Two major bits of information, plus a reminder about next week!

Patrick Walker is leaving Waterstones, emigrating to South Devon indeed. The bookshop will not be able to host our meetings after May, as no one else is willing to stay for the evening. I have therefore arranged with Coffee Corner, the café on the corner of South Street and Station Road, that we will meet there for the two remaining arranged meetings, in June and July.

The May meeting I have altered somewhat from as proposed. It is now linked with the Stortford Music Festival, which will be occurring that week, across a range of venues in the town. I’ve therefore altered its nature to an open mic reading (ie come along and read! – no actual microphone). I would hope to be able to draw more people in like this.

So schedule until the summer now runs:

• April 4 – Waterstones
  Blake Evening – sharing poems, images, music
• May 2 – Waterstones
  Open reading
• June 6 – Coffee Corner

1. Diane Shorrock introducing the poems of Sarah Wardle
2. Workshop on poems written by group members
3. Arrangements to set in motion for Next Year:

• plans for any projects (publication online/paper or reading???)
• set up more formal organisation?
• poets to invite?

• July 4 – Coffee Corner
  Frances Presley – read + talk about her writing

I hope this is all OK!
For next week’s event, the schedule I’ve got is:

• Sue Abbott, “London” and is happy to explain her choice + why she loves William Blake
• Stuart Masters, “The Chimney Sweeper”
• Jessica Mayhew, own "ending" to “The Sick Rose”
• Carol Russell, “Smiles” (from The Pickering Manuscript)
• Sheila Moy, “The Voice of the Devil” from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
• Peter Philpott, opening passages from Milton + passages from his own An Encounter Upon the Beach at Minehead with the Prince of this World

 I hope there will be more! Please email or otherwise tell me! And music? Any suitable music?

SPG Programme first half 2011

March

Jeff Hilson to read & talk about his writing

April

Blake Evening

May

Workshops on poems written by group members
Own poems? On theme?

June

• Diane Shorrock introducing the poems of Sarah Wardle
• + … introducing the poems of …
• Ideas for Next Year:
• plans for any projects (publication online/paper or reading???)
• set up more formal organisation?
• poets to invite?

July

Frances Presley to read & talk about her writing

Celebrate Valentine’s Day with Poems of Love (and Hate)

Stort Poetry Group is returning after a Winter break on February 15th with Poems of Love (and Hate) – after Valentine’s Day. Bring along your favourite poems of romantic emotion – whether love or its unhappy opposite – to share with other poetry lovers at 7.30, upstairs in the usual place, Bishops Stortford Waterstones. Refreshments may be had.

Sorry it's not the usual First Wednesday, which we should be able to make for the rest of the meetings through till summer. I wanted to put the event as near Valentine's Day as possible (& week before V-Day Bishops Stortford College Festival of Literature has that rarity, a visiting poet, Luke Wright). I also wanted to arrange our own visiting poets for later this year, so I could link the publicity: Jeff Hilson on March 7 and Frances Presley on July 4.

Poems of Love (and Hate) will celebrate the most powerful of emotions, indeed, the emotion most often voiced in poems and songs. Stort Poetry Group invites anyone to bring along your favourite love poem, or indeed maybe what you yourself have written, or who knows, even received on Valentine’s Day if you were very lucky. But love has always been linked with its opposite, most famously in the little poem of Catullus beginning "Odi et amo" – I love and loathe. You ask how come. / Don’t know – just happens I feel and I pain. We hope though for more of the positive!

Jeff Hilson teaches Creative writing at Roehampton University, where he has established a major reputation as a nurturer of poetic talent. He is a witty and haunting poet, whose performances of his own poetry engage, astonish and amuse his audiences. Jeff Hilson has edited one of the most important anthologies of recent years, The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (Reality Street, 2008) – sonnets remade for a whole new world, and his most recent book of poems is In the Assarts (Veer Books, 2010).

Frances Presley is a freelance poet and writer. Her work often links with the contemporary visual arts, and with specific places and locations, such as the Neolithic stone monuments of Exmoor. She has a clear and forceful voice as a poet, engaging directly with the reader or audience. Her most recent books are Lines of Sight (Shearsman, 2009) and Stone Settings (with Tilla Brading, Odyssey Books & Other Books, 2010). Frances Presley's poetry is accessible online on the Poetry International Web.