ZOOMING WITH THE 1000 MONKEYS IN NOVEMBER 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Many of our readers' contributions can't be shared on video here, because they were new and unpublished so far.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!