We are lucky to have some talented writers of poetry and prose amongst the Freethinker membership. Several have been published in local anthologies and can be heard at events such as the successful ‘Poems and Pints’ evenings in local pubs.

On this page we hope to feature work by some of them, and also welcome contributions on suitable themes from guest contributors. Please add your poems to our Guestbook page or - if you prefer - email them to sec@iomfreethinkers.org and wherever possible we will add them to this section.

The nearest we have to a ‘poet in residence’ is probably Denys Drower, whose new work is always a popular feature at meetings and has also featured in humanist publications near and far.

Retrospection was a piece on his 90^th birthday which appeared in ‘Humanism Ireland’. We also take pride in the fact that The Centurion appeared in a special edition of ‘The Freethinker’, the world’s oldest magazine of freethought, published to commemorate the famous Gay News trial. Any resemblance between Denys’s theme and that of the James Kirkup poem which so startled Mary Whitehouse is entirely….deliberate, and was the source of great amusement to freethinkers around the globe!

A common theme for Denys is the clerical lampoon. Educating Prout concerns the enlightenment of a vicar, while Holy Trinity is a cautionary tale about the side-effects of too much theology. Popery marks a change in Vatican management in a less than reverent manner and in Freedom we are asked who are the real prisoners and jailors.

Tragically, his son, another founder Freethinker member and also an enthusiastic local performer and poet, died in May 2008. Roly Drower was an astoundingly talented satirist, musician and music producer whose death was a great loss to the island.

Best known for his Sulby Phantom Band and Sulby Fringe projects, his work crossed many boundaries and reached many people. Much of the back catalogue of the Sulby Phantom Band can be found at http://www.manxman.com/spb/index.html. Humanists will particularly enjoy ‘Fermi’s Paradox’, an album built around an extended poem on the theme of space narrated by Denys over his son’s music.

Several of our members and associates were also involved in the Sulby Fringe – a satirical review show intended for local radio. Examples can be found at http://www.manxman.com/fringe/index.html.