Finding us

Several people have recently reported difficulty in finding 13 Parmoor House, Lypiatt Terrace, Cheltenham, GL50 2SX where we hold our regular meetings.
This map will help:
Map of Lypiatt Terrace

Here is a picture of what the building looks like from the outside:
Parmoor House, 13 Lypiatt Terrace

This Cheltenham Civic Society building is used by a number of groups.
Cheltenham Poetry Society meetings take place on the SECOND FLOOR, in the Rosalind Room.

All meetings are on Tuesdays, 7pm - 10pm, with a refreshment break mid-way through the evening.

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

Performing Poetry - The Poet's Voice

Although it wasn't a Poetry Society event as such, a workshop entitled "The Poet's Voice" was held on 11 April which several members and former members attended - all women.  The speaker was Dorothy Daniels whose career has been in voice training - with an impressive list of organisations and individuals she has worked with to help people become more effective and confident public speakers and performers. Those of us attending this recent workshop will unhesitatingly attest that Dorothy helped us too.

As well as reminding us of the mechanics of standing in front of an audience, making and sustaining contact, breathing correctly and so on, we benefitted from time spent reading our poems aloud as if at a public reading, but paying far more attention to modulation - the power, pace, pitch - of our delivery, noting where to emphasise words and phrases, where to pause, where to slow down or speed up and so on.

For me, personally, this was the best investment of time and money - in poetry terms - in a long time.  A well-timed event, too, in view of the forthcoming Poetry Festival ... when most of those attending the workshop will be performing.

Expect some engaging performances!

Poetry Reading Group - Tuesday 16 April

Newcomers are always welcome in our Poetry Reading Group. Just bring 6-8 copies of 3-4 poems by a contemporary poet and share what you find interesting or exciting about them! 7pm-10pm at Parmoor House, Lypiatt Terrace, Cheltenham. £2 - includes refreshments.

Poetry Workshops

Cheltenham Poetry Society runs a workshop on the first Tuesday of every month at Parmoor House, Lypiatt Terrace, Cheltenham, from 7pm to 10pm.  There is a different leader each month to ensure variety of approach - and share the workload!

The first half of the evening is a writing exercise, using the particular prompt or trigger the leader for that evening has chosen.  Sometimes it is word-based, sometimes a leader will choose to explore various poetic forms or themes, sometimes we will look at examples of other people's work to inspire us. We aim for an "educational" element or a new approach to creativity rather than just suggesting topics on which to write ... although that might be part of the exercise.  After 30-40 minutes of writing, we will read round what we have written for constructive  comments from others. However, there is no obligation to share these early drafts.  It is simply an opportunity to acquire and give some initial feedback to help us in the editing process.  

After a refreshment break and sharing of any poetry-related news, we read poems we have previously written - again for constructive comments and feedback to help us with our editing.  As before, there is never any obligation to share a poem on any given evening, or to give feedback on any particular poem.  The main objective is to be helpful - it's always useful to know what other people are taking from one's writing.  

We always welcome newcomers to these workshops and ask people to bring writing materials and half a dozen copies of the one or two of their poems which they would like to share with the group.  

Workshops are great value at £4 per session. This is reduced to £2 if individuals subscribe (£8). This represents a £16 saving over the whole year if a subscriber attends each of the 12 workshops.

The last workshop (2 April) was led by Avril Staple who brought her artistic flair to inspire us, inviting us to make simple pastel sketches focusing on light and shade in fabric, dried rose leaves and fruit skin, and  metal objects (eg tap, bracket).  Some of us confessed that we were not great visual artists, but everyone had a go.  We then "framed" the results ... and wrote about what we had thought about as we had sketched, using the images that came into our minds as we looked at the objects we were sketching. Concentrating on light and shade had freed our minds to wander, allowing for a "flow" of creativity to spark our imaginations.  Some exciting and refreshingly "different" first drafts resulted.  (Personally, I was surprised to have written my first ever poem (just 4 lines) in Welsh! I also wrote a poem in English about breaking through into another dimension.  I doubt whether these would have resulted from a more traditional word-based workshop!  

So, thank you, Avril for bringing a fresh approach - and for encourage us all to think about using other forms of artistic expression to re-ignite our poetry.   After the exercise, we talked more generally about how other artforms, eg music, inspired some of us in writing poetry.  We might explore this at some point in the future.