On May 5th we got together again with our poet friends under the aegis of ‘The 1000 Monkeys’ to listen to and read their poems. The session confirmed, as it does every month, the injustice of the title of this group, that we set up more than ten years ago, This is no random collection of playful primates equipped with keyboards and charged with recreating all of Shakespeare’s works given an eternity in which to do it. As always I emerged from the hour of readings feeling refreshed and hopeful, buoyed by the creativity of our talented friends.
Each month we can only invite a small number of the hundred or so poets who have given us permission to send them emails about the events; each zoom is open for about an hour. This month we invited fourteen of them to share their work, of whom two had personal and technical reasons for not taking part (but we’ll invite them again next month.) Everyone on our database received the link and thirteen of them came as listeners.
We enjoyed readings by:
​Gary Day (3.07 on the video); Evanthe Blandy (6.21); Aaron Barschak (10.47); Ray Pool (16.05); Anne Symons (21.00); Ranald Barnicot (26.00); Simon Williams (30.30); Jim Conwell (34.33); Daphne Milne (38.36); David Bleiman (42.30); Barry Smith (49.40) and Jenny Brown (56.00)
Dónall was ill this month, having had a difficult chemo session on Monday and Tuesday, so for the first time I was in sole charge. I ended the evening feeling a lot better than when it began. Dónall has recovered from his low point now and is well enough to enjoy the video.
Some of the listeners will be invited to read on June 2nd, and there will be some ‘open mic’ invitations sent out in the week beforehand.
If you would like to join the group, just email your request to Janice at dempseyandwindle@gmail,com. Then you’ll receive the invitations and links to the Zoom events each month, in your inbox.

We hosted another session of poetry with our talented friends on 7th April with a great line-up of readers. Sadly we forgot to turn the video on at the beginning, so Dónall's meditation on Irish 'demon testicles', Christine Vial's memories of her musical family and Tony Watts' ode to trees and his ballad of 'The Bard of Babel' are missing from this video of the event. But you can hear the other nine poets at these locations on the timeline:

1:00 – Chrys Salt (poems about over-age love and a stalker)

5:47 -– Michael Farry (a topical 'April Fool' and an exploration of the sensual properties of fruits)

10:17 – Kathryn Southworth (3 poems from her pamphlet about the Pendle Witch trials in which an ancestor of hers was indicted.)

15:16 – Clive Donovan ('The Roundabout’, ‘The Love Market' and 'She Smiles')

20:30 – Judith Wozniak ('The Lacemaker'; 'The Foundling' and a poem about her Polish father-in law)

28:57 – Jenna Plewes (poems lamenting the loss of bird species and nature)

28:49 – Rosie Barrett ('Homage to a Dog'; 'Summer Comes to Milburn' evidenced by cars caught in tide waters; and observations of the dolphins playing offshore in Devon.

32:58 – Sheila Aldous (two love poems)

36.41 – Anne Alexander ('Up in the Gods'; 'Wassailing' and 'Three Trees')
As always, it was a great pleasure to see so many friends and hear such a variety of brilliant poems. We very much appreciated seeing the friends who joined us as listeners, too: Timothy Adès; Ranald Barnicot; Jan Levin; Jenny Brown Barnet; Ray Poole; Phil Lawder; Audrey Ardern-Jones; Avadne Blandy; Jim Conwell; Alison Edwards, Sue Rothstein and Jean Hall. We hope that some of these listeners will be zooming with us as readers next month, on May 2nd.