Session of poetry

At the Scarborough Writers’ Circle on February 17, guest speaker Felix Hodcroft delivered a session on poetry. Felix began by disclosing something of his own interest and study of the subject, followed by readings to give a flavour of accessible poetry, ie poetry that the ordinary person in the street can understand. Selected poems were Frost by Samuel T Coleridge, Visiting Time by Stuart Larner, Christmas Truce 1972 by Rosie Larner, Pie by SJ Kennedy, Breath of God by Joyce Bell, Abandoned Buildings by Jeanette Hambridge and Trapeze by Chris Woodland. All but the first of those are from ‘A Pocketful of Windows’ anthology, edited by Felix and published by Valley Press.

Felix went on to give a brief history of how poetry had moved away from set metre and rhyme to embrace poetic techniques that communicate directly to the emotions of readers. He said that poetry is “sculpting words, ideas, emotions, to render fresh and almost transparent something just ... just out of reach; it’s getting inside your head, like an infection; it refuses to be forgotten, it wants to be passed on, and on; it wrings the grey, and out streams the colour; it’s a double-shot espresso, a throatful of pure springwater; it cuts to the core of tangle that has no answer or sometimes it’s inside drilling out; it’s a window into someone else’s soul, an escape-hatch out of yours.” (from A Pocketful of Windows).

Felix instructed on how to evoke potential poems from ourselves – saying that we should trust our own emotions when writing poetry. No matter what we or anyone else think, we are writing to create a spark between ourselves and at least one other human being.

The group were asked to attempt to write from one of two thoughts: 1) someone is coming at you out of the darkness or 2) write from a perspective outside yourself (something that is happening to someone else). The instruction was not to name the thing or try and make sense of what we wrote but to go with it and see where it led.

Many of the group present surprised themselves with the end results of the poem they created. Felix concluded that poetry is not just for poets to write but for anyone who can feel emotion, as had been proved by the quality of the poems produced by members from the exercise.

The next meeting i s on Tuesday March 3 at 7.30pm in the Arts Room (downstairs) at Scarborough Library. Jill Boyes will lead a session on the Arthur Hastings Trophy results. The daughter of Arthur Hastings, Anne Beavis, will be in attendance to present the winner with the trophy.

All welcome: guests £2.50, members/students £1.50. See website for f urther details about the circle at www.scarboroughwriterscircle.com.