Poetry Society Meeting - Update

The Poetry Society will hold a general meeting on 22 July at 2pm at The Royal College of Surgeons, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. Details here: http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/mediaroom/

If you are a member and want your vote to be counted, but can't get there, you can appoint a proxy. Kate Clanchy can provide the names of members offering to act as proxies. You can email her at kateclanchy@gmail.com, otherwise see you there.

Ty Newydd

I have just come home from a writing retreat at the National Writers' Centre for Wales. It is in Lloyd George's last home in North Wales (I slept in his bedroom, un-haunted!). It's the perfect location for writing new poems, meeting new poets and catching up with friends. If you ever have the opportunity to spend a week on a course of retreat there, grab it with both hands and then hope you are blessed with good weather. This week we were spoiled for sun and sea. Over the years I have met people on courses there that I am still in touch with, some of whom I am proud to call my friends.

http://www.tynewydd.org/english/home.html

Poetry Society - call for an EGM

If you are a member of the PS and want to join the petition for an EGM to ask what's going on, please email Kate Clanchy at kate.clanchy@gmail.com

If you have no idea what this is all about,  please visit one of the following web pages

http://rawlightblog.blogspot.com/ (Jane Holland)

http://www.displacement-poetry.blogspot.com/ (Fiona Moore)

http://baroqueinhackney.wordpress.com/ (Katy Evans-Bush)

Reading University Fine Art Degree Show 2011

The annual Undergraduate and Masters degree show is on until 24 June, every day 10am to 4pm at Earley Gate. The usual mix of excellence, invention, pastiche and the pedestrian, which proves one thing - art like poetry is very much a matter of taste: what I like, you might hate and visa versa. This is the work that engaged me most this year as sculpture (apologies to the artist, I forgot to write down the name - but query Kara Dennis).

More Forthcoming Poetry Readings

As part of the Brickwork Poets readings, I will be at:

Write Angle, Petersfield on 19 July at 7.30pm (details here http://www.petersfieldwriteangle.co.uk/events.html),  and

Battle Library, Reading on 21 July at 10.30am.

Come along and enjoy our conversations in poetry. You can find more information about the Brickwork Poets at www.brickworkpoets.co.uk

Forthcoming Poetry Readings in Reading

I will be reading next on 13 July at the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL), Redlands Road, Reading  http://www.reading.ac.uk/merl/whatson/merl-specialevents.aspx at 6.30pm and hopefully in the garden if it's a lovely evening. This is the latest Two Rivers Press Reading Poetry anthology reading. http://www.tworiverspress.com/  My fellow readers are Peter Robinson, Susan Utting and AF Harrold. I look forward to seeing you there.

Ai WeiWei - Zodiac Heads

Ai's huge bronze heads of animals from the Chinese zodiac form a semi-circle in the courtyard of Somerset House this summer. They are intriguing and somewhat scary. I am year of the tiger (which looks rather ursine) 

but my favourite was the dragon.

Worth swinging by and taking a look at your birth year animal if you are in the vicinity at any point in the next couple of months. We know where the heads are, but where's their creator?