Conversation With Roger Stennett

Roger with his book of poems in tribute to Dylan Thomas

Our guest speaker 0n 24th April was Roger Stennett, a poet and playwright who will be the judge for our 2023 poetry competition.

Asked about his views on poetry, Roger made several points. He felt that there was no need for a poet to put him or herself into every piece of verse. Not all poetry needed to be about the poet. He took as his watchword the idea, based on the thoughts of Coleridge and Wordsworth, that poetry was about “emotion recollected in tranquillity”. Asked what he looked for in poetry (Roger is judging our competition) he said that ‘universality’ was important, the idea that what is written is accessible to all.

Roger is the son of the famous entertainer and comedian Stan Stennett, whom members of a certain vintage may recall. Roger claimed to be the only author who had written work for both Sooty and the Royal Shakespeare company.

Despite Zoom being so 2020, it allows Slough Writers to invite people from anywhere to speak at the group.

He went on to describe his writing life, starting as a dramatist and over a 40 year career producing plays for the theatre and both TV and film screenplays. He then had a career interlude working as a psychotherapist, before becoming a poet and writer of fiction for children and young adults. Roger told us that he had a ‘stock’ of 3,000 poems. He has published several collections of poetry, most recently a book of verse inspired by the life and work of Dylan Thomas.

He described the rather hand to mouth existence of the professional writer, out of financial necessity being forced to turn his hand to all sorts of creative forms.

A good turnout to listen to our competition judge.

At the end of his talk Roger read the group a poem he had written that morning. It was a riposte to Betjeman’s verse about Slough. Roger felt Betjeman was critical of Slough mainly “because it wasn’t Cheltenham”, a sentiment to which he took exception. A copy of the poem will be presented to the winner of our competition.

Report by Lee Taylor

The full video of the session is available here: (Roger Stennett discussion on YouTube). 

You can also find a lot of his poetry here - www.facebook.com/rogerpstennett