26th November 2015, The Swan Hotel, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire BA15 1LN
It was a busy night at Words & Ears this month, with our guest poet Rose Flint attracting a good crowd of new and familiar faces, bringing with them some strong and stirring open mic contributions. Special thanks in particular to Linda Saunders, who read two exquisite poems by Duncan Tweedale, who sadly died this week. Rose read from her new collection, A Prism for the Sun, and from earlier and new work, and although insisting that she writes only about 'where she lives', cast her net widely across the plain of human experience - and the struggle of nature to maintain some kind of balance in a precarious world. She filled the room with birds - their sounds, colours - but the gentleness of her delivery belies a sterner streak, and we met with the shape of the hunter - a hawk, and later, a fox. She has, she confessed, a passion for the raw energy of predators. And in fact, earlier poems, set in hospitals where she was poet in residence, link a not dissimilar melding of compassion and realism - small, isolated moments of joy or tragedy, set against a wider context of our joint survival, our interconnectedness. Also particularly moving and powerful are Rose's poems dedicated to her young granddaughter, addressing her a dozen or more years ahead, when she is 18. Have a read of Circus Skills for Young Girls at www.poetrypf.co.uk/roseflintpage.shtml and you'll see what I mean.
