Settle Sessions

The Folly, Settle

SETTLE Sessions got off to a flying start with the first event for 2017 in front of a cosy fire at The Folly in Settle.

The audience, which comfortably filled the room, responded warmly to a variety of poems from six different readers, some local, others from further afield.

The evening kicked off with readings of two poems each from poets from Middlesborough and Kendal, evoking the life in very different places.

After this Veronica Caperon from Lawkland got the audience laughing and listening with poems full of warm feeling and humour.

The second half began with more humour, when Joan Burton from Austwick read us an imaginary encounter between a gushing American tourist and a laconic Dales farmer.

We were then taken into deeper water by Maggie How describing the struggle to get through to a close family member suffering from dementia. We were never far from the everyday world, though looking at it from new angles.

The other main reader was Ann Pilling from Hawes, whose work held us in deep attention with its musicality and sense of deep relationships.

It was altogether a very successful evening and we’d like to thank the committee and volunteers at the Folly for taking such good care of the practical arrangement.

The next Session will be held at 7.30pm on Friday, June 21, in The Folly when the main readers will be Ron Scowcroft and Kathleen Jones.

Jean Stevens and a group of readers will present a magazine of elephant poems, which is being sold in aid of an elephant charity.

Jean Harrison