A visit to the Doris Hatt exhibition at the Museum of Somerset

From the passenger seat of the car, Taunton seemed to have changed enormously from how it was when I lived there briefly, 30-odd years ago, but there was no time for a proper look as my Friend-Formerly-Known-As-'Er-Over-The-Road and I were on a mission, having only a week left to find a parking space and get to the Museum of Somerset before the exhibition of work by Doris Hatt closed. 

Because when would we next get the chance to see a whole exhibition devoted to Doris, whose art should be far more celebrated than it is?

Doris Brabham Hatt was born in Bath and into money in 1890. She decided to make a career for herself in art while she was at finishing school in Kassel, Germany, and subsequently studied art at the Bath School of Art, Goldsmith's and the Royal College of Art. 

One of Doris' earliest commissions came in 1915, in the form of a World War I recruiting poster for the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee. 

Doris soon disowned her work as news came through of the appalling casualties of the conflict. At the same time she was becoming radicalised in London through exposure to the poverty she saw in the city, the plight of returning soldiers, the Women's Suffrage movement, and the writings of William Morris.   

You can argue - and we did a bit - that like Morris before her, it's easy to build a beautiful, cutting-edge home to live in and devote your life to your art when you have pots of inherited money. 

But, again like Morris before her, Doris put her not inconsiderable money where her mouth was. In 1917 she joined the Independent Labour Party, and in 1935 the Communist Party. She travelled to the Soviet Union, became a regular seller of the Daily Worker, and stood as

party candidate in the Clevedon Urban District Council election in 1946 and 1947. She also taught children how to draw, and ran adult education classes into the 1960s. 

 Doris shared her life with her partner, the teacher, artist and weaver, Margery Mack Smith. Their extensive travels in the UK and abroad had a significant influence on the development of Doris's art. They were often joined by close members of their family, and I naively hoped for a

loving acceptance of their relationship, but tragically and horribly, a large quantity of her letters and personal records were burned by a relative after her death in 1969. Fortunately, two chests of material,

including sketch books, were saved by Margery, who took them to their second home in Watchet.  

On to the exhibition.

Doris was very influenced by the landscape of her native West Country. Here's Cumberland Basin with the Clifton Suspension Bridge in the background ... 

... and an instantly recognisable Brandon Hill, both in Bristol. 

She often revisited the same scenes in different media ... 

... and it's fascinating to compare landscapes to see how her style developed over years. 

Here, Sennen Cove in Cornwall. 

I love the feeling of movement in a lot of her work. Here the mad, wind-swept trees on the front in Clevedon ...

... and a still life, which is anything but. 

I also loved her paintings that make use of counterpoint.

Sursum corda - lift up your heart

The Melon Picker

Bay Cottage, Lyme Regis

Some of Margery's weaving

I think this might be my favourite painting of all. I love this woman's placid strength. 

Polperro

After we finished the exhibition, we went around again because it was that good - informative and beautiful. Not everyone agreed ... the only man there while we were was loudly explaining how he would have framed everything differently, although to be fair there was also a woman complaining that the paintings hadn't always been hung in the strict

chronological order she craved, which shows you can't please everyone. 

Anyway, the exhibition ends on 29th June so if you are reading this and think you'd like to go, you'd better get your skates on. 

Inspiration : Map Reading For Beginners

One of the reasons why I keep this blog is as a Commonplace Book.  Writing posts about my jaunts with photos helps me to remember in detail where I've been, and if I'm lucky enough to come home with the promise of a poem in my pocket, it's a  useful tool for the writing of it, especially since a fair bit of time can elapse before the poem is ready to be written.  

With this in mind, I thought I might occasionally post finished poems with their associated photos, and a brief description about how they came about. 

 Map Reading For Beginners


 The bulk of the title poem of my second collection, Map Reading for Beginners, was inspired in the first instance by this picture of the remote Church of St Ishow at Partrishow, high on a hill above the Grwyne Fawr valley in Powys.  As soon as I saw it, in January 2013, I asked the artist, Dru Marland, if we could go there and she agreed we could.  

I came back from our jaunt that day knowing I had to write about the place.  My starting point was a pair of ravens we'd heard chatting in the empty sky a fair while before we'd seen them rolling overhead - a happy encounter for me as they also inspired a sequence of three poems called Speaking Raven (also the same collection).  Before long the fox and hare from Dru's picture had made their way in too, as did the holy well below the Church, which has miraculous tales of healing attached to it.  


