|
 |
Stanza 31, June 2006
Eden Short sight and long. The blessings of blur. A movement of leaves. fieralingue Italy, Spring 2006 Refusal It was a bad day to be about. From the north-west, At home with my landlord and unopened bills, sticks, like a front plate refusal, Skald, Wales, Spring 2006 What has LPS brought to its members over the last six months? Some excellent workshops that tailed off after the Easter break, and one or two new events. It was impossible to predict the outcome. The Comedy Festival failed to repay the hard work Norman put in, largely because there was so much else competing within the Festival the same night. As liaison was the prime object, the result was counterproductive. Our venture into Asian territory met with more success and the goodwill generated may well be the basis of further collaboration. There was an inspiring night with Adrian Buckner and Rob Evans, two Members' Readings, and Alice's popular launch, well advertised by Marilyn, all of which involved some long-time retainers of the Society. These evenings are reviewed in Stanza 31 along with pieces about poetry festivals and launches. Early in the year, LAEC collaborated with BBC Leicester in a series of six morning sessions of poetry writing and recording called Soundscapes. Two of the LPS committee who joined the group felt it was definitely beneficial to hear oneself recorded and to receive help with reading. The series is due to be repeated in 2007. LPS also had its first direct participation in De Montfort's cultural EXchange week when the three other poetry networks shared goals and experience. A third application for an Arts Council grant paid off. Though modest, the rewards make all the difference to us between being and not-being able to afford readers and venue. Highlights for the forthcoming season include a Desert Island Disc evening with Kevin Crossley Holland, poet, prizewinning author & founder of the Wells Poetry Festival (13.4.07), readings by Meg (MR) Peacocke (13.10.06) (See review of Cumbrian festal on p 24 ), Anne Stevenson at De Montfort (8.12.06), and a GSF lecture from the dynamic founder of the Cambridge Festival, Richard Burns. (11.5.07) At Wells-next-the-sea Poetry Festival during the last few days of April, I noted that a £10 entrance was charged for readings not a whit more enjoyable, and occasionally less so, than we offer as part of LPS membership. Some indeed by poets we have heard in Leicester. Even if our subscriptions rise next year, and this needs to be looked into, we are incredibly good value. A year after Don Paterson’s provocative TS Eliot lecture – ‘Only plumbers can plumb … only poets can write poetry.’ (see comment on the back of Stanza 28) a mediating role passed to his prize-winning successor, George Szirtes. Quarreling with the arrogant scorn for ‘chicken soup anthologies full of lousy poems’, Szirtes asserted democratically, ‘I don’t see why anyone should have a problem with chicken soup. Nor would anyone genuinely hungry. What are they supposed to do? Starve until they can eat what the committee has chosen to call cake? Paterson’s title, ‘The Dark Art of Poetry’, he thought ‘unnecessarily obfuscatory. There is as much mystery about writing poems as there is about any improvisatory activity: no more, no less. Tell the world you are the mystagogue of a high religion .. it will call you a pompous fool and get on with its life. You can afford to be a fool because everyone is, but you cannot afford to be pompous about it.’ We look forward to seeing you at a GS Fraser 'lecture' that is rather more personal than usual, an idea Huw proposed. Caroline and Colin's Stanza Supplement was much enjoyed, another venture that we hope to repeat next spring. Material for the next Stanza to be in by end of October 2006. Sally Festing Cheese Whenever I see that kind of cheese 'Hewer' Sometimes at the checkout as my dad and his were The North, 2005 At the Florists They dye them now They have, at least, There is something unreal like dressing them up I leave them there. to impassion your grave. The Interpreter’s House, 2001. Members' Reading - 9 December, 2005: A respectable attendance was present for our first Members’ Reading of the season to hear three very different and interesting poets. Davina Prince initiated proceedings. Though introduced as a parodist, the poems she selected to read were chosen to illustrate her ‘serious’ side – ‘proper poems’ she wryly called them. We were treated to a range of well-made poems, notable for their gentle rhythms, shape, clear diction, elegance and wit. Inspired by George Szirtes’ dictum that poetry is ‘a straight way of saying something complex’, many of the poems were linked thematically through an exploration of layers of memory, and how these shape the individual. How does memory influence our view of the past, and of the present? Do we idealise the past, and thereby find the present inadequate? A poem about the sale of a former home movingly tapped this theme. The poem ‘Eye Test’ dips into a world below ‘the