By ‘popular request’ Bernard Holiday came back to East Coker to present an excellent evening of poetry on themes of travel, night and the art of writing different forms poetry.

Bernard was a Judge for our 2010 poetry competition and has also taken part in the West Coker Poets evening here the previous year. 

These open evenings are always popular and this May meeting was no exception.  

A wide variety of poetry was read and although there was no theme, a natural theme of poetry from abroad, or about other countries, seemed to develop.

The Brympton Festival is a new venture for Brympton House.  An extensive week of literary events was planned by the organisers.   East Coker Poetry Group members Catherine Simmonds, David Cloke and Iona Lambe performed poetry at Brympton House on Monday 23^rd April in the evening.  The setting is magnificent and despite the weather there was a good attendance at this poetry reading.

It is thirty years since the Falklands War took place.  David Morgan was a harrier pilot from this area who not only published a vivid account of the conflict from his own personal experience but also wrote some very moving poetry at the time.  These poems were not for ‘general reading’ but were written to record his own feelings at a time of great stress.  David very kindly allowed the East Coker Poetry Group to put together an evening of poetry and prose based on these very personal poems.   Tony Ellerbeck, a helicopter pilot who took part in the Falklands conflict, gave an excellent short talk to set the scene for the evening.

Getting poetry published is often an aspiration for many poets.  What are the realities and difficulties?  Local author James Crowden and poet Rachael Clyne talked about the difficulties and delights of publishing poetry in the quickly changing world of the printed word.  The evening ended with – poetry of course!  James and rachael read from their own publised work.

An evening of reflection on the theme of water.  Based around the inland waterways of Oxfordshire and the changing role of the lock keepers and their interaction with the wildlife on the water.

Poetry, prose and music from Virginia and Florence Astley and Catherine Simmonds. 

What better way to lighten a dark Autumnal evening than to celebrate the pleasures of eating – and in poetric form has no calories either!    

Poems were read on the subject of food and also poet, author and cider expert  James Crowden read from his book ‘Open mouthed’  – poetry on a plate!

A most entertaining evening.

Twentysix of our members had each taken a different letter of the alphabet as their subject for this year’s competition. All the entries were read at this well attended and enjoyable meeting.  This year the judge was Will Silk, deputy headmaster of Perrott Hill School who had the onerous task of picking three winners from a very varied collection of poems.

The three winning poems were based on the letters A (Heather Murphy), U (Iona Lambe)  and X (David Cloke).  Details of the poems are to found on our ‘Competitions’ page

We have probably all sat with a blank sheet of paper (or blank computer screen) and an equally blank mind, trying to write a poem.  However help was at hand.  For this meeting we had a panel of published poets,  Annie Freud,  Paddy Hughes and Stella Davis, who talked about their approach to writing poetry and how they put pen to paper.  An inspirational meeting !

These open evenings are an opportunity to hear both new poetry and old favourites in a live reading event that is open for anyone to come along and take part. No theme – just bring some poems.