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...
A melancholy honour
This week I was invited by her husband Joe to read the eulogy for Daphne Peters, founder of Ripon Writers’ Group and a good friend to us all. We lost Daphne eighteen months ago, just after the first lockdown, and were thus unable to attend the funeral, so this was a long anticipated opportunity to honour her memory. RWG members past and present attended the service in Ripon Cathedral and mingled later on over refreshments to reminisce.
During the course of the service, several of us read poems written by Daphne, who was widely published in anthologies and often asked for permission to broadcast her work. She specialised in writing for children, with animals and her love of the sea as frequently recurring themes. Daphne shared my love of cats and, out of all her poems, my favourite is ‘Friday Night in Finkle Street’. It tells of a group of cats hanging around a fish and chip shop in the centre of Ripon in the hope of feasting on the customers’ leavings. ‘They lick their lips over fish and chips’ will continue to come to mind and remind me of Daphne whenever I pass that shop.
NB Daphne’s poems can also be found under her maiden name of Lister.
30 September, 2021 - Make the first comment on this story
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