slatey surface of things’, whilst other poems paid homage to the past, including ‘Kindling’, a poem about her former home. Later readings made an abrupt and effective change in tone with two public poems, including the marvellous ‘Gull’ about a gull smashing a crab. In its particular description, and almost sensuous delight in describing it, it brought home ‘how killing feels’ and through our watching and listening our complicity in violence. Alice Beer's poems were competently read by Marilyn Ricci; and the selection treated us to many of her mordant observations on love and everyday life. We started off exploring relationships with the marvellously titled ‘How to Learn to Ride a Bicycle’, together with another bicycle-inspired poem and one set within the poet’s pottery class. An original updating of Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ was provided in ‘The Elsinore Diaries’, found by Fortinbras, and written by the major characters. In their diaries the protagonists share their private thoughts on ambition, guilt, envy, truth, maturity and morality. It is Hamlet in a modern living room. Particularly moving was ‘Weather Report’, inspired by Elizabeth Bishop’s line ‘the sun was blazing and the sky was blue’; and politics (and politicians’ lack of consistency) were amusingly explored in ‘How to Demonstrate a Principle or a Fact’. The final poems lifted our spirits with a Belloc parody, ‘Literature’, full of Mills and Boon clichés; while wise advice was given to all aspiring poets in the clever and effective ‘Talking About Clichés’. After an interval, we had a change in tone from the private to the public in the moving poetry of Tim Jones. His reading was a sequence of poems about the war in Iraq, poetry made even more emotional and painful through being written in evenly paced metre and rhyme. This is thoughtful, literate, committed and deeply felt poetry. The sequence began with the poet’s eye problem providing a metaphor for the blurred vision of political leaders over the issue of war in Iraq. In multi-layered poetry the war, and our response to it, was fully examined with a keen historical sense comparing and contrasting eastern and western texts, including Omar Khayyam’s ‘Rubaiyat’, Blake’s ‘Milton’, the ‘Arabian Nights’ and ‘Beau Geste’. This is poetry that deserves a further hearing or reading. To conclude the evening, each poet offered a final poem – Davina a pastiche, Anne some haiku, and Tim an appraisal of ‘The Simple Life’. This reviewer left inspired and enriched. Steve Morgan Pussycat Pussycat, Pussycat, Where have you been? Pussycat, Pussycat, what did you there? Pussycat, Pussycat, What's that you've got? Pussycat, Pussycat, surely you joke! Behind its horizon dimensions unfold Poetry Nottingham 2006 Caged Silence Four minutes and 33 seconds He didn't believe in cultivation, Imagine the banging and twanging - But he constrained the silence. Ambit 181, Summer 2005 The Policeman's Daughter Darling just ram your arm down the boot and my daughter did she is a very obedient girl she is a good daughter so she does it dutifully from inside with her great man-hand while the other hand takes on the feel of his muscle that's how it happened pushing against the floor with her white strap shoe daughter lovingly shines her father's jack boot the upturned end like the curl of a pussy's tail Orbis 134, Autumn 2005 Out of Silence i.m. Margaret Richter 8.8.04 Here in the whelk shed You always looked young, singing. The old copper, fishing nets. For a while it will be shut down - But sounds in the dark? Nothing much between us and the drop Orbis 134
The committee arrived at 6.30 to welcome the poet and found Belgrave Library buzzing with its user-clientele from the local Asian population, some of whom stayed on for the poetry when the library closed. The evening's proceedings, beginning at 7.00pm, embraced multi-cultural and multi-lingual themes in a number of intricate ways. For half an hour local poets, including LPS members, read their work in a variety of languages. We heard poems in Hindi, Gujerati, Punjabi and English, accompanied by helpful explanation and translation. Just before the break we listened to the entrancing language of music when a young singer performed two Hindi love songs in a touching and beautiful way. After that head librarian Balwinder served up refreshments (the samosas were delicious) then with one more Punjabi poem from Inderjit we were into the second half and Daljit's slot. Daljit Nagra, Britain's so-called first Punglish poet, was the winner of the prestigious Forward Prize in 2004. With his Punjabi parentage and as a teacher of English in a Jewish school in London the poet himself somehow personified the flavour of the evening. His poems reflected a wryness and a shrewdness about life in multi-cultural Britain. His answers to the audience's questions gave further insight into this complexity. He finished with a reading of his award-winning poem: "Look We Are Coming To Dover", providing a different take on Matthew Arnold's