Voices

After a very difficult family fortnight with a major bereavement, it was lovely to have an evening out yesterday at the Winchcombe Festival of Music and Arts. There was a very appreciative audience at the White Hart Inn for "Voices", a poetry reading given by Matt Black, Anna Saunders and Peter Wyton - three very different poets who were equally interesting and entertaining.

Matt Black was for two years the Derbyshire Poet Laureate - once confused, as he told us, when visiting a school to run a workshop, with the national Laureate, Carol Anne Duffy! But they asked him back, which must have been a sign of their satisfaction with his performance. His reading from his book of children's poems involved audience participation for his amusing rendition of "Toast" and then he moved on to subjects as diverse as Arkwright's cotton factory and conversations overheard outside a hairdressers and in Waitrose expressed in the 17 syllables of haikus. Brilliant.

Anna Saunders is well known in the area in her role as Director of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival and she read from her collections "Struck" and "Communion". Of her poems, a favourite of mine is one based on the chapter in Laurie Lee's "Cider With Rosie" that tells of the murder of a brash and bragging young man who comes to the village pub one winter's night - you may know the story. I have always loved the book - the setting for which is only a few miles from my home - and Anna's poem echoes the chilling reality of locals closing ranks against an unwelcome outsider.

Slam champion Peter Wyton was as great as ever, giving us a "fast trot around Cotswoldshire" with his take on the history of the villages and our "rogue river", the Severn, "distaining restraining orders"  by flooding with monotonous regularity. I could never tire of hearing his poem on "The Ladies Of The Charity Shop"; he has them well and truly (affectionately) taped.

All in all, a really good evening and just what I needed.