Welcome To Our Website

We are a friendly local poetry group that meets on

the third Sunday of each month to read our own

poetry, listen to others’ poetry and talk about poetry.

Meetings take place on the third Sunday afternoon of

the month starting at 2.00 o'clock and finishing at

approximately 5.15. In December we meet on the

second Sunday.

They are held in the library of Orley

Farm School, South Hill Avenue, Harrow, Middx.


The nearest tube station is South Harrow. There is no

access by car from the South Harrow end of South

Hill Avenue. Entrance to the library is by a door

round to the left of the building.


Fancy yourself as a poet?


Come and listen or read
your own verse. This local

poetry group started in 1992. Visitors £3.00.

For further details and before coming telephone

0208 864 3149.



Below we will be placing some of our latest verse as tasters.

Thursday 12 January 2012

Sunbathers

As snow blows
and we huddle in our
hoods and scarves
trees drop their leaves
and abandon last years fashion,
scattering skirts and underwear
to display their nakedness
like children on a beach.

Today the early morning sun
caught their dark bark
and lit it bright with orange
as they stretched their arms
to the sky
and basked in the sunlight
letting the glow bronze their skin.

Winter is an intimate
time of year
for trees.

©Jane Upchurch
www.janeupchurch.co.uk

Wednesday 11 January 2012

Evacuee

She washed up in a shoreside terraced cottage
fostered by a Devon couple, gentle,
loving, in this haven came to know
the heaven of a sandy beach. With pail
and wooden spade, she reconstructed house,
cathedral, school and sweet shop ubder skies
with no more in them than unworried gulls
which skimmed her pet name here of Dimples, limned
in capitals, in sand the perfect stage
of damp, with with edges of spade and then with shells.
She paddled in the playful waves with squeals
of new delight, quite cleansed of dread. In bed,
tucked, lulled, she breathed, in sleeping synchrony,
the soothing music of the rhymic sea.

Dorothy Pope

Open-air Baths, West Harrow

She told him that while there were still scrappy fields
all around the estate
each Monday their school made them swim
in the open-air pool
- even in Novembers.

He had seen Johnny weismuller open it
young years before that
saw the great Olympian thrash a top-speed length
before his whole class splashed in
- this he alwats remembers.

Now half way through the winter they sit clasping hands
in the low-ceilinged lounge of their sheltered unit.
As each stares into the embers,
she shivers at the thought of the bitterest cold
while he exullts in the movie star's glow.

Peter Keeble

Geezers Of Nazareth

I know the decorations must be somewhere,
seen photographs of when I'd fixed them up,
and memories are drawing-pinned there with them,
a yesterday from which I'll take a sup.

I watched and wished a big star in the night sky
from childhood tales of Christmas just begun,
and underneath a smile I had forgotten,
I trekked back to the birthplace of his son.

The roads were just a mud patch, dried and stony,
the king would surely never venture here,
but sure enough old Elvis rocked the manger,
and three wise men at least, broke out the beer.

I caught a glance, some fat bloke in a window,
dressed up in green, he punched his mobile's text,
it isn't true, he said, but …what the Dickens,
that’s Santa, selling gifts to undersexed.

Outside the corner tent, Patel was cursing,
his luck was low, and pine trees touched the sky,
he also stacked up angels and some starlight,
and paper chains, but no one knew quite why.

Then up the road came shepherds drunk on sheep dip,
each sang their hallelujahs and passed wind,
they'd come in fancy dress, geezers of Nazareth,
and as they stormed the barn, the wise ones thinned.

Each squinted in the candle brightened hay stack,
a child was born, sang Mathis (to their shock),
they all got down and partied with old Mary,
and Joseph pulled some JD from his frock.

I heard that some years later, short on shekels,
young Jesus (who'd been inside left for Rome),
signed books, and balls to anyone he'd hated,
his online blogging buzz, slid to a drone.

Now leaning on this lamp post, where once gas light
would rest its glow on hardened, weary souls,
take note from lowly ancients and their fan base,
and write yourself a bible, don't score goals.

Jerry Pike