famous work. It would have been nice to have heard some more but by finishing in good time Daljit was able to talk to individuals and even look over some of their poems before heading off down the M1. There had been a welcome warmth and friendliness about the evening. Meeting with local poets and a different audience was a delight. The library setting was light and spacious and the special display of poetry books was a thoughtful touch, to which Huw's bookmarks, bearing examples of LPS members' poetry, were an appropriate addition. The easy parking more than compensated for having to negotiate the complex roadworks around the Belgrave Road and I was pleased that we had moved out of our comfort zone and reached towards the wider community while still maintaining our core traditional approach. Hilary Blackmore Crossing Boundaries: another view On the 10th of March 2006, Leicester Poetry Society joined forces with an Asian Poetry Group at the splendid venue of Belgrave Library. Arriving late because of road works and poor navigation, our hazy understanding of the purpose was magnified on our entrance. A poet speaking Punjabi was facing an audience of thirty or so people, English and Asian. We interrupted him as we came in behind and bustled to the front row. Knowing neither the poet nor the language, our minds struggled with the situation. Having little prior knowledge of Daljit Nagra's work apart from his poem "Look we have coming to Dover!" and unaware that we would be writing ofthe event until several days later, we took no notes. Instead we drank in the pleasantly unusual ambience and enjoyed the poet reading from and explaining his Small Press work "Oh my Rub!" The Poetry Book Society says ".. websites are now the more visible vehicle for subversive plurality: but "Oh my Rub! still carries something of the pamphlet's ancestral gene for topical debate. Daljit Nagra's rich narratives, however, confront religious difference, caste and the confusions of modern identity without ever talking themselves into mere topicality. His stanzas are rooms for Punjabi and English to meet ... but with friction as well as opportunity (the Punjabi for god, ironically, is Rub) and as multicultural go-between his sharp observations cut both ways. His is a relevance that counts: vital, direct, colloquial - yet vulnerable risky. Pamphlet verse can balance the boustrophedon extensiveness of books by turning a single idiosyncratic furrow; flush with awkward humanity, Nagra does just that. [Authors note- Boustrophedon means- 'Having alternate lines written from left to right and right to left e.g. turning as in ploughing with oxen.'] ... 'Oh my Rub, what is England happening for us?" There is a website review of his pamphlet written by Emma Lee, well worth a visit (at: http://www.geraldengland.co.uk/revs/bs014.htm) . For our own part, we experienced in the flesh a humble, highly articulate and engaging person, his readings and explanations, audible and full of thoughtful quality. Here was a man, one felt, who is comfortable in his skin, mature in his cultural dilemmas. A teacher of substance about social issues and one who has found a use for poetry which has impact and influence. Jean and James Harbour The House Across the Road Looking back, I can tell how you really Merit in the Nottingham Open Competition, October 2005, Poetry Nottingham, Winter 2005 Waiting Rain needles your face, despite the umbrella. Over the road, light fills tall sashes. Equinox, Issue 13, March 2006 My Shoe My shoe is black. that, I fear, will lead to a showy Interpreter's House, vol 30 Oct 2005 Review - 13 January, 2005: Poetry for me is normally best heard in the mind's recording studio. Good poets are not necessarily good performers, and vice versa. So I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this joint reading by Adrian Buckner and Rob Evans. They have contrasting styles of delivery. Buckner is slow, quiet, almost conversational. Evans (who on this occasion had members of his performance group Late Shift in the audience) has a more extravert style, with calibrated pace and emphasis. But the work of both poets stands up well on the page. Buckner pins some bookish types to said page with unnerving precision. He insisted that Literary Society was not about any particular group, and definitely not about LPS, but some in the audience must have shifted uncomfortably. Slow Burn lives up to its title, getting better with each reading. A supplement left out to discolour in the sun (in what Robert Frost called "the slow smokeless burning of decay") is an extended metaphor of the state of mind of the ageing columnist whose picture stares up from it: At sundown the process is arrested _ like the wasp, frantic for sweetness Some of Evans' work has similarities to that of the Second World War poet Keith Douglas, to whom he made reference. Douglas was a career soldier from a military background, who wrote harrowingly about the acceptance of responsibility for the deaths one creates. Evans works in the aerospace industry