THIS may have been the first ever Poetry Breakfast the Ledbury event has hosted but I wouldn't mind betting on a return for this innovative platter come 2003.

Pleasant venue, smashing grub and two readings that tip-toed around the mind gently before leaving just the right amount of food for thought for a Sunday morning.

Cradley Heath's Roz Goddard served up the poet's first course and delivered a mostly amusing and, at times, slightly dark collection of life experiences in a mellow black country accent.

The inspiration, for a selection culled from her Girls In The Dark collection, was sometimes just that, with reference paid a couple of times to the silence, and the final 'breaking' of it, beloved of her late father.

This was real life. From the sausages, Sir Cliff Richard and chicken predicatability of flatlife neighbours to the intellectual way that teenagers look at death.

A tough act to follow but Gary Bill's second course did not fail to cut the mustard.

With an audience now swelled by caf regulars Gary's own reading from his The Echo and the Breath collection touched upon pastoralism before moving to the harvested pasture of a published Guardian Saturday Poem A Love Affair in Miniature.

Gary's selection provoked a rollercoaster of emotions.

"I couldn't come to a breakfast reading without reading something gruesome!" he mused, before recounting Bereavement.

But an inspired choice was to save his most personal work until last. With his wife and child in the audience he recited from memory a poem inspired by a hospital visit - (12 weeks) Baby Scan.

Carl Stringer