Pam Ayres & Poet Under House Arrest – Poetry News Roundup 1st September

In the last poetry round up of the week, we look at the very popular Pam Ayres and travel to an event in Jaffa that was organised to show support for a poet who has been under house arrest for the last two years.

Pam Ayres – Live Performance

Poetry comes in all different shapes and sizes, some poems rhyme, some are short and some are long. The subject matter can vary as well from the serious to the funny; for many children, their first taste of poetry could well have involved the works of someone who falls in the latter category. I am of course referring to Pam Ayres; the poet who shot to fame in 1975 when she took part in the TV show, Opportunity Knocks.

On 24^th September, Pam Ayres will be appearing live in Basingstoke in her poetry show. With more than 40-years of making the nation laugh with her poetry, which captures the minute details of everyday life and its many absurdities, it is sure to be a performance not to be missed.

As one of a small number of authors who has managed to have books placed in the Sunday Times Bestseller charts in almost every decade since the 1970’s, and author of some of the most borrowed library books in the UK it isn’t hard to see why she is still so popular. In addition to her collections of best-selling poetry, many of Pam Ayres poems have appeared in school text books, not just in the UK but all over the world.

Here we reproduce a couple of verses of one of her poems:

Pam has performed for the Queen on many occasions and in 2004 was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list. She was commissioned to write a poem in celebration of Team GB’s success in the Rio Olympics.

Poet Under House Arrest

This week hundreds of people, including poets, actors and rap artists gathered together in the Arab-Hebrew Theatre of Jaffa to show their support for the Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour who has been under house arrest since October 2015. Tatour was charged with incitement when she posted a poem on both YouTube and Facebook; the poem denounced the murderers of an East Jerusalem teenager in July 2014 and a Palestinian family during an arson attack on the West Bank the following year.

So many supporters turned out to show their solidarity for the poet that the organisers were forced to place additional seating in the foyer of the theatre. Several Tatour’s poems were performed by her fellow poets and Tamer Nafa, a Palestinian rap artist, performed “Spoken Word”.

At this moment in time it would appear that despite, the two years Tatour has spent under house arrest and the ever-growing group of supporters, there are no plans to end the period of house arrest in the near future.