Poetry
ID is a group based in Letchworth, Herts, UK. We meet every Thursday at
the Settlement
education centre, which is situated in
Nevells Road (7.30pm start). Each week we hold a writing workshop and then invite people to read
work in progress. Also, for the brave-hearted, we arrange occasional "surgery"
sessions, concentrating on a few poems and discussing them in detail. We also organise
readings in the local area and are currently
involved with the Letchworth Centenary
celebrations for 2003. The group
was set up by John Gartland in 1998 and the membership has been growing steadily
every week. We now have 20-30 regular participants.
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After a long absence, we're back! The story behind our disappearance is long and convoluted, but the upshot is that we're back with a new .uk address, and the site will hopefully develop and update in the coming weeks. |
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Cliff Ashcroft's second collection Dreaming of Still Water was recently published by Salt, and we urge you to invest in a copy. For details, follow this link. |
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Poetry ID is now the official Letchworth Stanza of The Poetry Society. More details on what this means to follow shortly, or visit The Poetry Society site. |
This was set up in early 2002 to promote our activities to a wider audience. Please take the time to look at samples of our work, recent and forthcoming events and some of the publications available. We aim to change the poems every few weeks, so the site should have changed each time you return.
All those years ago, on Tyneside,
of Eliot and Pound, and their meetings of course,
and he'd looked at our fledgling poetry;
Bunting said, "It's all right, but live some more.
You need to go out and live some more."
I said thanks, and I knew, as I closed his door,
he meant Poetry ID.
I've chauffeured cars and worked in bars,
crossed seas and worked illegally;
crashed out in Split, swabbed blood and shit
from floors in Vancouver casualty.
I've crossed the Rockies on a train
and jumped by parachute from planes,
drove a Cadillac through the FM band
from New York down to Miami.
Met Mozart in Carnegie Hall,
Bix Beiderbecke on Hadrian's Wall,
got woken up by lightning on the warm South China Sea.
Been there and back, and gone off track,
put the Darren Mountains in my pack,
I've taken stock at Lion Rock,
and swum in Lake Euphoria,
stirred Zen into my tea.
I've known apocalyptic trips
and rolled some monumental spliffs,
I've rocked to Dr Feelgood's riffs,
been heightened, frightened, free.
I've laughed a lot and loved my share,
I've come round in intensive care,
but many I loved no longer step
the headlong days with me.
I toast their sweet reluctant ghosts,
and all we did together, most
of all, this lush, uncharted coast
of Poetry ID.
Listen; words are the ladder we climbed from the slime.
Words that spring to your lips and sing of your time
are shouts in the throat of antiquity;
old oratory, shrapnel hurled
right out of history.
Magical, fierce, exuberant and sad,
words made us wise and sent us mad.
Rhyme's a trapeze we swing out on;
out, over birth, dissolution and death.
Rhyme, old as the breeze, and mysterious as breath.
Look, out as far as you can see,
there's love and birth, magnetic north,
the stars, and Poetry ID.
And I've come as before to the old poet's door,
to pass right through it, as you see.
I greet his shade, then turn once more,
ambiguous, naked and stubbornly free,
with thanks, and a smile, a fond farewell,
and Poetry ID.
John
Gartland
If you want to contact Poetry ID, you can phone Richard Copeland on 01438 217614, or David Van-Cauter on 01462 438712. For queries and suggestions about the website, please email David Van-Cauter.