Dear Poetry Friends
DECEMBER 2025, JANUARY AND FEBRUARY 2026 NEWSLETTER (new event added in February)
THE NEW LAMB PUB POETRY AND . . . SERIES ALSO GOES ONLINE NOW
Tuesday 2 December 2025, from 1530 to 1730
NEW ONLINE EVENT – some places available (see event page for how many)
POETRY AND SILENCE
The slow approach to the year’s shortest day is a natural time for deepening reflection. Many people find a potent silence in the action of reading or writing poetry.
We sense a stillness that surrounds those moments when poetry ‘moves’ us. There are qualities of silence on the poem’s page, along the lines, connecting the verses, above, below, beside and between the words. And there is the experience of silence in life which comes to us through the poet’s understanding of our inner and outer worlds. Poets who read poetry make better poets. Readers get better too.
From Akhmatova, Basho, Bishop, Coleridge, Day-Lewis,
Dickinson, Frost, J Graham, Heaney, Herbert, Hirshfield, Keats,
Lalíc, Longfellow, Machado, Petrarch, Qiu Wei, Rimbaud, Saba, Sappho,
Stevens, Edward Thomas, Wordsworth, Yeats
FOR MORE, AND TO BOOK, GO TO: https://www.grahamfawcett.co.uk/event/poetryandsilenceonline-2-2-2-2
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LIVE IN LONDON – NEW LAMB SERIES ALSO AT LUNCHTIME NOW |
NEW LIVE EVENT – some places available
POETRY AND DISCOVERY
Tuesday 13 January 2026
from 1130am to
1245 (lunch there 1245 to 2pm) and 2pm to 3pm
Empire Bar, The Lamb, 94 Lamb’s Conduit St, London WC1N 3LZ
Discovery is the dividend of reading. Poems about discovery can be our
best reminder of the desirability of living here and now: these poems, at their best, celebrate noticing what just happened (on or off the page) and stopping to drink it in. Elizabeth Bishop can make you think that you have never really seen a fish before, John Ormond that you have not thought thoroughly about the builders of cathedrals. Every time, the poet is at least one step ahead of us, or even on a path we’ve never taken. The result may be renewal as well as newness, which is what W H Auden meant when he hoped his reader would say, “Of course, I knew that all the time but never realized it before.”
And for writers of poetry, to be caught on the wing by a poet’s moment of grace or irony or surprise is to see that such a moment is simply a translation of what they had themselves stumbled on. So Ivan Lalíc finds communion with a young woman visited by Vesuvius in Pompeii, William Carlos Williams discovers the taste of cold plums, Philip Larkin listens to trees. Their discoveries need not be envied, because they have gifted each one to us, and we get to live twice over and over again.
Berryman, Bishop, Causley, cummings, Dante, Dickinson, Farjeon, Hardy, Heath-Stubbs, F Horowitz. Jamie, Kay, Kinnell, Lalíc, Larkin, Lawrence, Millay, Ormond, Stafford.
MORE DETAILS AND TO BOOK: https://www.grahamfawcett.co.uk/event/poetryanddiscoverylunchtime-2-2-2
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LIVE ON THE DORSET COAST
NEW LIVE EVENT
POETRY AND . . .
Thursday 5th to Sunday 8th February 2026
from 4pm on Thursday 5th to after lunch on Sunday 8th
Othona Community, Coast Road, Burton Bradstock, Bridport, Dorset
We are living in unusual times. Never has a small community like Othona seemed more able to fill the gap in our lives and massage what we have.
The four themes of this weekend belong together like a quartet of instruments: hope against the odds, strength to manage our lives and ourselves, discovery of new ways and possibilities, and silence as a place of renewal and energy.
These retreat sessions are always focused and informal. Everyone can feel free to express their thoughts and feelings about the poems as they want to. A lot of ground gets covered, poems and readers come alive, and friends are quickly made of the poets and each other.
This retreat may book up quite quickly, as Othona has a large database to publish to. For full details, including more about Othona and how to book, go to:
https://www.othonawestdorset.org.uk/civicrm/event/info?id=2364
All best wishes
Graham