16th April 2026 – Wylye Valley Writers

The readers at our 16th April 2026 meeting:

June read an extract from her forthcoming memoir on life aboard a sailing yacht. This concerned the dramatic departure from New York City and sheltering from a hurricane had us holding our breath.
June Cluett is a visual artist, poet, writer, sculptor and speaker. She helped found Wylye Valley Writers in 2023.
Born and raised in South Africa, she trained as a fine artist, majoring in Sculpture. June has studied and travelled in a wide variety of places. Her studies include post graduate level Critical Studies in Art and Design at Chelsea Art School, Ceramic Sculpture and Metal Casting at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston and Painting at the Boston Museum School. She helped form a Writing Group while living in the Boston area of Massachusetts.
When expat life in Singapore, Sweden, Hong Kong and Boston, with many stints in London, came to an end, June and husband, Geoff moved onto the sea in a sailing boat for 12 years. ‘Living The Dream’, she journaled, painted and drew from the many inspirations of the roving life aboard.
Now living in Hanging Langford, June gives talks and readings based on her art and sailing memoirs. Her poetry and short stories have been published locally. The advent of Zoom during Covid saw her and her American Writing Group publish Five Artist Writers, which had a book launch at the Vanner Gallery in Salisbury.

John read his story The Ex-Offender about a man hitchhiking in the desert country of the United States. The beautifully atmospheric and balanced narrative left us uncertain of the outcome until the very end.
John began writing seriously about twenty years ago; mostly poetry but also some fiction.
As a child of his time (and class), John read plenty, and it was natural to create stories and poems himself. But after a flurry at school, early working life, in an unrelated field, distracted from doing any more. He returned to it after the customary midlife crisis in his late 30s, and has written, albeit intermittently, since then. He says he’s a self-indulgent writer; that he writes because he likes the sounds of the words in his head, the shapes they make on the paper and the images they make in his mind. He does his best to use language that will convey those same things to the reader, trying to remove ambiguity where it’s not meant. He sees writing as art and craft, using the best tools to create the best pictures.
John helped run Poetika for a number of years, and now helps runs New SaRhyme encouraging local poets and writers. He is an accomplished photographer (see some of his pictures on this website), and created the exhibition of watercolours by the founder of the Young Gallery in Salisbury.
Although John designs websites for a living his own website remains unbuilt, and sadly he is too reticent to publish his own writing.

Richard read his highly amusing story Preserve the Humans which gradually reveals the real reason aliens decide to revisit Earth. This was an original, written for this meeting
Richard is an ex-physics teacher, a house-husband, and a father of three. He has worked for a year as a copywriter, writing brochures for SAGA Holidays, a few months as a journalist and, while working as a teacher, he has written or contributed to seven secondary science textbooks. Teaching also took him to live at both ends of the African continent.
Richard mainly writes science fiction or children’s stories, and sometimes children’s science fiction. He has been a member of the Warminster and District Writers’ Circle for almost a decade, which has provided him with plenty of practice in writing short stories.

Tarn read an extract from his latest novel Ripped which explored in creepy and sinister detail the feelings of Jack the Ripper after committing his first murder, and then switched to the present day and a woman contemplating an early morning run.
Rob, who writes under his middle name Tarn because there are far too many Rob Richardsons in the world, is an extremely careless writer.
After being awarded a three-book publishing deal in 2014 to write his First World War historical horror trilogy, The Darkest Hand, published by Duckworth Overlook, he managed to lose both his publisher and agent in the intervening years.
As well as careless, he’s an extremely slow writer, having just finished his latest novel about a modern-day copycat Jack the Ripper killer, after 12 years and 15 rewrites. His agent rejected the first draft, calling it unsaleable. Rob spent the subsequent years and rewrites trying to make it as good as he could. As a result, he can also be called extremely stubborn.
In 2024, he won the Masterton Prize for Best Foreign Novel for the French version of Book One of his trilogy.
For more information visit https://www.tarnrichardson.co.uk/.

Jennie read four of her beautifully poised and evocative poems:
- Well, concerning a hermit, set 600 years ago.
- Beacons, including an epilogue, set in border country, perhaps around Presteigne.
- Leaving, departure from a garden after eighteen years.
- The Learning Curve, learning the language around harvest.
Jennie Gilling is an artist and gardener and has lived in Warminster for over 20 years. She is the lead on the Warminster Community Orchard and has taken part in the biennial Wylye Valley Arts trail since 2005. Her alternative career of being an archaeologist is satisfied by exploring the wonderful chalk landscape on her doorstep.
Jennie’s poems often evolve into folded books in limited editions, the words part of the art form. She finds writing has helped her over the past two years as she adapts to bereavement, allowing the means to process change that becomes a medicinal part of healing.
For more information visit https://jenniegilling.co.uk/

Picture credits: Debra Wade (John Bruce and Jennie Gilling), Geoff Cluett (all others at this event)