by Rob Stepney

A year ago, Charlbury publisher Jon Carpenter hit on the novel idea of a poetry anthology based on his home town - verse about the town and surrounding countryside, by any poet; and verse by Charlbury people, on any subject. So there would always be some kind of local connection, but a rich range of topics.

The poetry collection Does Nothing Rhyme with Charlbury? has turned out well, and Jon believes the idea could be repeated in many Oxfordshire villages and small towns, with a share of the sale price going to a local good cause, to encourage enthusiastic participation. "By posters and word of mouth we encouraged as many people as possible to take part," he says. "Throwing the doors wide open has been justified by the quality of what came in."

Does Nothing Rhyme with Charlbury? is an eclectic and at times powerful mix of 100 contributions from 40 authors. It is a book where the rap-style Death and Religion (which equates the two) can rub shoulders with two contemplations on The Beatitudes, and where old styles of poetry mix with new.

The subtitle, Poems From a Little Town of Stone, relates to verse written a century ago during Hilaire Belloc's exploration of the Evenlode valley while a student at Balliol. The title comes from a poem by contemporary singer/songwriter Bob Cockburn, called No, I Don't Remember Adelstrop - a reference to the famous poem by Edward Thomas. Indeed, the bulk of the book is bang up to date, and much is in no way parochial.

Nick Owen's fierce trilogy on Falluja imagines Charlbury changing places with the Iraqi town where American soldiers "Schooled in a games-of-war Arcadea/ Chew gum/ And slither through the streets". This is followed by Igor Goldkind's 2 towers falling, describing an expat American's anguish as 9/11 unfolds on a small screen in his Cotswold living room. He ends: "This is the grief before the anger, for which there is no number. God protect us from the anger."

In fact, there is enough anger in the book for the emotion to have its own section, along with one on Love and Loss, those flipsides of life's coinage. Here, actor Freddie Jones (aka Sandy Thomas in Emmerdale) writes in his poem Country Funeral of the corpse being "Smugly packaged and richly privy to the dark bewildering of death".

Among several celebrations of love for people and for place is Hilda Reed's For a Grandchild on a Rainy Day. In this sestina, the final words of each line in the first verse also appear as line endings in the next five verses, but each time in a different sequence. The poem is as intricately worked as a piece of lace. There are contributors who follow other disciplined schemes of rhyme and metre. But the free verse meets my criterion for poetry because of the intensity of emotion expressed, or simply because it has fun with words, as in the section on beer and cricket. Having grown up near Birkenhead when the Mersey poets were in spate, I retain a fondness for poetry as a way of subverting language.

The largest section of the collection - River and Stone - relates to the two elements that best define Charlbury, and indeed much of West Oxfordshire. It includes the work of the playwright David Halliwell, whose memorial service included a dialogue between two lovers about Shorthampton Church, "nestling in the hills" of the Evenlode valley. The view, David writes, is "the most lovely altar cloth in England", and he uses the medieval wall painting of Jesus breathing life into clay birds to represent his characters' feelings.

When Jon asked last year if I would compile the book, I was delighted to accept, on the basis that he would contribute a portion of the selling price to the Shorthampton Church maintenance fund. I had talked many times to David Halliwell, but I knew nothing of his feelings for Shorthampton - nor, until after his death, that he'd written about it so passionately. I don't really believe there is order in the universe, but this is a coincidence that makes the project seem "meant".

Could a compilation like this succeed elsewhere? Jon believes so, and is keen to hear from people interested in compiling poetry collections based on where they live. Or is there something particular to the mix of people in Charlbury that makes it work?

"I think that Charlbury is the most special place in the world," says Ed Fenton, another local publisher. "But then I go to other places like Ascott-under-Wychwood or Chadlington, and the people there think their place is the most special as well."

There will be an evening of readings from Does Nothing Rhyme With Charlbury (Wychwood Press, £8.99) on Friday, November 3, at Charlbury Memorial Hall at 7.30pm. Jon Carpenter can be contacted on 01608 819117 and jon@joncarpenter.co.uk.