Next Workshop - Tuesday 4 June

Our next workshop will be at 7pm - 10pm on Tuesday 4 June at Parmoor House, Lypiatt Terrace, Cheltenham.  The writing exercise will be relevant to the theme of "Memory" which is the theme for this year's Gloucestershire Writers Network competition - so it offers a good opportunity to prepare a poem for submission to that.  There will be a chance to read back our drafts for mutual constructive feedback, but there's no obligation to share if we don't want to.  After coffee/tea, we will read our already-written poems, brought to the meeting, again giving and receiving feedback to help us in editing our work.  Please bring writing materials and about 8 copies of one or two poems you have already written.  These workshops are great value at £2, to include refreshments.

Writing and Socialising, May 2013

Successful Launch of "Beyond the Well-Mapped Provinces"

Eight members of the Society's Writing Group read poems from our new anthology, "Beyond the Well-Mapped Provinces" on 24 April, during Cheltenham Poetry Festival. The well attended event, upstairs at Cafe Rouge in the Promenade (a first-rate venue for poetry readings) provided a feast of 40 poems from the anthology. These showcased the varied interests and styles of David Ashbee, Robin Gilbert, Sharon Larkin, Michael Newman, Stuart Nunn,  Michael Skaife d'Ingerthorpe, Sheila Spence and Roger Turner.  Other poets represented in the anthology, but unavailable to read on the night, are Judi Marsh and Gerald O'Shaughnessy.

Here is a review of the launch:

"The poems in this anthology are excellent. But I have to particularly commend those of retired nurse Sheila Spence, often about water, including her wise and compassionate Salt Water; Submerged, about the flooding that regularly assails Gloucestershire; and Waiting, likening a new baby to a starfish".  
(Greg Freeman: Write Out Loud)

The event was also an opportunity to publicly thank Robin Gilbert for overseeing the anthology's publication and Abi Ponton of Pigeon Illustration for cover artwork.  We are indebted to both.

Copies of "Beyond the Well-Mapped Provinces" are selling well.  If you'd like a copy (£5 plus £2 p@p) please email us on: Cheltenham.Poetry.Society@gmail.com