THE Harlow Circle of Poetry convened last night for another cosy and relaxing session over drinks and snacks and they were also thrilled to welcome two new guests yesterday.

Here is their report.

During the first half, we discussed two featured poems: The beautiful ‘Kinder than Man’ by Ohio poet Althea Davis and the punchy ‘Some People’ by striking Galway poet Rita Ann Higgins. Both our chosen poems were simple in tone and showed how it is possible to make a poem emotive, touching and illusive via straightforward, direct language. We were interested to learn that the poem ‘Some People’ was written in 1988 and yet some of the themes touched upon felt very current. #wordsarepowerful

In our second half, we all performed readings of our poetry to each other, celebrated good news of our recent publication successes and brainstormed ideas for future meet-ups.

Carmella de Keyser has been busy this month working on accessibility for all, via making audios and performance videos for her poetry. Her joyful poem ‘Frankie and Me’ published at The Dirigible Balloon, a wonderful children’s poetry magazine, now has her audio reading of it attached: https://dirigibleballoon.org/poem/Frankie-and-Me

She is also excited to have opened up her very first ever (Twitter) X account where she will be adding news of her latest magazine publications -here is the link, do give her a follow to read about more of her own poetry news as well as shares of all her favourite writers! https://x.com/CarmellaPoetry

Noel Cowley performed his latest poem-a mysterious, acrostic piece he wrote based on the theme of loss, we really enjoyed how he performed his reading to us and also the vivid, experimental and ambivalent imagery used in his new poem – you can explore some more of his poetry, music performances and current projects here on the fabulous Noel Cowley poems & pop do give him a follow if you like music and poetry (or both) and would like to read more of his poetry! We will be doing some collaborative music and poetry events in the future so watch this space…

Peter Vealey read us some thought provoking and emotional poems from his book ‘Particular’ which may be found under his author page on Amazon, and he also spoke about and impressed upon us the importance of writing for maintaining good overall mental health which we all agreed was so important- you may find some more of his raw, moving and honest work here on Poem Hunter: https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/workspeak/

One of our members Anna, a qualified teacher, therapist and English Literature Degree holder is kindly considering running a special Sylvia Plath themed evening for us – which we really look forward to in the future! Thank you Anna. #sylviaplath

Finally to our newest guests! These included Sue, who is an arts and music enthusiast, she regularly attends concerts in Herts and Essex – we really appreciated her coming along, trying something different and delving into a new Harlow community group. We were grateful for her curiosity in trying something a bit different and for providing us with her insights into the poems shared, hearing all about her musical interests and we do hope she comes along next time so we can get to know her better!

Our other new guest was widely published writer and PHD holder Simon Trelawney, who performed beautifully, two wonderful poems of his, which he recently performed live at the Hertfordshire Festival. He kindly brought us in one of his books which we look forward to reading over the summer! Here is a link to his biography and some of his work, do take a look. https://www.breese-books.com/simon-trelawney/ We will be featuring some of his fantastic poems over the course of the month as we very much enjoyed his evocative, accomplished writing style and engaging performances.

All in all it was a lively yet casual and relaxing meet-up, everyone was completely different, writers and non writers alike, offering different writing styles, projects and poet preferences which made the evening stimulating by having so much variety. We enjoy supporting each other, sharing your work and whether you are an emerging writer of poetry, or just like having random conversations about words, everyone is equally welcome!

Thank you to everyone for an enjoyable evening and the biggest thank you to the excellent team at The Geek Retreat for hosting us.

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