A poem is 'a machine made of words', according to the American poet W.C.Williams. At Poetry Appreciation 1, sometimes we've found the 'machines' judder and halt - as in our sessions on Chaucer and Emily Dickinson, though the cogs, levers and pulleys of their poems were running more smoothly after our discussion.

In the past few months, our verbal spanners and screwdrivers have been at work on the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy, Pablo Neruda, Tennyson, Owen Sheers, Simon Armitage, Milton, Shakespeare, Elizabeth Bishop, and poems about such topics as towns and cities, growing up, travel and birds.

We also have a regular 'mystery poem' and 'desert island poems' sessions. We have argued a lot. But, as someone once said, "Poetry will find consensus where politics never can".