Two poetry walks and a funeral

The IsamBards had two attentive and (comparatively) sizeable audiences for their poetry walks at the University of Bristol Botanic Garden Bee and Pollination Festival the weekend before last. 

This is not a bee, of course, it's a hoverfly, but a useful pollinator for all that; the festival doesn't discriminate and neither do poets.

a Common Carder bumble bee

another hoverfly

Apis mellifera mellifera (so good they named it twice)

It's unusual to get four IsamBards together and looking in the same direction as each other. We so very nearly managed it. 

A few days later I was at Arnos Vale cemetery for the funeral and woodland burial of John Terry, one of the first people I met in the Bristol poetry community after I plucked up the courage to go out and read my poems. John, who'd died after a long illness, was a fine poet and it was a joy to hear his voice again, reading his poems, in recordings made some years ago at Bristol Acoustic Night. 

During the gathering, crows and ravens flew overhead, as did an aeroplane, which was entirely appropriate, John having been an engineer at Aerospace. It was an absolutely fitting farewell in a beautiful spot.  

A month of poetry - and the Buzzwords Poetry Competition 2022

September's been a busy month, seeing the submission of my dissertation, and with it, the end of my MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Writing School. I decided to apply after my mother went to live with my sister in Nottingham for the last couple of years of her life, and I suddenly found myself with a lot more free time. Now all that's left to do is wait for the result of my dissertation, and then the release of my overall mark. I've really enjoyed rediscovering my inner swot, and will miss her and my studies once I've graduated. (Unless I go on to study for a PhD. We'll have to see.)

September was also very busy with regard to poetry readings; in fact, I ended up doing more in one month than the preceding two and a half years, starting with four readings over the course of one weekend at the University of Bristol's Botanic Garden Bee and Pollination Festival. Reading with me were two of my fellow IsamBards, Pameli Benham and David Johnson. 

I also had the pleasure of being one of the guest poets at the Berkeley Square Poetry Review in Clifton, and at Uncut Poets at Exeter Phoenix, along with Dominic Fisher. 

My seventh reading of the month, again as guest poet with Dominic Fisher, was pre-recorded for West Wilts Radio, courtesy of Dawn Gorman's The Poetry Place. The programme, with many excellent open-mic readings, is available to listen to here.

My final reading of the month was perhaps the most personally satisfying of all, as it was for Silver Street Poetry, the open mic I used to run with my partner, Colin Brown, before the pandemic put a stop to such things. Since then we've had a prolonged search for a more spacious venue than our old haunt, and have found a warm welcome at St Stephen's Church, just off Bristol City Centre, which not only has an excellent Spanish cafe, but also mermaids! 

I'll be running the event from now on with Dominic, Pat Simmons and Rosalie Alston, as Colin is currently working in Cardiff. We'll be booking some excellent guest poets in the months ahead. In the meantime it was great to dip my toes in the warm (as it turned out) waters of viability, a mere two and a half years after I was slated to read in April 2020. 

And my best poetry news for the month came in an email from the organisers of the 2022 Buzzwords Poetry  Competition to say that my sequence of poems, Conversations with Silence, from my most recent project, Love the Albatross, had won second prize, which is all kinds of pleasing. Thanks very much to judge, Nigel McLoughlin.   

The IsamBards do pop-up poetry at the Botanic Gardens

Amidst uncertainty around the wisdom of older poets meeting indoors to share their work, the IsamBards decided to make hay while the sun shines (or not) and do some pop-up poetry in the Botanic Gardens, where we've held poetry walks previously. 

It was just an ordinary Sunday at the Garden, events such as the Bee and Pollination Festival having proved too risky to organise during the pandemic, so we weren't expecting to be overly busy. David Johnson and Pameli Benham set up stall individually; Dominic Fisher and I decided to read together, interleaving recent nature poems in a conversation of echoes and shadows. All of us soon found we were reading more or less continuously, Dominic and I managing to get through six sets of poetry back-to-back in the space of an hour and a half.

Here we are, having a bit of a breather.

Photo by Alex Johnson

There wasn't even time to take as many photos as I would usually.  Here's David and his wife Alex, standing to one side of the beautiful pool ...

... and a couple of dragonflies having sex ...  

... and that's about it, really, except to say it felt good to do a bit more toe-dabbling in the waters of poetry performance, after such a long time without the possibility of sharing our work. Small steps into a different future.

Poetry openings and a visit to All Saints, Clifton

 My small corner of the poetry community is opening up, just a little. I did my first real-life reading, in front of a real-life audience, in 17 months last Saturday night, at the Victoria Methodist Eco Fair. The space was cool and airy; all the audience, which was sizeable, wore masks; and it was a chance for me to read some of my new poems about the field, wood and common in the north Bristol edgelands that we visit most nights, as well as some older ones from 'The Shadow Factory'. I even sold some books. 

I don't have any photos of the event, but here's a couple I've half-inched from the church's FB page. 

The IsamBards have also been plotting some pop-up poetry over tea and biscuits in Pameli's kitchen, this time in the University of Bristol Botanic Garden, so if you're planning a visit and would like to hear us, make it the afternoon of Sunday 8th August from 2pm.

Prior to our refreshments, we'd been for a wander around All Saints Church in Clifton, which was designed and built in 1967 by architect Robert Potter, and which I'd intended to visit for ages. It was a treat to finally get there and see John Piper's striking and very beautiful fibreglass windows, which were cutting edge when installed (and painted in situ), the original Victorian Church, designed by G E Street, having been bombed in 1940. 

The Lady Chapel South window

Windows by the organ, itself a work of art

Perhaps the most sublime are the West Windows, offset by the beautiful, plain font.

The River of Life

The Tree of Life

I don't think I've seen such glorious blue light since I visited Liverpool's Catholic Cathedral. 

The altar, which was covered in a cloth but has fossils in it, apparently, has a decorative canopy or baldachino, which was designed for the new church and incorporated into the design.  

The angel on the left appears to have two left feet. 

Part of the old church, which was founded in 1868 and added to in 1909 and 1928, still stands. This includes the former narthex, now a chapel dedicated to St Richard of Chichester, with some (unimpressive) surviving Victorian glass and an East window by Christopher Webb, designed in tribute to one Ella Madeline Hodgson, who lobbied hard for the Church to be rebuilt after its destruction. I like the detail of the then vicar, Father Albert Luetchford, delivering up the new church building.

 

I also love the patterning on the ceiling, which is reminiscent of work by William Morris. Not surprising, perhaps, given that the narthex was designed by George Frederick Bodley, who, like Morris, had been a pupil of the original architect, G E Street, and collaborated extensively with him. 

Bread of heaven