PUTNEY VERSE WORKSHOP

Putney Verse Workshop welcomes you to our meetings, which take place once a month, at 4pm at The Star & Garter, Putney Embankment, SW15 1JN We are a new society and our aims are:

• to promote an interest in and appreciation of poetry
• to give local poets the opportunity to meet, encourage one another and discuss each other's work and poetry
• to find an audience for the poetry of local poets
• to encourage an interest in poetry of many kinds, rhymed or unrhymed, instructive, narrative, lyrical, serious or comic, in English or any other language

We usually take a theme - either write your own poem on the topic, or bring a published one to read: This is the programme for 2012

February 19 Love Poems: Around Valentine's Day. Many of us have written love p[oems, even if we haven't used them in courtship

March 18 Free for all, and AGM: Bring any poem you like

April 15 Short poems on incidents, co-incidents or odd happenings.

May 20 William Blake led by Blake expert Geoffrey Jackson

June 17 Juvenilia: Poems by children - and ones you wrote when you were young.

July 15 In sickness and in health - poems on a medical theme

August 19 Longer poems that tell a story - narrative poems

September 16 on Youth and Old Age - poems that contrast

October 21 Recently active poets - work published in the past 5/10 years. How do we let current trends and figures influence how we write?

November 18 Social and Political issues

December 16 The Poet's Craftsmanship

You are welcome to attend 4 meetings free of charge. If you attend 2 meetings you can become a member for £10 annual subscription (to cover printing costs)

For further details contact Connaire: 020 8788 8647.

Connaire's birthday: the founder of the group celebrated his birthday in June, and two of the group members wrote poems to honour the occasion. Here they are:

For Connaire Kensit at 70

The normal life of normal men

Was formerly threescore and ten;

But now such age no longer brings

An end to most delightful things.

We can expect still better times,

Though seventy has no proper rhymes.

But wait—it’s two times thirty-five,

Which keeps our doggerel alive,

So happy birthday, Connaire Kensit,

And here’s the final rhyme that ends it.

Geoffrey Jackson 15.06.10

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CONNAIRE

This is your starter for your 70^th birthday.

What joys still abound —

Your hearing is still working—now that’s sound.

You can still walk the walk and talk the talk.

You have poems galore to read and write,

And many other intellectual delights.

You can eat and sleep, like all and sundry,

And like them—still dread Monday.

See 70 is not so different from 30;

It’s 80 you have to be worried about.

A Phelan 15.06.2010

Below are some of the poems our members have written, at various times in their lives.

We are adding to them as the workshops produce more.

Hampshire History

The London road once passed through Buriton

When Petersfield was hardly on the map,

But later traffic shifted to the west

And engineers improved the Butser Gap.

And so they left a somnolent retreat

To milkmaids and slow-thinking farmers' men,

Till motor-cars brought townsfolk to the pubs

And brought the place to boozy life again.

Connaire Kensit

Pilkington's factory at night

Those bold lights pinning back the darkness

Which threatens to engulf

The factory's cargo of men

Surround a myriad of hopes

Locked within each body

Whose mind and soul are trained to obey

The machine's caprice.

Gill Nurse 1967

Below is one of the poems produced at a meeting where we wrote our own poetry. We had been asked to bring along some objects for inspiration, and one of these was a plug with a piece of cable attached.

PLUG

Confronted with this long-discarded plug,

Its cable useless, rudely, roughly cut

From its attachment, I can only shrug,

Not knowing where it came from. I have shut

Its use, its useful life, from recollection.

I cut it off and saved it when we still

Bought items plugless, made our own connection

With scissors, screwdrivers and fumbling skill.

But now the white-goods stores would never sell you

Appliances not ready-primed to use.

So why have I still kept this plug? I’ll tell you:

One day I’m going to need its five-amp fuse.

What one day may be needed, who can say?

That’s why so few things should be thrown away.

Geoffrey Jackson

Unbeknown to each other, another member of the group also wrote about the same object!

Plug Ugly

A plug, hmmm, what sparks

in my brain--

little or nothing. What marks

on the paper--just jumbled up thoughts:

Warts and all in my head.

But a poem-- is dead.

Angela Phelan

Angela also wrote a second poem about a large red radish, another one of the objects.

Radish

Red and rosy and picked ripe morning.

Garnished with salad and eaten with fingers.

Back to my roots, field and fallow.

But I'm a townie, now that's hard to swallow.

Angela Phelan

For our June meeting, we were asked to bring a poem on the subject of the Postbox. Some members wrote their own poems. Here are three of them:

Pillar Box Pantun

Love letters written from the heart

When cruel circumstances kept us apart

Feelings that were once pillar box red

Still echo quietly in my head

I grow old... I grow old

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled

Stewart Kempsell

Meditations on a Pillar Box

This invention of Anthony Trollope

More familiar now than his novels

But threatened by texting and tweeting--

Imagine it capped with plump snow

Or white sauce, with a sprig of green holly,

A redbreasted robin - you name it -

And greetings cards stuffing its gullet.

Imagine it now out of season;

Shout in its mouth - it will echo

An empty response - the last post,

Back in the day it was different:

Its belly bursting with passion,

With love letters, pages and pages,

Effusive, handwritten missives

As well as fat cheques, postal orders

And sepia picture postcards.

You dropped your letter inside it

Too late for regrets or revisions

The very next day, if not sooner,

It graced the recipient's doormat.

This is the age of the email,

The Facebook and instant intrusion

Of junkmail and viral disaster.

Does the post of postmaster general

Still exist?

Was the last one a postmistress

First past the post to pass the parcel

To rationalising postmodernists?

The wide, inexpressive mouth,

Too high for a frisky drunk,

Especially one with a dodgy prostate,

To piss into - a black band round the bottom

Caters to dogs, so let him use that.

But just think of fag ends,

Fireworks, petrol and matches

Or packets of terrorist Semtex . . .

Why don't we hear of such horrors?

Perhaps the postmaster/mistress

Is now a clandestine censor

Waging the war against terror,

The inevitable copycat kind?

Must we admit that proper post

Has almost given up the ghost?

Now Trollope's scarlet pillar box

Gapes hungrily, and merely blocks

The pavement, surely harmless, and yet

A dreadful health and safety threat.

Geoffrey Jackson 20.06.10

Postbox

True, I’m not so tall,

but my pedigree is distinctly royal.

A generous smile envelops my face.

Solid, stolid, even.

Black and red—well fed.

No fad diets for me.

I swallow everything of every shape and hue;

and right on cue, here comes Sue

with her monthly package

of bits and bobs and wasting dreams,

of grandchildren that she never sees.

Strolling down along comes Bill,

with a hefty cheque for William Hill.

Yes, he likes a flutter,

does our own local nutter.

I have thank-you notes post deep from Joy,

who was delivered recently of a baby boy.

There’s young Jill whose email is up the spout

She now has to post her letters out.

See—all human life is glimpsed in here.

I have often wondered

if I would have enjoyed a more “active” life.

But, then I remember: “They also serve who only stand and wait”.

A Phelan 20 June 2010

As the site editor, I couldn't resist adding this poem about..........whom, exactly?

Who is she?

Expressive eyes

In a beautiful face

With a mane of blond-fringed hair

Her slender legs

And smooth dance moves

My sensitive Paso mare.

Gill Nurse

Eighteen months ago I realised my lifelong dream of owning a horse. She’s called Athenia and her breed is Paso Fino, meaning ‘fine step’ in Spanish