Poetry Exchange: pilgrims of hope

This is a monthly evening in convivial company to share poems that inspire, intrigue, challenge or delight, with an optional shared theme each month. 

The Pilgrims of Hope meetings started with an evening dedicated to the poetry of William Morris, as an example of a multi-skilled artist with a passionate vision of a better future. 

We have grown from there to invite short texts from any author who interests or inspires us. That short text could be a poem, an extract from a diary or article, a short prose piece; and from any writer through time, including ourselves.

Sometimes we start with a theme, as a suggestion rather than as prescription. In May our theme was Hope, and in June the theme was Solstice, to coincide with the summer solstice.  Our September session reconvenes after the summer break with the optional theme of autumn.

The range of texts shared has been extraordinarily rich. In May and June we heard poems from the following authors: 

Kathleen Jamie; Mary Oliver; Robert Louis Stevenson; Christina Rossetti; Mirosluv Holub; Shakespeare; Alistair McLaine; Robin Murray;  Carol Satyamurthi; Thomas Hardy; Ursula le Guin; Wendell Berry; Emily Dickinson; George Szirtes 

We have heard the following participants reading their own work: Joe Butler, Ros Kent, John Dougill, Nick Lewis, John Daniel, Mike Nightingale, Jane Spiro.  

Here is a poem from our first theme, Hope:

"Hope" is the thing with feathers: Emily Dickinson

Hope' is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all-

And sweetest - in the Gale- is heard-

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm - 

I've heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

Here is a poem from our second theme: Solstice

Indian Summer by Joe Butler

It's the hazy, dusky drunkenness that comes after sex -
a seed-sown, harvest-home contentment
in the woodlands and hedgerows -
the trees at ease with themselves in their pollen-passed
post-coital raptures:
conception achieved for another year, their branches pregnant.
And listen - you can hear the stretch marks ripple
through the swollen purple of the plums and wild damsons,
a come-hither calling to birds, and boys with sticks, 
and girls with lips grown sticky with eating.
Listen - to the pinprick primp and pimple
of the thousand tiny eyelets of the blackberries.
The blushes redden on the apples' cheeks,
the gloss grows more lustrous on the beads of sloe and haw and hip.
In their spiky shells the chestnuts harden to mahogany.
And the trees themselves grow langorous, like-to-like,
link arms across their lovers' lanes,
caress a fading consciousness.
'How was it for you?' the oak trees ask.
The ashes nuzzle at each others' necks.
The birch are still a-tremble.
And at their feet the warm earth opens
to receive
another generation.