Tettenhall Writers’ Group
Meets on the first Saturday of every month from 10.30am-12.30pm at Tettenhall Library, St Michael’s Parish Centre. Telephone Roger on 01902 750313.
Work produced by the group
Here are some examples of our work
Bright Star – or how I came to have an understanding of literature and art
This memoir describes a profound experience I had a very long time ago. But for it I’m sure I wouldn’t have been asked to contribute to this anthology.
It happened one sunny June evening in 1959. I was twenty-two and attending Coleg Harlech. One subject I was studying was English Literature and I could quote countless chunks from plays, novels and poetry, and I could remember all my lecture notes. Naturally I felt very confident about my examination prospects. I knew everything about the subject, everything that is but for one thing – I didn’t understand a word of it! That sad lack of comprehension was to continue until that June evening, mentioned above.
A crowd of us were returning, after a drink in a village down the road. We were hot and tired as we trudged up that long hill, just before you come to Harlech itself, from the South. Eventually we reached the top. The view was stunning. I’d seen it many times but that evening, in that bright clear air, it looked different. I suddenly realised why the locals called that spot, “Good God Corner.”
Laid out below was the empty, three-mile sweep of Harlech Beach. Behind towered the massive backdrop of Snowdon and her sister mountains, and above all that the sun was starting to set in a blaze of red, yellow, orange and purple. I’ve never seen sunsets to equal those over Snowdon and the Llyn Peninsular, and that was the best I ever saw.
The air hung still. Everything was quiet. We sat on that stone wall transfixed, watching the tide slide gently up the sand with hardly a ripple. No one spoke.
Suddenly a shark’s fin broke the surface beneath us. It was a basking shark. We could clearly see its dark bulk below the surface. It glided slowly though the water, keeping never more than ten yards from the shoreline. We watched in fascinated silence for more than twenty minutes until it finally disappeared into the distant and fast gathering gloom.
That week we’d been studying the poem Bright Star by John Keats. As usual I hadn’t understood any of it. But now it was impossible for me to disconnect it from what I’d just witnessed – a beautiful reality had joined with a beautiful piece of literature.
Bright Star.
Bright star, would I were as steadfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Emerite,
The moving waters at their priest-like task
O pure ablution round earth’s human shores.
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors –
No – yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair loves ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest.
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever – or else swoon to death.
I had suddenly, acquired a better understanding of things. Those golden moments had demonstrated that poetry and art are more than just technique and being clever. There must also be beauty and a soul.
I shall forever be grateful for that experience and I sometimes shudder to think I might have missed it. What if I’d remained in college that night or gone off in another direction.
I was truly moved by those “moving waters” that evening, whilst sitting on that wall, and I’m still moved by them to this day.
Roger Jones
Carpe Noctem
Sashaying arm-in-arm through clubs and bars
They razzle-dazzle in their spike-heeled shoes,
Spaghetti-strappy tops and push-up bras,
Low-slung hipsters show G-strings and tattoos
And pierced navels. Drop-dead gorgeous groups
Ricochet round dance-floor, bar and loos,
Propelled by power that never flags nor droops
(or vodka shots and multi-coloured booze).
Armed to the teeth with lip gloss, cash and comb
They party ’til the last bar closes down,
Wolfing hot-dogs as they swagger home –
On Fridays, when the girls go on the town.
Rip-roaring girls, you’re diamond hard and bright:
You reach out with both hands and seize the night.
Jane Seabourne