Poetry is undoubtedly flourishing today - maybe most people will have heard of half a dozen poets, and Carol Ann Duffy is doing a great job. It is wonderful to read of the Poets for Haiti Appeal.  Suffolk is one of the best places to be with the four cafe poetry groups, the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival and its own county-based poetry society.   

Joe and I attended the Suffolk Poetry Society AGM yesterday. It was the first AGM I have been to since I joined the society three years ago, though I have been involved in several of the events.  The Sutton Hoo Event, the Schubertiad and the Celtic evening were all outstandingly successful. Much of this can be laid at the door of a handful of energetic people who give their time to the rather unpoetic tasks of fundraising, planning and setting up meetings.

I had been asked to speak about the Bury group and I was keen to do this as I regard it as one of the highspots of the Suffolk poetry scene. I think also that the website is technically brilliant and vigorously managed with a huge potential for expansion. Some of the things that SPS currently do laboriously and expensively through the Royal Mail, such as the portfolio, could so much more speedily work through the website (the mechanism has already been put in place).  In many ways I think Poetry Aloud is setting the pace in the promotion of poetry as an active and socially rewarding pursuit.

Unfortunately, I was not able to say what I had wished to as the political business of the AGM overran is time limits. I very much hope that with new people in place the county organisation, which is a venerable and well-financed organ, will be stirred from its past introversion and listen to and learn from the groundlings. That is where the action is.