Poets and times past and present

A good evening last Tuesday at the Hen and Chickens in Abergavenny - their monthly poetry evening showcased the work of four Bristol poets, two of whom (Bob Watson and Elizabeth Parker) I'd met at the Abergavenny Festival of Writing, but two of whom I didn't previously know (Claire Williamson and Ben Banyard). I was particularly taken with Ben Banyard's work; on his collection "We Are All Lucky", a reviewer praises the "accessible poems about the real world with its triumphs and disasters, tragedies and comedies." If you read the wonderful poem "Early Days" on his blog (benbanyard.wordress.com) I'm sure you'll agree.

Saturday saw an interesting couple of hours - at a school reunion. Not my usual venue of choice at a weekend but I was keen to go along to see the memorabilia that's always wheeled out for the occasion; on this occasion it certainly fulfilled a useful function, prompting memories, starting conversations and providing copious notes for the memoir project with which I'm currently underway. The yellowing copies of the school magazines were particularly useful. I was busy making notes from a couple of articles when I suddenly realised they were ones that I'd written - fifty years ago! I was also amused to come across a photo of myself treading the boards in the school production of "Much Ado About Nothing" - although it took an old school friend to point out to me that it actually was me!

4th from left as Don Pedro, mid 1960s

Later today I'm going to watch the preview of Owen Sheers' play "Unicorns, almost" at Hay-on-Wye, where it's playing for the duration of the Literary Festival. It tells the story of the poet Keith Douglas, who was killed in action during the Normandy invasion in June 1944. Like so many schoolchildren in the 1960s, I studied the First World War poets for A level English - Siegfried Sassoon, Edward Thomas, Wilfred Owen; no mention was ever made then of the poets who sadly followed in their footsteps only a generation later. It was years before I came across their work - and the work of women writers at the time of both conflicts (that certainly wouldn't have got a look-in during my school days - they may have been at a girls grammar school, but as aspiring writers we were introduced to no female role models!). If you were similarly brought up on a restricted diet of male authors and poets, do read the two wonderful volumes of women's poetry from Virago, "Scars upon my heart" from the First World War and "Chaos of the night" from the Second. For me it's no exaggeration to say that first readings were revelations.