélène, who had an evening free mid-course.

We began the evening with Sue Johns reading a strong pair of poems from her first book, each dealing with the lives of a sex-worker, It was a powerfully moving start. 'Wanton', in the voice of a Nigerian woman, was partly in Nigerian patois. 'Papers on a train', a cut-up poem, was from her second collection, 'Track Record.'  Jo Wright followed up with 'The Killing Poems' — not so much tales of murder, as warnings of ecological destruction: "after killings forests burn". With her other two poems she struck a more hopeful note: "The eye of the heart is always looking." In 'Healing', she assured us that we're entitled to "games of must-believe".

Ranald, having published his translations of Friendship, Love and Abuse, the shorter poems of Catullus in 2020, has turned to Catullus's longer poems and he delivered his English translation of one of Catullus's own translations into Latin of a Greek poem. A kind of Russian doll of a poem. It was as erotic as any of Catullus' own poems, of course. Pratibha had more of her Irish legacy to recount, and some creepy-crawly 'Domestic Gods'. Julia Duke asked "how do you choose what to spend your money on?" in a poem about values; in 'Screaming for attention' she aired a grievance, and she rewrote Genesis in terms of climate change in 'In the beginning'.

David Punter had a very creepy, sinister new neighbour introducing himself on a local social media site, and in 'Gold, Saffron, Cocaine' he considered the relative merits of the valuable goods carried on the Silk Road from East to Western markets, drawing a conclusion that you might guess. Hélène Demetriades' moving poem 'Parting Gifts' reminded many of us of the sorrow of an ageing parent's despair and anger at their growing loss of independence, and in another poem told of an episode at the other end of life, when the young narrator visits Switzerland. 

Rod Whitworth made us smile ruefully with his letters to Tory cabinet ministers and advisers, and in 'The Dock, Nuremberg' paid tribute to Dame Laura Knight, the artist whose painting of that name was inspired by her experience of sitting in the gallery at the trial of Nazi war criminals. Tony Watts' first poem told a Zulu legend of a race between the Lizard and the Chameleon to bring news of the existence of Death to the first Zulu warrior. (The Chameleon won, because the Lizard stopped on the way so failed to deliver immortality to Man.) 'The Talking Horses of Dreams' were remarkable for brooding over "a body of knowledge ... the intractable fact of the world."  

Paul Wright's poem warned us in no uncertain terms "Do not put your hand down" inside a hollow tree stump — and after that poem I shall certainly avoid hollow tree-stumps altogether (Paul was inspired by James Grainger, whom I must look up on Google.) Timothy Adès gave us his translations of the sonnets that Jean Cassou wrote in his head while imprisoned by the Nazis without any writing materials, remarkably writing them later from memory. 

Mantz Yorke introduced us to a 'Proud Boy'; Carla Scarano spoke of an imprisoned heart, inspired by Shakespeare's Sonnet no 133, celebrated "the silence of the ordinary" and remembered a wet summer in Lancaster, and Liz Kon read her own homage to Carla's poem about an embarrassing experience as a patient treated as a 'thing' by trainee doctors.

And there were lots more poems, ideas and friendly talk, which I was too interested in listening to, to write notes about... If you would like to listen to a new line-up of talented Monkeys, or read your own poems, on 1st March, do email us. And I'll make sure the URL link works perfectly this time.