But then images from other places which evoke similar feelings in me came crowding in.  The sat nav relegated to the boot is a  reference to a trip I made from Taunton with another friend, back in 2008, following our noses with no idea of where we were headed until we ran out of land at Porlock, and drove along the coast to Watchet.   The tunnelling lanes are therefore those of Somerset, and also Devon, both my ancestral home 'where the story first began'. 

The snake is also from Devon, the pregnant she-adder I encountered on Meldon Hill on Dartmoor in 2009, who also inspired a poem (Ophidiophobia) in the same collection ... 

... or maybe it was the snakelet I spotted with my partner near Scorhill Stone Circle, on our first trip to the moor together in 2013, which turns up in yet another poem, The Seventh Sign.

Meanwhile, the fractal dreams carved by beetles date from another, earlier jaunt, this one in my home city, Bristol. I'd gone up to the Downs, again with Dru, for an afternoon stroll and a glimpse of the newly installed goats in the Avon Gorge, only to find myself clambering down the steep side to the Portway at the bottom in her wake ... and surviving!

All these elements were drawn together into the poem and subsequently the cover of the collection, drawn by Dru.  As in the poem, the buried Saint Ishow has become a poet with wild strawberries (a nod to the poem of the same name) and primroses growing from her hair.  Best of all, the flowering garlic in the shape of The Plough. Just gorgeous. 

Here's the poem:

 

Map Reading For Beginners

Put the sat nav in the boot
Follow your own arterial route

the tunnelling lanes that take you down
to where the stories first began,

where fox and hare listen in bracken,
ravens chat across the silence of the sky.

In the moss-dark holy well
a nadder bites its stripy tail,

completes the circle.
Your turquoise tracery of veins

espaliered branches
mapping skin,

a buried poet
with a fruit tree growing through her,

whose fractal dreams are carved
by beetles under bark.

©Deborah Harvey 2014

Map Reading for Beginners is published by Indigo Dreams and available from their website (and Amazon and good independent bookshops).

Romanticism Revisited : An Interactive Map

Back in April I was approached by the Department of English at Bristol University about an interactive, site-specific map it was developing concerning the literary heritage of the South West, in particular the area’s important and inspirational connection with major Romantic writers.  In short, it was seeking commissions from contemporary poets with a connection to Bristol and/or the South West, for poems written in response to any of the key locations of Romanticism.  

Well, this was right up my vernacular alley.  What could do I but submit my Coleridge and Keats poems? 

Well, I'm pleased to say that the map is now active, and the app can be downloaded to a smartphone, android device or on Apple.  And if, like me, you're not really sure what an app is, you can view it on the website also. 

Happy poeticking!

  

A Poetry Pilgrimage through the Wild West

To Devon via the scenic route. And since my partner in poetry hadn't been there, a visit to the cottage at Nether Stowey where Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his family lived from 1797 to 1799 seemed apt. 

I'd been there before, so while he fossicked about inside, Ted and I sat outside the pub and birdwatched.  A squeal of brakes and the slamming of car doors announced the arrival of a gang of swifts from distant climes. I wonder what the resident birds make of the new arrivals each May.  Probably not too different from the villagers when Samuel, Sarah, William Wordsworth and Dorothy descended on the area. 

After lunch. a drop of Rich's cider and a delve in Lyrical Ballads in the garden of the Hood Arms in Kilve, we popped down to the beach to let Ted stretch his legs. I love Kilve's delightful shore, as Wordsworth called it, though this time, post broken ankle, I found its stony terrain challenging.

Kilve has found its way into a couple of my poems too.  I love scrabbling about in the hope of finding a fossil or two.  I did see a selection, all on hefty pieces of rock.  I always wonder how many people have struggled to get them back to their car, only to give up en route.  Much better to leave such impressive specimens where they lie - they've been there for millions of years, after all.

After a good scramble about, we made our way to Watchet to see the statue by Alan B Herriot of the Ancient Mariner (which also pitches up in a poem of mine).

Salty sea dogs

Our final stop, via a quick dash through Dunster, was Tarr Steps, an ancient clapper bridge over the River Barle in pretty much the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately for us, we arrived there gasping for a cup of tea five minutes after they's stopped serving tea and coffee and fifty-five minutes before the pub opened, and da yoof behind the counter was not inclined to pop the kettle back on. 

The bridge, which has been rebuilt following flooding twice since I last saw it, was looking good ...

... though I have to say, it's the Second Severn Crossing of clapper bridges. Impressive in a burly sort of way, but lacking the grace of, say, the clapper at Postbridge on Dartmoor. 

The Barle, and then the River Exe escorted us off the moor and as far as Tiverton, beyond which we rejoined the motorway and completed our journey south and west, all poetried up and ooh! what's that feeling? ... happy.