Poetry and Silence – online, Tuesday 2nd December 2025, 1530 to 1700

The weeks that lead to the year’s shortest day are 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. 

Edward Thomas is gifted an owl’s cry in the night, Arthur Rimbaud holds his breath at dawn, Antonio Machado watches the rain from his winter fireside, Jorie Graham reflects on silence in the poem, Qiu Wei is walking in the hills. 

From Akhmatova, Basho, Bishop, Coleridge, Day-Lewis, Dickinson, Frost, Graham, Heaney, Herbert, Keats, Lalíc, Longfellow, Machado, Petrarch, Qiu Wei, Rimbaud, Saba, Sappho, Stevens, Edward Thomas, Wordsworth, Yeats

These sessions are always focussed 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.