This is an informal group in which we share our enjoyment and knowledge of recent and contemporary poetry.

We meet every month, currently at the Bookery link room, to discuss poems and poets. We might have a particular poet in mind or a theme. Members are encouraged to share their favourite poems on that theme, pooling our collective knowledge and experiences.

The group is led by David Greenwood.

New members are very welcome but please contact the coordinator through the email link above

Events in 2026

Next Month : We chose the theme of ‘Harvest’ for next month.  We can take this wherever we want, remembering harvests of mine, sea as well as land.  and anything associated with Harvests, such as bread, fruit, or other foods is fair game as well.

August Meeting: Five of us met at The Bookery this week, bringing poems on the theme of ’Holidays’.  As ever, we had a variety of ages and styles, though we were more post-war than we sometimes are.

The poems were:

• Matty Groves                                       Anon
• The Journey                                        Susanna Barkla
• On the Border                                     Charles Causley
• maggie and milly and molly and may  ee cummings
• Beachcomber                                      Carol Ann Duffy
• You Hated Spain                                 Ted Hughes
• To the Sea                                           Philip Larkin
• Holidays                                              Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• The Furthest West                              Glyn Maxwell

Perhaps the poem that caused the greatest discussion was the Ted Hughes.  It was one of the collection “Birthday Letters” that he published in 1998, shortly before he died.  It is one of the earlier pomes in the book and does describe their honeymoon in 1956.  

June Meting: Four of us met at The Bookery for this month’s meeting.  Unfortunately, two regulars couldn’t make it.  It did mean that we were able to share all of the poems we brought on the theme of Midsummer/Solstice etc.  The poems led to diverse discussions, particularly on childhood experiences of summer, reading etc.  As ever, we had a very diverse range of poets, ranging across the centuries.  The poems we shared were:

• Now goth sonne under wod              Anon, 13th C
• The Schoolboy                                   William Blake
• When the great pink mallow             W.B. Carman/Sappho
• There came a Day at Summer’s full Emily Dickinson
• Solstice                                             Ellen Dudley
• A Song to Mithras                             Rudyard Kipling
• The Summer Day                             Mary Oliver
• Ancient Monuments                         John Ormond
• Summer Stars                                  Carl Sandburg
• Adlestrop                                          Edward Thomas
• Last Love                                           Ella Wheeler Wilcox

May Meeting: There were only five of us this month; sadly two members were not feeling well and dropped out at the last moment.  Once again, we had a wonderful variety of poems to share which led us into interesting conversations.  As you can see from the list below, we ranged over the centuries.The poems brought were:

• ‘And did those feet in ancient time’                                 William Blake
• ‘All in green my love went riding’                                     e e cummings
• ‘Green Man in the Garden’                                              Charles Causley
• The Cat                                                                           W H Davies
• You’re Bored Child?                                                         Felix Dennis
• ‘The Grass so little has to do (not read)                          Emily Dickenson
• Nothing Gold Can Stay (not read)                                   Robert Frost
• Light                                                                                 John Gibbens
• Green                                                                               D H Lawrence
• The Garden vv V and VI (not read)                                   Andrew Marvell
• Everyone Sang                                                                Siegfried Sassoon
• From Othello Act 3 Scene 3 (not read)                            William Shakespeare
• A Yellow Circle                                                                  May Swenson
• The force that through the green fuse drives the flower   Dylan Thomas
• The Song of Wandering Angus                                         W B Yeats

Hilary sent one of her poems after the meeting, as she didn’t have the breath to make the meeting; Hilary sees it as a meeting with Gaia: Over the Hill She Came by Mary Oliver

April Meeting: Six of us met on Wednesday afternoon in The Bookery for our March meeting.  The theme of ‘Birds’ proved very fruitful.  For the first time, we had 5 poems by the same author: Mary Oliver, clearly a favourite for many of us.  The poems led to much discussion and reminiscences.  There was only time for two poems each, so some poems were shared but not read.

