Lorraine Mariner grew up in Upminster and attended Huddersfield University where she read English, and University College London where she read Library and Information Studies.
She now works at the National Poetry Library in London.
She has had several poetry collections published including Furniture and Bye for Now and was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize in 2008.
Essentially an ‘Urban’ poet, her poetry is distinctive and succinct and always interesting.   She will talk about her work at the National Poetry Library and the poems that inspire her along with some of her own work.
Maya Pieris will be presenting this evening and reading some of the poetry.

Group member Trevor Pearce presents an evening detailing his poetic journey.

He writes “I hope it is a celebration of my fifty years of writing poetry, how it has changed from a purely personal, hidden activity to a shared passion which has helped me define my life”.

Should be a lively, entertaining and thoughtful evening.

Juliet Lacey was born in India and educated abroad, before settling in England in the 1960s.  She read English at Oxford and worked in publishing before training as an actor at RADA.  Her acting career included 3 seasons with the RSC, leading roles in rep and the London fringe and appearances in TV soaps such as Man of Straw, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads and Open All Hours. After retiring from acting to bring up her daughters, she worked for many years as tutor and director at RADA and other acting schools. Her handbook for students Performing Shakespeare is published by Samuel French.

She has written 9 plays, two of them prize winners; the most recent, The Long Bones about the poet Alun Lewis, was shown at the White Bear Theatre, London in 2018.

She has written poetry all her life, and her poems have been placed in several competitions, including 3rd prize in the International Strokestown Competition, and featured in magazines such as The Interpreter’s House and Agenda, and in the anthologies Building Jerusalem and Hollow Palaces. She currently leads a Poetry Appreciation group for the Crewkerne U3A.

Poetry by local poets from local poetry groups – bring a poem to read or just come and listen.

Saturday 21^st March     2pm  Start

Dawe’s Twineworks, 94A High St, West Coker, Yeovil, BA22 9AU,  The Twineworks is on the right-hand side just as you leave West Coker towards Crewkerne.

Tea, coffee and Cake – Donation to The Twineworks appreciated

A two part meeting:-

First, an evening of poems about Summer to transport us poetically from a cold and sometimes dismal time of year to somewhere perhaps warmer and brighter. Heather Murphy and June Colledge will present the first half of this meeting (re-scheduled from January)  No passports are necessary for our poetic travel with no airport queues either!

In the second half, we have poetry by member Ruth Hall who has given us a taste of her excellent poetry at some of our meetings and deserves a wider audience.

Note – Due to the January meeting being cancelled, the ‘open’ part of the January and February meetings will now held be at the extra ‘Open for Poetry’ meeting at Dawe’s Twineworks on Saturday March 21^st.

Due to many roads being flooded in the area, the venue was closed for this evening and this poetry meeting is being re-scheduled for February.

(An evening of poems about Summer to transport us poetically from a cold and sometimes dismal time of year to somewhere perhaps warmer and brighter).

Lots of poetry, perhaps mince pies and music too……..

The NonCompetition meeting brings forth an extraordinary range of poetic styles and forms and this year the poem must be hand-written.   Members will be encouraged to talk about their poetic entry – how their ideas transformed into a poem.

Gill Barr’s debut collection A Wide River Divides Us (published by Cinnamon Press this August) opens with acute recollections of a troubled childhood in 1970s Derry/Londonderry, evoking the child’s experience as violence escalates in the streets around her.
In a compelling fifty-year leap the poet leaves behind the city of her youth, sweeping into an expansive future, where she reckons with the past and with her self. The arc of this poetry collection is tremendous, ambitious, wide – what strikes most is its sheer vitality and variety. An accomplished and distinctive collection.
Gill holds an MA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University, Belfast and received an award for her poetry from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in 2024. Her poems have appeared in a wide range of publications and she was our East Coker Competition Judge in 2021.

Julie and Andrew Haylock of Sandhurst Garden Design will give a talk on how they design gardens taking their inspiration from nature, art and poetry.