ON a recent weekday evening, dozens of people crowded into the Oxfam charity bookshop in Portbello Road, West London for a poetry reading organized by the steadily growing grassroots poetry movement Pass on a Poem. Some 20 people among the gathering had come along to read poems they had chosen. The rules are that the poems should have been published in a book or magazine and that readers should not read their own poetry. The compere, William Stadlen, introduced each reader in turn with a few biographical details about them, and each reader began by explaining their choice of poem. The poets whose work was read ranged widely in time and genre, from Ancient Greek poet Sappho to Shakespeare, Robert Browning, Gerard Manley Hopkins, D H Lawrence, Constantine Cavafy and Dylan Thomas. Poems by contemporary writers included the suggestive “Warming her Pearls” by Carol Ann Duffy, and “How to Leave the World That Worships should” by American-born British poet Ros Barber. As is customary at Pass on a Poem gatherings, the readings were full of verve, humor and the unexpected. Frances Stadlen, the founder of Pass on a Poem, summed up the event on the organization's website: “Against a background of cyclones, implacable dictatorships, earthquakes and impending economic collapse... poetry felt especially bracing and enjoyable. The great diversity of the poems chosen and also of the readers' ages and occupations, as well as the palpable sense of enjoyment at the end of the evening, demonstrated how much poetry has to offer – even at the end of a working day in the middle of the week.” Frances launched Pass on a Poem in 2006 with the aim of giving people an opportunity of enjoying more poetry, or discovering its pleasures and uses for the first time, through readings in intimate, informal and relaxed surroundings. The events are free, and subscribers to the Pass on a Poem website also get a weekly poem e-mailed to them. The organization's profile was boosted in May 2007 when a special evening of celebrity readings was held at Oxfam Books to mark the start of regular Pass on a Poem readings there, every three months or so. Among the 17 celebrities who read at that evening were broadcaster and journalist Mariella Frostrup, crime writer PD James, Spectator editor Matthew d'Ancona, bass guitarist (of the group Blur) and farmer and writer Alex James, journalist and novelist Rachel Johnson (sister of new London mayor Boris) and actress Fiona Shaw. Frances told me of the three main things she finds so special about Pass on a Poem. The first is “the opportunity - so rare these days - for any ordinary person to participate in or create part of a live cultural happening: the same real buzz as, say, music making, but accessible because it requires no training or practice.” The second is “being hit for six when discovering or rediscovering a poem you choose to read or, as a listener, hear. Usually there is at least one, if not two or three, poems per reading that really grab you.” And thirdly, the events offer “the palpable sense of human fellowship and of equality that builds once the readers start sharing their choices and the reasons for them. “ She traces the initial spark for the idea of Pass on a Poem back to her childhood boarding school experiences of having to listen to classical music on Sunday evenings and to look at Renaissance art reproductions projected onto a wall through an epidiascope, without being required to respond to either in any way. “They were offered to us purely for pleasure to make of them privately what we wanted or could,” she recalls. “I found both experiences revelatory, exciting and also soothing – in the sense that they allow one to enter reverie and dream – beyond words.” When she later found poetry to be the art form to which she responded most deeply, she in turn wanted “to do something to make it available, free and unencumbered, to people who might have been intimidated by it, perhaps at school, or perhaps had never have encountered it at all.” Pass on a Poem is gaining momentum, partly through word of mouth, and the original group based in Portobello Road has spawned similar groups that meet regularly in Turnham Green, West London and at the adult education institution Hillcroft College in Surbiton, Surrey. In March the well-known journalist Bel Mooney hosted a Pass on a Poem evening at her house in Bath, Somerset. In her Daily Mail column, Mooney described poetry as “the best medicine for the soul” and said “how can I begin to tell you what a strange and special and wildly successful evening it turned out to be?” People in many places in Britain expressed interest in starting a Pass on a Poem group. There is also interest abroad. Frances says that “a Swedish textile artist who came to the Bath group told Bel Mooney that she wanted to set up a group in Sweden when she returns to live there. Also two expats, one living in Berlin, one in rural France, have contacted me, presumably having found the website, wanting to start groups for their local English community.” The success of Pass on a Poem is one indication of the resurgence of poetry in Britain. There is a proliferation of readings, festivals, anthologies and collections, magazines, and poetry ‘slam' competitions, as well as frequent coverage of poetry in newspapers and on radio programs including BBC Radio 4's weekly Poetry Please. The Radio 4 weekly Saturday morning chat program Saturday Live always has a poet in the studio to provide a running commentary. The Guardian and Independent daily newspapers both recently issued rival series of free poetry booklets. The seven Guardian booklets, each with a foreword by a prominent writer, focused on the great poets of the 20th Century, while the 12 Independent booklets written by Michael Schmidt, Professor of Poetry at Glasgow University, featured poets from Geoffrey Chaucer to Thomas Hardy. The Independent columnist Johann Hari , who normally writes on political topics, wrote a column last week headed “As life flies on, don't let poetry pass you by” in which he told of his conversion to poetry over the past four years. A further indication of the appetite for poetry is the establishment by the poet laureate Andrew Motion of a remarkable website, the Poetry Archive (www.poetryarchive.com), of recordings of poets, past and contemporary, reading their own work. It goes as far back as Tennyson, who died in 1892, reading from “the Charge of the Light Brigade.” I asked Frances why she thinks poetry seems to be so popular at the moment. “I hesitate to say, but I guess it may have to do with the scraping out of our spiritual wombs on the one hand and on the difficulties caused by the surge of individualism, but also loss of identity, on the other – ie with an attempt to locate and to solve ourselves. This is no different from any other time, but perhaps it is more acute right now.” The website of Pass on a Poem is www.passonapoem.org __
