Poetry and Music at North Books

 The shop was packed, but there was just space for a keyboard and the viola player, and Simon the Poet.

Sadly, Omar Majeed couldn't make it, but Simon had put together a very good programme of nature poetry even though he admitted that he hadn't given much thought to climate change or climate activism up until now.  Rod and Steven provided musical interludes.

The first poem was from Cressida Gethin, the girl from Dorstone who is now in prison for helping to arrange a Zoom call to organise the blocking of the M25 motorway as a protest.

This was followed by a poem about hiking in the Rockies by Gary Snyder and a Czech poem called Prayer for Water.  Simon has been translating Czech poems into English, and Rod at the piano actually lived in Czechoslovakia from 1968 for a time.  Rod said that everyone in Czechoslovakia knows this poem, and it has great meaning for them.  When Simon had recited the English version, he repeated the last verse in Czech, and followed that up with part of his own Moravian Suite - Moravia was the part of Czechoslovakia that Jan Scakel the poet came from, and where he lived just down the road.

Then we got part of Wordsworth's poem about Tintern and the Wye Valley, and a poem by Gerald Manley Hopkins.

Simon read one of his own poems, about living with sheep just above Hay, and followed it up with Wendell Berry and Mary Oliver.

All of these poets are worth seeking out, by the way.  Their work is wonderful.

We finished with a Welsh lullaby, sung by Ros, who was sitting in the audience - so it was a trilingual evening, with English, Czech and Welsh.  Rod said that, when he brings musicians together to play jazz, the group is called Blue Haddock, and Ros lives in Tenby and is a mermaid - so the title for the evening was Blue Haddock and the Tenby Mermaid.

It was a wonderful evening, and a lot of money was raised for the Prison Phoenix Trust, which is a charity that organises yoga and meditation sessions in prisons.