Turning Up
On Poetry and Community
Image: Dokyung Kim, Unsplash
Last week I took part in two events at the Dobunni Poetry Festival, Stroud’s new festival of poetry, community and place, organised by the extraordinarily determined and energetic Dialect team and Gloucestershire Poetry Society. On Friday my son was ill and being looked after by my sister. I taught a 2.5-hour life writing class on Zoom and then got a taxi to the venue. I’d had little sleep and I’m currently pretty done in by navigating a particularly rocky stage with my small child. But Lansdown Hall was laid out beautifully with tables and chairs, cabaret-style. There were drinks and snacks in the green room. There were friendly, talented poets. And there was an appreciative audience, including some kind and familiar faces.
After the reading we stood outside in the Bank gardens and chatted. I learned that Jenny Joseph (best known for her poem ‘Warning’) had spent a big chunk of her life living just up the road in Minchinhampton. I listened as another poet told us how she’d once driven across London with a life-sized spitting image puppet of Ronald Reagan in the driving seat — all part of a life spent working with puppets and puppeteers. I chatted to another poet who I’ve been bumping into at poetry events for almost two decades… After dashing home to relieve my sister I went back into town to chair a reading and discussion focusing on debut collections, in the beautiful Borderless Books.
Having a poetry festival on my doorstep is a massive gift for a poet and solo mum: no complicated travel, no complicated childcare — at least, if the fates are kind and no unusual illnesses afflict us. At the debut poets event we had brilliant, warm readings from Suyin du Bois, Rose Lennard and Ellora Sutton, and then chatted about first collections, autobiography/fiction and the lyric ‘I’, and what support we most valued when we were starting out as poets. I asked what support our poets had felt was missing, or what could be improved. Ellora mentioned that poetry culture still seems quite London-centric, and that decentralising it and making it more accessible are still works in progress.
