Author: Anne

Gathering Places
(tanka sequence)

Reada’s people, settling
in this valley where
the Cunnit’s waters join
forces with the Temes’,
call their town Readingum

the Saxons who settle
on the southside hill
cut down trees and burn them
by the score: spreading piles of
wood ash, they whiten the soil

the Conqueror’s men
on their fact-finding mish
come to Witelei
to weigh-up its worth and record
it in the Book of Domesday

monks seeking refreshment
come up to Witelei to taste
the waters from its springs:
as it is to their liking
they pipe it to their Abbey

wisely, Whitley growers
plant their crops around
the fresh-water springs
then harvest them to sell
at markets in Reading town

around those Spring Gardens
Victorians build terraces of
houses for people:
shops, pubs and Mission Hall
for their needs and pleasure

where the roads from Town,
Whitley Wood and Shinfield meet
Mister Blandy installs
his spring-water pump with
triple spouts and triple troughs

outgrowing the Mission Hall
Wesleyans build another
but bigger:
Whitley Hall Methodist Church
where, praising God, they gather

it was a sad time when
Whitley Pump was demolished
and the triangle
disappeared to make way
for the roundabout

it was patronised by
many working horses:
the triangle itself
with its several lime trees
and circular metal seats

such a popular
meeting point for many of
the older locals:
being used for public meetings
particularly at election times

first of the post-pump era,
we four-five-year-olds climb
Whitley Hall’s back stairs to
Sunday School in the billiard room:
we are the new Beginners . . .

~

Geoffrey Winch

In her book The Top of Whitley (Reading: Corridor Press, 2002) Daphne Barnes-Phillips details much of the history of the Spring Gardens area and Whitley Hall Methodist Church. The italicized passage in ‘Gathering Places’ is a paraphrase (in tanka form) of part of Bob Cooper’s memories as recorded by Daphne. Now retired, Geoffrey Winch lives in West Sussex. He was, however, born in Reading in 1943; educated at George Palmer Junior and Stoneham Grammar schools. He left the town in 1965. His poetry has been widely published in journals and anthologies mainly in the UK, US and online. His most recent pamphlet collection is Encounters with Oscar and Other Sequences (QQ Press, 2024), and his next full collection Reading: Around the Town of My Geneses is due to be published by the Corridor Press in 2026. He can be contacted at geoffreywinch@gmail.com

Kennet Avon

Reading: Kennet swerves to Thames.
We start to walk, upstream,
the little green English river beside us,
Bristol our end.

Kennet easters, wester we,
each on our own business,
parallel but opposite,
enjoying the other’s contrary impetus
in mutual respect.

Switchback at Cadley Lock:
our companion water
no longer contra
but similarly aimed.

Its congruence encourages,
yet I miss our agreeing
to move in opposite directions
side-by-side.

~

Kate McLoughlin lives in Iffley, Oxfordshire

Wilde’s Street

Wilde’s words are his harbour –
they remove the solitude from his cell.
Pen in hand,
thoughts scurry to pass the prison’s perimeter.
His hand takes them.

To the brothel,
where men calculate how desperate Sal is
Ten pence? Four shillings? One even?
Her malnourished children huddle together,
their fingers blue and
hair damp from the leak in the roof.
Will their mother bring bread and milk tonight?

Who gathers by the river?
Society’s stragglers
who stumble, misplace their footing
and spy silver coins out the gutters.

Two men disappear down an alley
far from the streetlights
only here can their lips meet.
This is Wilde’s memory –
his conviction.
Will he and Douglas ever be like this again?

Now Wilde descends.
He clutches the paper
with inky fingertips –
a crime in itself;
the evidence of an imagination
graffitied over the wall.

~

Jasmine Siddle is an English Literature with Creative Writing graduate from the University of Reading who loves to write short stories, poems and screenplays.