April & May Foraging Pigs
The Foraging Pigs was six months old in May. It’s been quite a journey establishing a new poetry open mic night in Billingshurst. We have now had over 50 different poets sharing their work since we began, as well as plenty of returning foragers each month.
Simon Zec, Steyning’s poet laurate, hosting April’s Foraging Pigs.
Sadly, we were without Liz Barnes for both April and May, but Simon Zec stepped into the breach to help me host April’s meeting - and it turned out to be our busiest yet.
The room was buzzing and we wondered if we it was time to begin limiting the number of poets on stage!
Given that the Foraging Pigs name originated from an internet search for ‘Billingshurst’ and the resulting historical nugget that Sussex coastal folk apparently liked to bring groups of pigs to Billingshurst to forage for food, and since we are swelling our numbers, in preparation for the evening, I went looking into the collective nouns associated with pigs.
It turns out that there are plenty to choose from. I suppose that we should really choose to be a ‘drift’ or a ‘drove’, since the original foraging pigs in Saxon times were already domesticated.
A first-time forager in April
Another alternative is a ‘parcel' of pigs, which I rather like for it’s alliterative quality, but the one I discovered which I love the most is ‘sounder’, the collective noun for wild pigs.
As poets, we forage for images and how fitting that a ‘sounder’ of foraging pigs speaks their poems.
As ever, there was some cracking poetry on offer, and a record-breaking 8 first-time foragers, including Siobhan, Harvey, Jan, Andy, Sam, Sully, Charlotte and Lucy, alongside some now firmly established audience-favourite ‘sounders’, Diana, Cosmo, Rob, Kathryn, Sue, Andrew and Lisa.
May’s gathering was smaller, perhaps as a result of the heatwave and a string of days of more than thirty degrees (although, it transpires that ‘sweating like a pig’ is a total misrepresentation, since pigs don’t actually sweat, but roll around in mud to cool down…) so not so many sounders.
Ted hosts May’s Foraging Pigs night
Still, the heat didn’t stop the parcel of brave foragers and the audience was once again blown away by the quality of the writing and spoken word. We were delighted to welcome back Dave Streeter from Brighton with his characteristic blend of humour, incisive observation and clever wordplay.
Siobhan was our top forager of the evening and she shared poetry on topics ranging from bees to motorbikes, via fertilizer.
Barry is fast becoming a foraging favourite with his wry, subversive and entertaining poems, executed with razor-sharp delivery.
Miriam returned with her powerful image-based poems that always deliver a knockout blow in the final line. Kathryn shared a relatable rant that began with the fury ignited by the ‘baby on board’ signs seen on cars, and later explored what women over 50 are not. (Women over 50? No idea!)
First-time forager Nikki challenges ChatGPT.
Popular returning forager Andrew shared a witty poem about a firm of solicitors, and first-time forager Nikki gave ChatGPT what for. Friendship and the pandemic were amongst Harvey’s choices, and I shared poems on dementia, patriarchy and apron strings.
As always on nights like these, it was great to see how so many of the poems spoke to one another in overlapping themes.
We also had quite a few non-readers in the audience for May; it’s brilliant to have that support, and long may it continue.
See you on the 25th June for the next round of Foraging Pigs.