Hello, and thank you for visiting my site. I hope that you'll return often and always find something of interest about my world and what inspires me to pick up a pen. (This is a figure of speech, unfortunately. My handwriting is terrible!) Here's what I've been up to recently...

Ripon Poetry Festival 2023

 

What a weekend! Actually it began for me on Thursday evening, when the two Ripon writing groups that I belong to co-hosted the open mic event to launch this year’s festival.

    

  

 

The downstairs area of the Claro Lounge, where Write-On! Ripon meets on Tuesday afternoons, has never seen as many poetry lovers crammed into its many nooks and crannies. We even had to bring in chairs from the garden, so it was lucky that the afternoon had been a dry one. There were sad poems, happy poems, funny poems, angry poems – some using traditional forms and others the most free of free verse. Definitely something for everyone. 

 

    

The same could be said of Saturday evening, when the launch of the 2023 anthology was held in the Ripon Arts Hub. Everyone who had had a poem chosen for inclusion was invited to read and I was delighted to meet up with a friend from the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School. Penny Blackburn had travelled from Newcastle to take part in various activities throughout the day and we just managed (courtesy of my son Richard) to have a photo taken of the pair of us before she set off home.

 

24 September, 2023 - Make the first comment on this story

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