and in his introductory remarks predicted (correctly) that his non-pacifist views would meet resistance from the audience. But his poems about war are troublingly ambiguous. The Numbers Game is about the mathematics of weapons development: Oh the seductive elegance of war Killing a Helicopter adopts a part-mythical, part-technical approach, treating a ground-attack helicopter as "some ancient Celtic dragon" whose armour can be pierced only by the magic weapon of a flechette warhead. At the end the two pilots come into focus, when in the dragon's "shattered skull" the nervous system perseveres, His command of rhyme and metre is impressive. The Numbers Game is not his only poem in the difficult form of terza rima, and in response to a question about this he informed us that he makes them up in his head before setting pen to paper. I purchased a book by each of them, and the poems quoted here are from these two publications. For those who neglected the opportunity, or were not present at the reading, here are the details. One Man Queue, by Adrian Buckner, Leafe Press £3.50, ISBN 0-9535401-3-8 Thanks are due to Marilyn Ricci and Mark Mawson for arranging this entertaining event. Brian Fewster Hearth My mother had the trick of it A solid flame roared up. The chimney gulped. We didn't. Grown-up business, this - The Coffee House 13, June 2005 High flight By chance, a jet high-flying chalks Only for a moment. The chalk line shifts, It's never proofs that remain, but how although, later, this was never Magma 33, November 2006 Members' Reading On the evening of 21st April a good crowd packed one of the smaller rooms at LAEC. In an intimate atmosphere the three poets gave clearly-spoken readings that held our interest throughout. Lydia Finlay was first up. She had the controlled delivery of a singer, a light airiness combined with a certain gravitas. Her poem Twenty Minutes In Winter played with colours and forms. Words such as ‘spottled’ and ‘blackenfold’ typified her inventiveness with language. Examination was a detailed portrait of a dairy farmer’s visit to a city optician. I felt a tremendous sense of stillness here, despite the farmer’s anxiety. In Catalogue she used rich verbs and physicality to convey factory conditions. The poem Cloth also focused on manufacture and used listing to great effect. Other poems, such as East Timorese, Missing Detail and Mountain Route moved beyond the local or personal to deal with political upheaval and displacement of peoples in various parts of the world. Of the three poets, Lydia was perhaps the most frequently serious in tone, though certainly no less enjoyable for that! Emma Gleadall gave a relaxed, even laid-back delivery of her poems, occasionally misreading but never getting flustered. Hers was a clear voice. Her poems were simply constructed, well-crafted and deceptively deep. Bright Medallions was a pleasing image of a child playing with sunspots on the floor. The poet compared the light to a form of ‘trickery’ and maintained that ‘it is the dark that has an exact vocabulary’. Poems such as Travelling By Night and The Long Home indicated a poet who is very spiritually aware. But another aspect of her work was an earthy sense of humour. In Mind, Body and Spirit she gently mocked meditation with ‘the Zen art of trolley avoidance’. There was a youthful cheekiness in To A Young Slug and I enjoyed her description in Mainland, Kowloon, where ‘hills ring with pollution’ and, with luck, you may get to stay at the ‘Triple Lucky Hotel’. Maimie Henderson told us how she grew up in a suburb of Glasgow in the 20s and 30s and how even quite ordinary families would have had a household maid, usually an Irish woman, or ‘a Mick’ in the sectarian language of the time. Her poem Agnes, A Child’s Eye View was a memory of one such maid. Maimie’s best poems had very strong narratives and often successfully displayed comedy and tragedy simultaneously. I particularly liked Tribute To A Latin Mistress, describing a teacher who ‘came.. saw our ignorance.. conquered it’ and took pleasure in laying down ‘minefields of gerunds’. The sexual awakening of her pupils and their realisation that ‘amo, amas, amat that’s what she gave up’ was touching. Some of Maimie’s poems showed a writer very much at home with prose-like forms. Others were strictly rhyme and metre, such as ‘The Lay Of The Last Spinster’ - an irreverent ballad. In all, a versatile poet and a natural story-teller. Mark Mawson WORKSHOPPING What to do? Wake up, look at it. Walk around it. Have coffee or black tea. Stay hungry. look at it again. It's a thing or an animal on the table. A.S. That Wolf, Life Pink and naked as we were what did we know "That Wolf, Life" was placed third in the Envoi competition “ ... a pet goat acts as a symbol in a foundering marriage” That Spring Billy was just a kid they’d come across Far from Cathar country Billy’s capriciousness Afterwards The end wasn’t long in coming. Poetry Nottingham 59/2, Summer 2005