The poems were:

• Exeter Book Riddle 57         Anonymous (tr Michael Alexander)
• Sonnet: The Nightingale      John Clare
• I Watched a Blackbird         Thomas Hardy
• The Windhover                    Gerald Manley Hopkins 
• A Cormorant                        Ted Hughes
• The Owl and the Pussycat   Edward Lear
• Swifts                                   Robert MacFarlane
• Egrets                                  Mary Oliver
• Gannets                               Mary Oliver
• Terns                                    Mary Oliver
• Vultures                                Mary Oliver
• Wild Geese                          Mary Oliver
• Nuthatch                              Julie Sampson
• Redwing                              Julie Sampson
• From Romeo and Juliet       William Shakespeare  (Act III, Sc 5)

March Meeting: 6 of us met in The Bookery for an afternoon of wind and storms.  There was time for us to go around the circle twice.  As ever, the range of poems and poets was diverse and the conversation was wide-ranging.

The poems discussed were:

• Western Wind                              Anon
• Watergazing                                Chrissy Banks
• We like March                              Emily Dickinson
• Haiku                                           Barbara Gorelick
• Storm on the Island                     Seamus Heaney
• Had I Not Been Awake                Seamus Heaney
• On Wenlock Edge                        A E Housman (From A Shropshire Lad)
• Wind                                            Ted Hughes
• Written at Midnight ..                   Charles Lamb
• High Flight                                   John Gillespie Magee
• from February                              William Morris
• Hey ho, the WInd and the Rain   William Shakespeare (not read)
• Rough wind …                            Percy Bysshe Shelley (not read)
• Haiku                                           Netsuke Sōseki
• “Tonight the winds …”                 Lord Tennyson (From In Memoriam)
• In Like a Lion …                          AW (Armorel)
• Haiku                                           Unknown

Feb 2026 Meeting: Seven of us met in The Bookery with poems on the theme of love.  We welcomed Tim, who very bravely started odd with a poem that he had written, under a pseudonym.  Once we had liked it, he admitted the authorship.  As ever, there was a wide range of poems, from the well-known to the obscure and from Tudor times to the present day.

The poems shared were:

• A Wife to a Husband              Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Love Lives Beyond                John Clare
• Love                                       Billy Collins
• French Connection                Felix Dennis
• Pangur Bán                           9th Century translated by Robert Flowler  
• She Tells her Love ..              Robert Graves
• Pangur Bán                           9th Century translated by Seamus Heaney
• The Two Parallels                  Christian Morgenstern
• (The Midnightmouse             Christian Morgenstern)
• Love and Age                        Thomas Love Peacock
• Sonnet 109                            Shakespeare  
• Sonnet 116                            Shakespeare “Let me not to the marriage ..”
• Noted                                    Jonathan Shayfer
• “My true love has my heart”  Sir Philip Sidney
• To a Cat                                 Swinburne
• The Ragged Wood                W B Yeats

We agreed on the theme of Wind or Air for next month - March wind being the original idea, but then we have had a lot of February wind and storms.  So, recent weather might give some ideas or inspiration.

Jan 2026: Seven of us met in the Bookery this Wdnesday, bringing poems on the theme of “January”.  It was lovely to have new members and fitting in so well.  The theme proved very fertile, with a variety of poems from across the centuries, from Spenser to Scheider.  There wasn’t time for every poem but we were each able to read two of those we had brought, sharing the others to be read at home.

The poems were:

• The Chimney Sweeper           William Blake
• January                                  John Clare
• Journey of the Magi               T S Eliot
• Song For Simeon                   T S Eliot
• Desert Places                         Robert Frost
• Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening Robert Frost
• Star-Talk                                 Robert Graves
• The Unlooked-for Season      Jenny Joseph  (Not read, but shared)
• From The Eve of St Agnes     John Keats
• Snow                                       Louis MacNeice
• Lovely, White Fields                Mary Oliver
• Waking In Winter                     Sylvia Plath    (Not read, but shared)
• Snowdrops                              Myra Schneider
• A Wet Winter (from A Midsummer’s Night Dream) Shakespeare
• Winter (from Love’s Labour’s Lost)    Shakespeare
• From Mutabilitie Canto VII      Spenser