Sunday Lunch in Tahiti

Listen to another poem from Helmsley Arts Centre. Martin is a Trustee and Treasurer of Helmsley Arts Centre and a member of the Ryedale Writers group based there.
listen to ‘Sunday Lunch in Tahiti by Martin Vander Weyer’ on Audioboo

The Ballad of the Old Meeting House by Martin Vander Weyer

On the 18th day of the 12th month of 2012 Helmsley Arts Centre celebrated the 200th birthday of its home, The Old Meeting House in Helmsley, built by the Quakers in 1812. The party was so successful everyone there agreed we shouldn't wait another hundred years for the next one! One of the evening's delights was the music provided by the Red Hot Santas ski band, last seen in Helmsley market square during the Queen's jubilee celebrations in 2012 - wonderfully energetic, a joyous, funny yet precisely controlled anarchy, that lifted people to their feet to move to its rhythms. Another was this Ballad written and read by Martin, with action in the background provided by Sue Elm and Charlie Grumbley.

As you see you are not actually seeing (as suggested by the box on our website) but only hearing Martin read his ballad but we hope you enjoy it just the same.

If you would like to read the Ballad for yourself then you can on Helmsley Arts Centre website.

Listen to our new poem

listen to ‘Remembering the Cats by David Powley’ on Audioboo

Ryedale Open Literature Entertainment

A meesage from John Dean:

Now, with April’s sweet showers around, a new open access occasional literary group is forming. Ryedale Open Literature Entertainment (ROLE), with the aim to share poetry, plays and prose, initially in Kirkbymoorside, then at various Ryedale venues.

Examples of activities which will assist the launch of  ROLE, directly or indirectly, include:

* the Scarborough Literature Festival 

* a book launch by poet Paul Munden: poems and photographs of Shandy Hall, Coxwold. Thursday 12 April, 7 -7.45 p.m. at Kirkbymoorside Library tickets available £1 now at the Library;

* poetry sharing at and around the Daffodil Walk in Farndale on Sunday 15th April

* a WEA literary course launch ‘True Voices of Feeling’ - Friends Meeting House, Kirkbymoorside   Monday 16th April 10.45-12.45 for ten weeks.

If you would like to help with these readings, or at others in the future, please contact John at 01439 771639 or email.

John Dean

Helmsley Arts Centre Poetry Competition

TS Eliot is the Nation's Favourite Poet!

After more than 18,000 votes were cast TS Eliot is given the title of 'nation's favourite poet' by an online poll hosted by the BBC to mark National Poetry Day.

The results of the online poll saw Eliot win in a "tight final", according to the BBC, narrowly pipping John Donne to the post. In an eclectic top 10, Rastafarian dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah came in third (the only living poet to make the top 10), while no female poets – not even poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy or Sylvia Plath - made the final line-up, which was rounded out by Wilfred Owen, Philip Larkin, William Blake, William Butler Yeats, John Betjeman, John Keats and Dylan Thomas.

Read The Waste Land (extract)
Watch Eliot read Little Gidding
Find out more about Eliot

Arena: TS Eliot
Thurs 8 Oct 2009 22:25 BBC Four
Arena presents a profile of TS Eliot which, with unprecedented co-operation from the Eliot Estate, tells the story of one of the 20th century's most celebrated and elusive writers. Rpt.
Watch on BBC iPlayer

T.S. Eliot reading The Waste Land. Recording of the poem by the poet himself.