Ross Kightly, in the Smith Art Gallery at Brighouse Library, signing copies of Out of Bounds , with a backdrop of two Peter Brook paintings.

A section of the audience. Spot the poets.

A gathering of around 30 folk at Brighouse Library welcomed Ross Kightly’s collection Out of Bounds into the world last evening. Ross, creator of 58,000+ poems in his locale sequence, was his usual irrepressible, articulate and witty self. He surprised the audience by concluding the evening with rhyming verse in celebration of the Cafe Zone coffee house in Halifax, an establishment with which the poet is familiar.

Guest readers were poet, singer-songwriter and barista Siobhan Morrissey, Winston Plowes, surrealist soul-brother of Kightly, and Gaia Holmes, midwife to the creations of so many local lyricists through her Igniting the Spark workshops. All excellent poets; all read beautifully.

A presentation was made to the retiring Chief Librarian, Jayne Watkinson, as a tribute to her 33 years of encouraging and helping to organise events such as this one. She received signed copies of the nine collections published by Calder Valley Poetry since its formation at the beginning of 2016.