Review- Words By The Water - March 2005 If you want to listen to poetry in the most beautiful of settings Cumbria is the place to head for. Words by the Water is a ten day festival of literature held in the Theatre by the Lake in Keswick. As we arrived, snow clothed, the high fells and small children sledged in a nearby field. Derwentwater rippled in the afternoon sun as poetry lovers of all ages crowded into the foyer to attend the Poetry Prom. Many had travelled long distances through bad weather to be here. Five poets in turn amazed with their talent. James Fenton read several new poems from his recent collection. His work achieves a new dimension when it is read aloud and he was able to establish a warm rapport with his large audience by his spirited and rhythmic readings. M.R. Peacock followed and in quiet and measured tones read a couple of new poems as well as several from her most recent collection. Her plain language and meticulous observation led to admirably controlled feeling in poems of great power. There followed Helen Dunmore and Grevel Lindop who gave us further joy and variety. Elaine Feinstein rounded off the evening with a rousing and moving performance, full of verve and humour even when approaching the darkest subjects. We were treated to great variety of styles and subjects and furthermore experienced the pleasure of listening to poems read with talent and imagination. It made us realise again how important the performance of poetry is to one’s enjoyment and understanding of the text. The audience was wonderfully appreciative and added to the warm atmosphere which I am sure the poets shared. It was an evening we will treasure for a long time. For those tempted to try next year’s festival the web address is: www.wordsbythewater.org.uk Helen Dunham Monday 20 March is one of those far-too-cold days that dragged into early spring. At 9.15 pm in the Troubadour Coffee House, Lynne Wycherley stands behind the microphone reading ethereal poems from her new collection (Shoestring), sparked by a journey to Iceland and the Scottish Islands. 'Glass into glass'. She shares a black-curtained, black-ceilinged corner of an L-shaped basement room with a vase of pink carnations on a circular table. The room is hardly less packed since the interval (wine, jazz on the piano, easy talk). An audience of mixed age range upwards from 30 sit round small tables. The only diversion is a slightly intrusive background swell of restaurant overhead. Despite which, listening is attentive. A string of 'two-poem' readers take the platform between a short spiel from the editor of Magma 34 and guest-poets Mimi Khalvati and David Harsent. Mimi reads with enviable naturalness, using more body-language and a wider vocal range than most. She finishes with new poems, managing somehow not to be sentimental about a son who turns up for Sunday lunch suffering from what sounds like Schizophrenia. 'No heaven however divine's enough' We are affected, not only by her language, she is an eloquent presenter. (Both Lynne and Mimi have read in recent years at LPS.) The evening concludes with David Harsent reading from his Forward prize-winning volume, Legion. The poems are metaphors for war. It is tremendous, rousing stuff, and being a lot of lefties, we are again affected. Magma, ten years old, is run by a changing team of Editors. I like the magazine because it combines quality with range and isn't cliquey. From the start, they have encouraged poets physically to meet. This is the fourth time I have been to one of their thrice yearly launches in Earl's Court and this time, instead of dashing across London for the Leicester train, I stayed until the end. Small improvements have been implemented over the years, the event ran buoyantly throughout. One of the perks of publication in a London-based magazine is their launches. April 10 found me at the Poetry Cafe for what James Byrne, energetic and ambitious editor of The Wolf described as a 'launch like no other'. The Wolf is where John Hartley Williams published his antiestablishment satire on Don Paterson's Eliot-prizewinning speech. Willingness to be controversial stood, for me, in the magazines' favour. Since then I've been watching the 4- year old, visually appealing A5 booklet with fine colour photography. A real bargain at £3.00 though Magma is perfectly reasonable at £5.00. Our Entrance wasn't smooth. 'No alcohol upstairs' the man behind the bar informed. Apparently no children either (he alluded to my teenage grandchildren). 'We don't know what sort of thing they'll be listening to'. Fortunately, 'upstairs' rules were more flexible. In a small white cube of a room with hard lights, the seating was already taken when we arrived. Before we started the room was choked by standing and floor-sitting participants. Five poets took the platform in each half, and none of the first batch overstepped the allotted 7-10 minutes. This affirms The Wolf's principles, by allowing more time for less high profile poets. 'The Wolf magazine's intention is to give a chance to less known but talented poets to display their brilliance', the website disarmingly informs. 