Stanza News: Second Life Stanza

Second Life Stanza
Contact: Adele Ward aka Jilly Kidd (www.secondlife.com - Written Word area, Cookie Island - adele AT writtenword.org.uk or 07979 765 891)

There was great excitement when a New York Times journalist visited Second Life to see a replica of the Chelsea Hotel, the well known haunt of poets and musicians. We gathered together to put on an impromptu poetry reading to give the Chelsea Hotel the right bohemian atmosphere and you can see how a virtual poetry reading looks here www.pookymediafilms.com/2009/04/poetry-at-hotel-chelsea.html Some Stanza members are up there on stage, and so am I but my microphone packed up!

We were delighted when our Stanza was featured in Poetry News and the group continues to meet every Wednesday at our Writers’ Circle at 10pm. This is a good time for international members to get together and read out or listen to others, with about twenty or more usually attending. The Writers’ Circle has fiction as well as poetry and anything read can also be published on our website which gets about 20,000 hits per month, so people do have the satisfaction of being heard and read. www.writtenword.org.uk

Members have asked for workshops and so we’ve revived the Just Poets online workshop on www.communigate.co.uk/london/justpoets The message board on Just Poets has been going for about eight years and its now active again with poems being posted for feedback. The standard of the poetry and the quality of the feedback certainly makes it worthwhile. One of our members, who goes by the name of Klannex, is on Just Poets and is also an active reader at live events in London and on Second Life.

Occasionally we have poetry competitions with a choice of book or equivalent cash prizes, and over the past month we ran a contest for the best poem on the theme of London. It coincided with the launch of my own poetry collection Never-Never Land and I was pleased when the winner chose to take a copy of the book rather than the cash (my colleague Peter Chowney was sure they’d opt for the money!) The winning poem was a wonderful one by the very talented Stanza member Jayne Dunsmuir and it can also be seen on the Written Word website on the competitions page.

We have always had a link to the Poetry Archive by touching a poster of Andrew Motion in our Poetry Stanza Oast House (our virtual HQ) and were a little saddened when his very active term as Poet Laureate ended. The arrival of Carol Ann Duffy was cause for celebration though, and we have set out more books and links to their work, plus a link to U A Fanthorpe who will be missed. We would love to see other Stanza members from various groups on Second Life and also on the Just Poets message board.