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*** 2018 POETRY COMPETITION – RESULTS***

*** Events Autumn Festival Fri 16 & Sat 17 November now booking ***

***Remote Workshop Perceptions of Time, by Myra Schneider
(Fanfare & Her Wings of Glass, both series still available) ***

Need help with travel to Second Light events? See Second Light Mary MacRae ‘Access to Poetry’ Fund

Poets of the Month (& see sample poem below, by Jenny Morris)

Featured Poets, October 2018 straight to poems

Simone Mansell Broome, Five Changes
Maureen G Coppack, Wading Through Green
Margaret Eddershaw, Golden Rule
Evie Ford, Harvesting the Lavender
Jenny Hamlett, The Grey Mare’s Waterfall
Danielle Hope, In the kitchen
Gill Learner, Lost
Jenny Morris, Accident of Birth
Elizabeth Rapp, Ice Garden
Maggie Sawkins, Zones of Avoidance (extract)
Joan Sheridan Smith, Tenderness
Sue Wallace-Shaddad, Crystal Ball
Hilary Hares, On sculptural figures looking out to sea
Jay Whittaker, Pearl
Sue Wood, Imagine yourself to be water
 

Sample poem (selected at random)

Accident of Birth

The family tree can hold you fast
with ties of guilt or love or pride.
Opprobrium may haunt its past
but bonds of blood are sanctified.
Though you may choose your friends with care,
in kith and kin you have no choice.
Regarding them it may be rare
you find a reason to rejoice.
Yes, you can run away from home,
divorce your parents if you like,
escape from relatives and roam –
until you find you are alike.
Those inbred traits will bind you fast.
When you were made the die was cast.

Jenny Morris

Poem published in collection The Sin Eater, The National Poetry Foundation, 1993

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