'The only rule is originality.' Stephen Watts began the evening with one of those 'is-it-a-poem-or-prose' pieces that reads well on the page though it used too many Italian words and references for easy listening. We enjoyed a life-in-a-suitcase poem from Valeria Melchioretto and some short witty pieces by Mark Granier who had flown in from Ireland for the occasion. I liked also his atmospheric travel contributions to The Wolf, one called Evening Walk in Manly beautifully set off by a print of a sublimely-twirling child in a dodgem car. It was past the girls' bedtime so we failed to discover whether Fiona Sampson, reverentially interviewed in The Wolf 12, turned up for her slot. If the event wasn't quite as slick as Magma's, it was free against a £5.00 entry fee for the Troubadour. There was friendliness and a zip in the air. While Magma has a backbone of old-timers, James is a one-man band and something of a stripling. (His first collection, Passages of Time, was published by Waterways, 2003.) All credit to his enterprise! Sally Festing The concentrated silence her stealthy silence - The heavy silence The impartial silence The expectant silence The brooding silence My own awed silence Envoi 143, Spring 2006 December 24th Spellbound children watch The room transformed, still - old and new carols Time Haiku, Spring 2006 Review - Talking of pots, people and points of view - The most striking feature of this collection is Alice's ability to share her perceptions and spatial awareness with her reader, so that reading these poems requires slowing one's own pace and becoming attentive to the differing points of view opening up within these pages. Too many poets deliver their poems as though they are tablets of stone - solid, heavy and hurled from on high: a one-way traffic. Alice is different; she is patient, drawing her readers in as equals in experience, sharing her own insights and allowing time for our own reflections. This requires a consistently quiet register which she achieves through an apparently simple language and syntax; the effect of this is to let the content of the poems speak more clearly, so that we leave at the last page feeling enriched and extended. The metaphor of illumination - lights, switches, the sun, stars, a rocket lamp, the fluorescent tubes used by an artist in a Somerset field - spreads through these poems, used with a quiet originality, as in the final poem 'On growing old' , which ends "The ruts get deeper,/ the woods more dense, the bright star/ before us brighter." Aging is not a closing down, but an opening up of visions and opportunities, a view that has been developed through the whole volume. 'The Elsinore Diaries' and ‘Pride and Prejudice' lack, for me, the immediacy of the personal poems, with the literary characters providing a cloak that Alice does not need. Instead it is the apparently simplest poems that have the most impact - for example, 'How to Learn to Ride a Bicycle': the wobbly movements echo the uncertain give-and-take of friendship, and the interdependence and mutual support we meet with throughout life. The same idea slips easily into 'So You Want to be a Potter?' where both hands make a team in shaping the pot growing on the wheel. 'Seven Shapes of Silence' builds up from the pleasingly domestic ( a cat settling down to wash herself) through the watchful silences before a storm or around a turned-off fountain, to a climax combining both personal and political - "My own awed silence/ when my first pregnancy/ was confirmed/ in September 1939." If I had to choose one poem from the whole collection (and my copy bristles with markers for poems I turn back to) it would be this. I hope Alice's next collection can build on the strengths of this one. D A Prince Holly Hayes revisited I remember: the silence, Irregular drops on leaf. Speaking out When waiting for my lesson on how to speak Then shoes off, my hot feet would leave a trail I would open it quietly to see and to touch Obsessed With Pipework, Spring 2006 & 2005 |
The Daljit Nagra event on 10 March this year was part of the Society's visiting poet schedule, albeit with a difference. This was a joint venture with the Libraries Service, pursuing the suggestions from previous LPS AGMs of working with other groups and organisations, reaching out to the wider community and diversifying our programme. For several months I had been in touch with Literature Development Officer, Damien Walter and Inderjit Gugnani, the Community Librarian for Leicester and Leicestershire, in order to take forward the idea of a joint event between Leicester Poetry Society and local community members. We decided to use Belgrave Library, with its location in an ethnically diverse area of the city, and to ask Daljit Nagra to be the visiting poet. LPS members and participants in the poetry workshop, run by Inderjit every Saturday at St Barnabas Library, would also be invited to read on the evening. The costs of the event were to be met by Leicester City Council. 