Our featured writer this month is Andy Graham, a new member of the group and new to writing too! After a long career in technology marketing, he’s now turning the weapons of branding into the ploughshares of prose.

He writes about small things that turn out not to be small at all — apples, weather, time, people, and the curious business of transformation. Turning one into another. In this case, apples into the minor miracle of cider.

Alongside this, he’s working on a travel narrative exploring humanity’s relationship with energy. An ambitious attempt to bridge science and myth, from Prometheus to AI, and to make sense of thermodynamic laws in human rather than purely scientific terms: what it means as much as how it works.

He doesn’t come from a classical literary pedigree but writes to place the reader in a specific time and place so they can experience it for themselves.

His article, Cider Pressing Day is available to read here.

This month’s poem, ‘Pater Nosterer and Pilgrim,’ is by long-time Somewhere Else member Tina Baker.

Tina travels farther than all our other members to attend our weekly meetings, and hopefully her journey will be more pleasant now that summer is approaching and the evenings are getting lighter. Her poem takes readers to an unspecified time in the past and offers some food for contemplation.

As well as writing poetry, Tina is working on a novel she describes as a Tudor murder mystery, promising readers a diverting story.

You can read Tina’s poem here

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Following Britain’s success in the Winter Olympics, this month’s featured poem is inspired by ice skating. Linda Dyson fell in love with skating when Torvill and Dean were at the zenith of their career, and was inspired to write her latest poem while viewing the recent European championships.

You can read ‘Championship’ here

Also, newly added to our 2026 archive page is Alan Passey’s work Patience.

Alan is currently working on his first novel, and was an entertaining and informed speaker on prose poems at the February meeting of Writers in the Library. Local poetry enthusiasts also had the opportunity to hear Adam Horovitz read at this month’s meeting. The sessions run from 2pm to 3pm on the second Monday of the month in Cirencester. Entry is free with complimentary refreshments available, and a short open mic spot, enabling audience members to read their own work or that of their favourite authors.

You can read ‘Patience’ here.

Our Writer of the month is Selwyn Morgan, possibly the group’s most widely travelled member. To launch our New Year, Selwyn has written Time Drills Its Way, a piece which looks back on his past and anticipates the year and all Time ahead. His novel, Going up Camborne Hill: The Serpent Ring, is available from Amazon, where you’ll also find Somewhere Else Writers’ Off the Wall, an anthology of stories and poems featuring QR code links to audio of the writers reading their work. To find this and other works published by the group, click here.

To read Selwyn’s Time Drills its Way. click here.

2025 was a productive and successful year for the writers group, and we look forward to a great 2026.

Iris Anne Lewis is delighted that her poem ‘Manordeifi’ has been highly commended in the Maesteg Poetry Competition. The competition was arranged as one of the events to mark the two hundredth anniversary of the town of Maesteg in the industrial heartlands of South Wales. The aim of the competition was to celebrate the rich cultural heritage of Wales, and entries were welcomed from anyone with a strong connection to Wales.

Iris’ poem features the small Pembrokeshire town of Manordeifi and its old parish church. Now disused, the church features the old box pews (some with fireplaces!). A coracle hangs in the porch, affording parishioners a means of getting to and from the church when the surrounding fields flooded.

Our last poem of 2025 is ‘Nettles’ by Frank McMahon from his latest collection ‘Joining the Ring.’ You can read the poem here. ‘Joining the Ring’ and other publications by Frank and members of the group can be found on our publications page here. Clicking on the image of the book will take you to the relevant Amazon page.