Pimento poets launch new work....

The latest work of Pimento poets!

A new anthology of poems written by members of this Long established Lincoln group.

See below of details of the launch in Lincoln at a free event.

Pimento meetings in 2019....

We now meet on Tuesdays once a month at the Lincoln Library. Good venue with a round table and chairs for the dozen of us!

Plenty of superb poetry and stimulating discussion.

May it long continue.....

Pimento Poets meet to read and discuss their poetry….14th March 2016.

For our March meeting Sue Wallace will be leading the discussions on our work.

Please bring recent work which you want to read to the group.

We meet at 10.30 am but the room is available from 10 am if you want to arrive earlier.

Refreshments available from the tearooms.

Pimento Tearooms on 14th March 2016!

Pimento Poets: Shirley Bell, a new member this year……..

We have a new member: Shirley Bell.

Shirley joined us at the last couple of meetings and read some of her works.

Her biographical details reveal an interesting and diverse background:

Married for 42 years (!) with 3 adult children and 3 grandchildren. With her husband, Shirley Bell has run a cactus nursery for many years, written and illustrated gardening books for GMC publications, and worked as a wedding and social photographer.
In the past substantial selections of her poetry were published by Faber and Faber in Poetry Introduction 6, in Six the Versewagon Poetry manual, Anvil New Poets and Outside The Chain of Hands and she was published in magazines including Ambit, Poetry Review, The London Magazine, The Spectator and many others.

Her poetry has been broadcast on Radio 3 and she also had a small pamphlet published by the Wide Skirt. She has read her work widely throughout the country including at the South Bank and the Arvon Centres in Yorkshire and Devon.

Recently she completed an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Lincoln, and in 2013 she published a pamphlet ‘behind the glass’ as part of her course and compiled and edited an anthology of the work of the students on the course, The Black Path 1, which was published in June of that year.

Her poems have recently appeared in The Rialto and The North and in a new anthology 'fathers and what must be said', published by Rebel Poetry.

We will be posting some of Shirley's work in the next few days……...

Meet the Poets: Susan Wallace.

                                                   Susan Wallace

Susan enjoyed poetry at school but then got distracted by other things for about fifty years.

During these decades she has taught and researched in the UK and overseas; published more than a dozen works of non-fiction; edited Oxford’s Dictionary of Education; and is currently Emeritus Professor of Education at Nottingham Trent University.

She admires particularly the work of Larkin, Betjeman and U.A. Fanthorpe. 

Her own poetry, which  has been published in a number of journals and anthologies, has been described as  ‘neatly faceted and rich in slant rhyme.’

Meet the Poets: Maureen Sutton.

Meet the Poets: Maureen Sutton.


Maureen has been organising poetry and folk events for many years in the Lincoln area and is a founding member and leading light in the Pimento poets group.


She is well known as a public speaker, folksinger and broadcaster.

Maureen has had numerous poems published in local and East Midlands poetry magazines. She has also had three books published on Lincolnshire folklore: We didn't know Owt was short-listed for both first and second edition for the Catherine Briggs Memorial Prize. Another of her books is A Lincolnshire Calendar. For many years she has been published in Lincolnshire Life Magazine.

She has contributed to our last two anthologies: Voices from the Deep and Long Time Passing, a century of Wars.

My poem for submission to the new anthology of poetry to be published in 2014 as a commemoration to the first world war.

Grantchester Meadows - Autumn (Photo credit: hchalkley)

Some Hand: Extracts from a one act play.

Opening scene: On shaking hands with a Cambridge undergraduate at Grantchester in the glorious early Spring of 1916, before he goes to the Somme, as an officer and a gentleman.

In the dappled orchard of Grantchester we meet.

He, a student of merit, an athlete.

We meet, we greet.

We shake hands for the first and last time.

This is the hand of the Elite.

He has not worked below his feet,

In mine, nor steel.

Fingers are long,

Elegant strong.

Slim but not thin,

Meant for the Boardroom.

Academic hand,

Aristocratic hand,

Young lover’s hand.

Man’s veins down the middle

Branching into light blue rivulets.

Blue-blood hands.

Skin light and Bright

Coloured sun-brown

Not grasping, but open honest.

Athletic hand,

Keen hand,

Fast-moving hand,

Muscled and clean.

This is the hand that could feed a family.

Could rule a nation. Destined for things great.

This is a hand that has touched and loved.

This is a hand of a gentle man.

These are just the hands we need to make war.

Below the Autumn-laden apple trees we laugh,

Hand round the scones and tea.

The blueskygoldsun dips and fades.

And on the air, I hear the rain.

Vernon Goddard Revised December 2013.

Some Land: Extracts from the front of stage: July, 1916.

Another scene, another place, another time. On 1st July, 1916, 100,000 Allied troops advanced from the trenches of the Somme anticipating an easy and quick break-through of the enemy lines. This was not to be. Over the course of the next few months, and, by the end of the battle, a million and a quarter men had perished.

Picardy: ancient orchard, fringed with charlock,

Scabious and cornflower under heavy skies.

Sancta terra, sacred land;

Sangua terra, bloody land.

Now my land,

My place, my bunker as cold as any pit.

Noisy in the fireworks.

My gun, my bayonet, steel-hard,

Clean, bright and lightly oiled.

My bloodied hand, deep-red.

My men, my few men left, so few now.

We shake each others hands or nod.

Seven thirty.

And the barrage

Stops.

My breathing, coming hard.

And in the air, I feel the rain.

Head wet, hair wet like Brylcream,

Kit wet, boots ready to parade.

Lips dry.

My whistle in my mouth.

And with one soft peeeeeep,

We're up,

Over and out.

We greet and meet the terrible rain,

The leaden drizzle.

Some fall, I fall.

Just like the rain,

On Byron's pool.

Sancta terra, Sangua terra.

Vernon Goddard Revised December 2013.

Copyright David Vernon Goddard.