17th July 2025 – Wylye Valley Writers

The readers at our 17th July 2025 meeting:

June read an extract from her memoir of being an artist living aboard a sailing yacht. She related the dramatic experience of being caught up in a storm while sheltering in a Turkish bay.
June is a writer, poet, memoirist, painter and sculptor. She is also a founding member of Wylye Valley Writers.
She was born and educated in South Africa, majoring in sculpture. She left SA for the UK in 1972. By 1983 she and her husband were ex-pats; living in the Far East, Europe and the US.
While in the US, June studied at both Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She then ran her own art studio for fifteen years.
In 2002, June and Geoff began twelve amazing years living aboard their yacht on both sides of the Atlantic. June kept journals of this time afloat which provided material for several successful talks about combining life afloat while being an artist aboard.
In 2023 a covid collaboration written with her US writing group Five Artist Writerswas launched at Salisbury’s Vanner Gallery.

Paul read his very amusing short story about the problems of being a sorcerer in the present day.
Paul feels he has been extremely lucky as throughout his working life he has been paid to do something he loved. Having been a soldier, a civil servant, he became the founding MD of his own multi-disciplinary defence logistics consultancy company. For this he worked with the defence ministries of the UK, Norway and the UAE. He found the UAE far warmer than Norway!
During these three careers, Paul travelled extensively, journeying as far east as Thailand and westwards to Chile. He also spent time as an amateur racing driver.
On retiring, Paul discovered the joy of writing to offer far more fun than jigsaw puzzles.
His latest novel Crystals will be joining his other work on Amazon shortly. Paul adheres to no particular genre, writing what his imagination suggests, be it lost dogs, gay vampires, sorcerers, or good Samaritans. Sometimes charged with writing rather dark material, there is an occasional humorous turn taken.

Millie read five powerful poems from her forthcoming collection titled Venus in the Forest. This collection uses archaeology as metaphor for grief. They were: Relic, The Muse, The Last Bohemian, If You Wanted Goodbye, I Could Think of a Thousand Ways to Say It, and On Seeing a Picture of You as a Child Holding Feather.
Millie Woodrow is a writer of poetry and fiction from Wiltshire.
She has just completed her Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford.
She has been published in Acumen, Motherlore and The Passionfruit Review.
Close Poetry, her poetry events company, sells out venues in the South West of England.
Her work explores themes of grief, family, and desire, as played out upon landscapes.

Richard read an amusing extract from his memoir Plenty of Grapes. He recalls Elizabeth 2^nd’s coronation day when he was four. Uncle Denis keels over and grandmother is trying to keep up Victorian values. An ancient aunt had met someone who was born in the eighteenth century.
For many years Richard limited his literary output to writing for professional periodicals. Having been a friend of the hugely talented Martin Amis at Oxford was a serious disincentive even to think about embarking on a literary life.
But he has always made notes of the many unusual and outrageous people and events he has encountered, being quite sure that one day he would turn them into literary gold, or at least as much as the laws of libel and defamation allow. For the usual reasons, with advancing years that day seemed to be getting further and further away.
Then one evening nine years ago he was invited to sit next to John Julius Norwich. During their conversation Richard asked him when the next much-loved Christmas Cracker would appear and the disappointing answer was that there wouldn’t be any more.
At that point Richard decided to put together his own collection of pieces that had moved, amused and entertained him over the years. In 2018 he published Plenty of Grapes, followed earlier this year by A Few More Grapes. He plans to publish one a year for as long as he is able.

Caroline read an intriguing extract from her book that concerns a disaffected worker from the government research establishment at Porton Down. The man had been given a cat by a former colleague, but is now trapped in a room by a guest.
Caroline has lived most of her adult life in the US. Predominantly in New York. She went from London, where she grew up, to New Jersey to pay a birthday visit to her university-attending boyfriend. When her visa ran out, they instantly got married, and then stayed in the US. Their wedding in the Princeton University chapel was attended by four people. Telegrams were then sent to both sets of parents.
In NYC they lived close to the World Trade Centres. Caroline became a founding member of the 9/11 Environmental Action Group leading to the creation of the WTC Health Registry. Caroline was also active in the campaign that ended fracking in New York State.
In late 2021 Caroline settled in Salisbury, moving into what had been her mother’s home. With both children, and grandchildren being based in London, and the hassles of Covid travel restrictions, it made sound sense.

Photographs on this page by John Bruce, lightanddarker.com