The Lichfield Poets - Our part in The Mysteries 2009

The Poems

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In 2008 when we were originally asked to take part in The Mysteries, we declined because we were busy working on Stone City Voices as part of the Lichfield Arts' Festival. Also some members had visions of reading poetry in the pouring rain without sound equipment!

The message didn't reach Polly and Jill, however, and they approached us again. Val Thompson and I met up with them over a civilised cuppa in The Garrick coffee bar and as we got further into the discussions all four of us were fired up with enthusiasm. This enthusiasm later rubbed off on to the other group members especially when -with the help of Ann Mayo and Di Kenney- we managed to acquire St Mary's Centre as a venue in which to perform. Initially we were going to present our poetry on the Saturday, but we had our arms twisted - not very hard - to do both Saturday and Sunday as an introduction to the plays.

Then came the difficult bit - writing on religious subjects that some of us did not find particularly motivating. After talking and comparing notes, we started to get ideas down on paper, but many of us seemed to be coming up with poems about Adam and Eve or The 7 Deadly Sins - not sure what that says about our group!

Other poems suddenly started to emerge, however, and before we knew it we had over 70! We asked people to choose no more than 3 of their poems, had a whole group evaluation session and wrote down our comments.

A small group of us then volunteered to look at the outcomes in finer detail and put together ideas on readings, groupings and incorporating different subjects, styles and light and shade. After further discussion and a few changes, a programme was chosen. We had three rehearsals and then it was time to present poetry as part of The Mysteries for the first time.

The whole process was far more time consuming than we ever envisaged and there were last minute concerns about the possibility of the venue being noisy and whether we would need sound equipment. But everything came together really well.

We became The Lichfield Guild of Poets for one weekend only. Wearing our Mysteries' T-shirts and using microphones set up by the sound technician, we gave it our all and thoroughly enjoyed the experience!

We received excellent feedback both verbal and written.

In addition Val liaised with Sylvia Royle from The Guild of Artists and then produced some attractive bookmarks using the designs from local art work. These were sold after our performances and also in the church alongside the paintings.

We felt that taking part in The Mysteries was mutually beneficial; it gave us the opportunity to do something completely different and we gave a little something extra to the proceedings.

Janet Jenkins


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