A happy and creative time!

Our Next Session will be on Friday 23rd June at The Folly in Settle. 6.30pm drinks reception followed by the programme for the evening - featuring Elephant poems, Kathleen Jones and Roger Scowcroft. See more here



We had a great time at The Festival of Happiness in Settle last weekend. Well done to our friends at Settle Stories for organising it. It was burning hot sunshine in the morning and monsoon-like rain in the afternoon, but hey! this was the May Bank Holiday weekend!

As well as having fun with our own and other people's poems in our half our slot later in the day, we invited everyone during the day to add a line or two to 'Everyone's Poem' - which they did!

Around 40 people, young, old and in the middle came along and added a line or two. The result is this funny, witty, moving, thought provoking poem  - one to be very proud of!

Everyone's Poem!

Here's the first line of our poem today

Just add your own to make it grow

Then everyone young and old can say

"With our happy poem off we go!"

 

It's great to be here hunting our the fun

Settle for nothing less.

Join in the yoga, meditation Tai-chi

All ways of relieving your stress!

Family and Friends is happy days

best served with sunshine, gratitude and

festival spirit

Look around you let the juices floe

Do it today – there may be no tomorrow

But if there is allow the zeal to grow

So live today as if it were your last

Live in the present – not the past.

Beauty is located in the smallest of places

Keep your eyes peeled for love's delicate traces

Just the shape of a leaf or smile of a stranger

Only Travel miles of smiles...

Here is Settle this doesn't mean danger

Banter and Blessings in Yorkshire's great land

United with the power of a belting brass band 😊

Vibrating Settle, the town with a buzz

Join in, have fun, as everyone does

The Stalls and pub some have buns

Sing and Dance and laugh out loud

On our own or in a crowd

Let down the hair that remains

Tomorrow will not be the same

Seasons come and seasons go

Friends say 'goodbye' and new ones 'Hello'

The cottage that we stay in Settle

has brass, wood and metal

Views over the crag, green and brown

Fireworks light up this friendly town

I've just been to the Fest of laughter

And enjoyed several happy things

But nothing deserved a BAFTA

like when the strollers sings

I like playing on my scooter around the lanes of Giggleswick

I wish I had a hooter and I'm very quick

On my scooter I'm very slick!

I can do a great trick

Happiness is with family and friends

Singing, walking, joy that never ends!

It's a hard rain crashing on the roof

beating the rhythm happiness is truth!  😊

Lightning flashes illuminate ideas

Thunder rolls, drowning out fears

Dance in the storm. Today, every day

Never give in, never give way!

The beautiful caterpillar wiggles across the page

It's been raining cats and dogs

And turned our gardens into bogs

Now the weather is fine and dandy

But 'tis still wise to have t'brolly handy

So with thanks to our creative friends

Now it's time our poem ends!

Reception and prize winning poets

You can see a review for the April Settle Session at this link

Settle Sessions took part in the Settle Stories Festival of Happiness in May. We aimed to get everyone to add a line or two to 'Everyone's Poem' all day which you can find out about here.

The next Session will be on Friday 23rd June at 7.30pm at The Folly in Settle with prize winning poets Ron Scowcroft and Kathleen Jones. It will also be the group's AGM and reception.

The evening begins at 6.30pm with a drinks reception followed by a brief AGM.

Then the main event begins at 7.30pm 

Read Two is a special this time, devoted to poems about Elephants taken from A Poetry of Elephants, compiled by Rebecca Gethin. She and a group of poets make the book a reality and the publisher ValMor gave their services for free. 100% of the proceeds from book sales will go to The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which is one of the most successful conservation organisations for wildlife and habitat protection in East Africa.

Ron Scowcroft

Ron Scowcroft's poems have appeared in many literary magazines, prize winners’ anthologies and literary websites. They have also featured in exhibitions by artists Jayne Simpson and John Morrison and been adapted for video by Morph Films. His pamphlet ‘Moon Garden’ was published by Wayleave Press in 2014. He was awarded joint first prize in the McLellan Poetry Competition (2013) and has been highly commended in The Yorkshire Open (2012) and Magma (2011) competitions, as well as being longlisted in the National, Strokestown and Bridport competitions. Ron is a founder member of Lancaster based April Poets

Kathleen Jones was born and brought up on a hill farm in Cumbria and now lives with her partner, sculptor Neil Ferber, on the edge of the Lake District. She has been writing since she was a child and has published fourteen books including eight biographies, a novel and a collection of poetry. She lived for several years in Africa and the Middle East, where she worked for the Qatar Broadcasting Corporation. Since then she has written extensively for BBC radio and contributed to several television documentaries. Kathleen was appointed as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow in 2008 and is currently also a Fellow of the English Society. Her two most recent biographies are ‘Katherine Mansfield: The Storyteller’ (published by Penguin NZ and Edinburgh University Press) and ‘Norman Nicholson: The Whispering Poet’, (published in 2013 by The Book Mill). She is also the author of two novels, The Sun's Companion and The Centauress.

More details at settlesessions.co.uk, info@settlesessions.co.uk.

Flying start for 2017

Settle Sessions got off to a flying start with the first event for 2017 in front of a cosy fire at The Folly, Settle.

The audience responded warmly to a variety of poems from six different readers, some local, others from further afield. The evening kicked off with two readings of two poems each from poets from Middlesborough and Kendal, evoking the life of very different places.

After this Veronica Caperon from Lawkland got the audience laughing and listening with poems full of warm feeling and humour.

The second half began with more humour, when Joan Butler from Austwick read us an encounter between a gushing American tourist and a laconic Dales farmer. We were then taken into deeper water by Maggie How describing the struggle to get through to a close family member suffering from dementia.

We were never far from the everyday world, though looking at it from new angles. The other main reader was Ann Pilling from Hawes whose work held us in deep attention with its musicality and sense of deep relationships.   

 Jean Harrison