Open Poetry Competition Results

17th April 2012

The winners of the 41st Open Poetry Competition,

adjudicated by Helen Ivory:

1st Mother by Dorothy Fryd

2nd Hotel Small Hours by Gina Shaw

3rd Love, the Verb by Dana Smith

Family: My Parents Staying by Nicolette Golding

Humorous: Epitaph for our Time by Gerard McKee

Minimalist: Little Stars by Chris Hardy

A further sixty-two poems were selected from the 622 entries and featured in this year’s anthology with ten “Highly Commended” and twelve “Commended”.
The evening was made very interesting as many of the poets had travelled to Norwich to hear the results and read their poems. Altogether it was a very successful year and the evening was most enjoyable.

 Chairman Adrain Dearnley

 Judge Helen Ivory

 Vice President Elizabeth Bencze presents 1st Prize

Dorothy Fryd reads winning poem "Mother"

“The Incomparable Mr Dick”

3rd April 2012

Peter Mieville's talk reflected on life and works of Charles Dickens. He noted that the author had many local connections to this region and was partly inspired to write “David Copperfield” after a visit to Norwich. Reviewing his early career culminating in his fame with the publication of “The Pickwick Papers” his prolific writing was in part motivated by his desire to support a large number of relatives. Peter gave moving readings, illustrating Dickens level of perception, consciousness and humour and a lively discussion rounded off a very enjoyable evening.

Information supplied by Adrian Dearnley

Results of Competition 3

Tuesday 20th March 2012
The winners of Competition 3 for the Colin Sutton Cup for Humour, A Tall Tale judged by storyteller Andrew Brammer

1st “A Portrait of the Forger as a Young Man” by Sally Newton
2nd “Mrs Patterson’s Flowers” by Victoria Bartlett
3rd “Barney’s Continental Adventure” by Doreen Rosser

Laughter was the main ingredient of the evening with a twist in the tale, a misleading statement and a bumbling hero. The winners were chosen from 14 entries all of whom found life farcical and entertaining.


Forthcoming event
Our next meeting on 3rd April has a more classical bent with Peter Mieville reflecting on life and works of Charles Dickens with a talk titled “The Incomparable Mr Dick.”

March 6th 2012: Speaker, Anne Potter on “The Writer’s Web”

Anne Potter started the evening with a brief history of her working life then followed by giving the members the benefit of the many facts that she has gleaned in her two years of research about publishing your own work on the web. Encouraging members to ask questions at the end of each section, she covered selling short stories, articles, novels and online submissions, which were both interesting and informative.

The handouts she brought with printouts of web pages complete with step by step explanations were welcome and helpful, particularly to novices who might be nervous when first trying to navigate the web.

 Anne completed the evening with a brief set of guidelines for

Competition 4 A short science fiction or fantasy story.

It should be some thing readable, could be some scientific invention that you can extrapolate or fantasy: person power, fairies, etc Anne suggested we look at websites for examples of these.

Please look on the guidelines in your programme for format.