Dear Poetry Friends
DECEMBER 2025 TO JANUARY 2026 NEWSLETTER
THE NEW LAMB PUB SERIES ALSO GOES ONLINE NOW
Tuesday 2 December 2025, from 1530 to 1730
NEW ONLINE EVENT
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
| LIVE IN LONDON – NEW LAMB SERIES ALSO AT LUNCHTIME NOW |
NEW LIVE EVENT
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 Lalícfinds 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
| LIVE – NEW SERIES CONTINUES OUT OF LONDON TWO EVENTS IN THE SERIES ARE NOW BOOKABLE FOR YOUR LOCAL VENUE |
POETRY AND HOPE
Clarke, Creagh, Dickinson, Emerson, Hardy, Heaney, Herbert, Khayyam, Shakespeare, Szymborska, Tennyson, Wylie
More at https://www.grahamfawcett.co.uk/event/poetryandhopeontour2026-2-2-2
Image: Francesco Zurbaran, Cup of Water and a Rose on a Silver Plate (1625), National Gallery, London
POETRY AND STRENGTH
Akhmatova, Bishop, Bukowski, Clare, Creagh, Day-Lewis, Dickinson, WS Graham, Heaney, Henley, Khodasevich, Millay, Moore, Shapcott, Tennyson, R S Thomas, Wilcox, Zagajewski
Image: Edgar Degas, Young Spartan Women Challenging Spartan Youths to a Wrestling Match c. 1860, National Gallery, London
MORE AT https://www.grahamfawcett.co.uk/event/poetryandstrengthontourin2026-2-2-2
If you are writing . . .
Graham continues to read, comment on, and give tutorials for typescripts of poetry and prose, including collections. Contact him if you would be interested in this for yourself or anyone else at [email protected] .
“How grateful I am for your unfailing gift of wise counsel – whether it’s about a philosophy or the placing of a comma, you’ve been on to it. And never daunting, always friendly”. Patrick Coldstream, Hertfordshire (2021)
“Your work on my book taught me so much”. Celia Purcell (2022)
“A masterclass in line-breaks and word order.” Owen Gallagher (2022)
“Thank you again for your excellent feedback. It’s been a thrilling process having such attention paid to my work. I have recommended you to a very good friend who is preparing a poetry pamphlet for competitions. Vishvantara (2024)
I may also be running live and online seminars in 2026. For typescript reading, tutorials or seminars, write to me at [email protected]
All best wishes
Graham