Poetry Review
Four Voices at the Ledbury Poetry House
Sunday 3rd November 2024
Poetry on an Autumn Sunday afternoon is sheer delight. That was a discovery made by many at a unique event at the Poetry House in early November – unique because the venue has not before been opened on a Sunday for a poetry reading of this kind. After the pleasure and camaraderie created on this occasion, it is to be hoped that this will not be the only time this happens.
The Poetry House sits within the Barrett Browning Institute, a striking landmark on Ledbury’s High Street with its prominent corner position and Gothic clocktower. Originally opened in the 1890s to commemorate the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning who had lived in the town. The building has long promoted learning and literature, housing the public library for many years and now the home of the prestigious Ledbury Poetry Festival which is held annually in July. The House also hosts poetry events throughout the year such as this recent Four Voices afternoon.
On that special Sunday in the House, we sat back and listened, bathed in late autumn sunshine shining through leaded windows and surrounded by wall quotes from famous poets Benjamin Zephaniah, Don Paterson, Helen Dunsmore. Folks had come from Stourbridge, Birmingham, Shrewsbury, Tenbury as well as local parts and were rewarded with the work of four very different, very gifted poets.
Tina Cole, who had been the driving force behind the event, made the introductions and then our first treat was a reading from Jean Atkin, Shrewsbury poet and former Troubadour of the (Malvern) Hills, just returned from a writing residency in Latvia. Jean took us on a tour – geographical, emotional, magical – with poems from her 2023 book, High Nowhere (Indigo Dreams Publishing),nominated for the 2024 Laurel Prize. She invited us to consider the mystery and beauty of our planet by taking us to the black ash plains of Iceland, the land of the trolls, and to Solway Firth in With the Millers ofAir, her haunting homage to wind farms, the ‘high ghosts of the Solway sandbacks’. She also asked us to reflect on the current plight of our world and the threat of climate change in her stunning poem Naming the Dead in which she names the last of the vanishing creatures – the last Pyrenean ibex, the last Polynesian sea snail, the last Carolina Parakeet. Jean will have a new pamphlet published next year in collaboration with Michael Thomas on the topic of walking.
Next up was Tina Cole herself, a Tenbury Wells poet with three published pamphlets and another due out in 2025. Her reading, from her last collection, What It Was (Mark Time Books, 2023), was a striking shift in focus after Jean’s segment on the natural world and the its creatures. Tina’s poems were about people. She set the scene, explaining that her reading would explore an emotional Black Country landscape, looking at the ‘pass the parcel’ of generational trauma. Her poems spoke to us of ‘genetic hand-me-down like Grandma’s Irish linen’, of ‘pond skaters’ and ‘snap, crackle and pop’ moments and a stand-out statement of forgiveness – ‘it was not malice’. Her delivery, in one continuous burst with no breaks, made for a moving and memorable journey into a very human experience. No doubt, many present that Sunday recognised elements of Tina’s generous offering.
Lesley Ingram’s segment switched the tone yet again based as it was on her collection, Scumbled (Cinnamon Press, 2015),a set of poems responding to the artwork of Yorkshire-woman Maggie Taylor. As a result. Lesley’s reading was very visual with a surreal, dream-like quality as we heard about red girls and butterfly whisperers, the ‘gauze beyond the garden’, shape-shifters, pink ribbons and a lichen dress. Lesley has tried many things in life including stints as an Italian book rep, a customs officer, VAT inspector, an IT analyst to name but a few. On that November Sunday, the Ledbury audience was very grateful that she has found her place as a poet.
The final treat was a reading from A Time for such a Word (Black Pear Press, 2024) by Michael Thomas, delivered with warmth and humour by its author, an Irish-British writer now living in Worcestershire. These poems offered some acutely-observed and compassionate insights into ordinary life: a poem named for a road, B4976, another named Centra for the popular supermarket chain in Ireland which spoke movingly of ‘the women who work/in the Kilfinane Centra’ and their modest hope ‘for nothing from the day/save that it should end as it began/with dryish light/a roof/a ring of gas for the carrots’ and a safe family at home. Michael’s sensitive, gentle and loving work. honouring the real lives people live, will remain long in the memory.
Four very different voices at The Poetry House. One stunning autumn Sunday in Ledbury.
Many very content and uplifted listeners. Please let’s have much more of this.
By: Bernadette Lynch
Further Events and Information
- Poetry Events and Diversions in Ledbury
- Tina Cole will be reading for Canterbury University Poets on Zoom on the 8th December at 6.30 pm
- Jean Atkin
- Michael Thomas will be reading at ‘Country Voices’, hosted by Simon Fletcher for Offa’s Press, on Saturday, 15th February at The Water Rat, Buildwas Road, Ironbridge, Shropshire, TF8 7BJ on the third Saturday of the month, usually from 2.30 to 4.00; here’s the Offa’s Press website
- Also at Poetry Upstairs, The Melville Centre for the Arts, Abergavenny, next year but the date is to be confirmed
- Michael W Thomas
- Swan Report