A Celebration with Roger McGough

SMP Chairperson David Hide reflects on our sellout Celelbration of poetry event at St Margaret’s Church, Warnham, on Saturday 14th October 2023

The event included readings by our winning poets from this year's competition, the composer Paul G Terry and the Freedom Ensemble delivering a stunning performance of the composers, ' Rise Like Lions' and stellar performances from our patron Barry Smith and musician and poet Chris Hardy who joined forces to perform two of Percy Bysshe Shelley's most popular poems, Ozymandias and To a Skylark.

Competition winner Mark Ramey reads his poem, Lilla.

And if that was not enough our very special guest, Roger McGough then entertained the audience with some of his best known poems in a set that demonstrated his fantastic wit and insight, eloquently justifying his titles of both the 'people's poet' and 'the patron saint of poetry'.

The evening was expertly hosted by Radio 4 presenter, Chris Aldridge, and the poetry competition was judged by well-known Sussex poet, Simon Zec.

The SMP would like to thank everyone who made it a very special evening including the team at St Margaret's Church who welcomed us for a second year. It is a special location, being the church where Shelley was baptised. We would also like to thank our competition sponsors, The Radical Tea Towel Company and The Steyning Bookshop. Thank you, finally, to everyone who joined us for what was a truly exceptional evening.