ZOOMING IN SEPTEMBER 2022

We were a small select band of readers and listeners on September 1st 2022, when The 1000 Monkeys met for their zoom four days earlier than usual — but, as always, the quality of the twelve readers and the audience who came to listen was superb.

Dónall led us off with three poems from ‘The Smell of Purple,’ all three about his little stepdaughter Tilly: ‘Daddy Daddy Soft Soft’; ‘The Smell of the Light' and ‘I is Smiling’. They all had us smiling.
 
Julia Duke had ekphrastic poems about ‘The Wrestlers’, a drawing by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and ‘The Art of Conversation’ by Magritte. She finished with a very tuneful account of a street in The Hague,  which practically had us tapping our feet to its rhythm.
 
Jeremy Loynes revived a famous radio narrator’s voice: his story poem about unrequited, unacknowledged love was told in the American tones of Garrison Kiellor whose monologues Dónall remembered well. Jeremy relaxed into the role and by the end of the poem we felt we must be sitting on a front porch somewhere in Minnesota, or gathered round the wireless listening to Tales of Lake Wobegone. Jeremy’s poem had an affecting little twist in its tail.
 
Heather Moulson had a modern pantoum — her refrains ‘I don’t fancy hers much’ and ‘Dave and I had a great snog’ gained a lot of traction through their repetition in the pantoum form! This was a 1970s-something double date that ran along familiar lines. ‘Crystal Tears’ was a great confessional piece about an attention-seeking friend!

Pratibha Castle had news of a new pamphlet to be published before the end of this year and read three highly-charged poems from it.  Erotic and sensual, they brought to life romantic relationships placed under pressure in time of war.
 
Timothy Adès read from his translation of Florentino y El Diablo by Alberto Arvelo Torrelba which is about a poetry battle between the Devil and a mediaeval bard. We were impressed particularly by Timothy’s  very spirited snatch of song in Venezuelan Spanish. We include the video.
 
Ranald Barnicot read his translation of Catullus 64, about the marriage of Peleus and Thetis.

Peter Wilkinson had tales of meetings with ‘Power Walkers’ and ‘Donald’ on Whitley Common in Surrey. From merely observing their behaviour while walking his dog, these random encounters developed into — not quite friendships, but meaningful relationships of various kinds, each honoured with a poem.
 
Dennis Tomlinson read two new poems: one set in ‘GHQ Palestine’ was about a competition between tarantulas and scorpions held between men of differing ranks. It led to unexpected inequalities — the scorpion’s speed and power overcoming venom of the officer’s tarantula — a metaphor?
 
Rod Whitworth had a number of short poems which added up to a varied and enjoyable set. We include a video of his readings: all the poems have already been published.
 
Carla Scarano read three poems from ‘Workwear’, a new pamphlet that she tells us will be published by The High Window later this year.
 
Kathryn Southworth read a single poem ‘hot off the press’ (that is, written today!). ‘Alicia’s Garden' explored the experience of looking for her great-grandmother’s garden on a recent visit to Ireland. That one's under wraps until it has been published, of course.
 
And Mantz Yorke​ had an excellent poem about an octopus — another that may go far, so we can’t show you a video, though we would like to.
 
And that was the end of the excellent poetry night that was this month’s The 1000 Monkeys.

There will be more of the same at 7.30 on Tuesday 4th October — only different, of course. We welcome new voices — in the second half of September, do email us if you would like a five-minute reading slot, and on 1st October we will be sending the Zoom link out to you and to all the other 100 people on our list of potential readers and listeners.