Lighting Touchpapers

Exactly a month ago, I was privileged to attend a beautiful evening of poetry in the King's Head, Wells. 

We'd gathered to celebrate the launch of Sara Butler's collection, 'Waiting for a Change'. The evening was hosted by Ama Bolton and Morag Kiziewicz, two members of the highly respected Wells Fountain Poets. Sara was a member of the group too, until ill health prevented her from continuing. It was Ama and Mo who collected Sara's poems and arranged them into this book.

Ama reading

Mo reading

I have a personal stake in this collection, as Sara was also a valued member of Poetry Can's poetry group some years ago, and I’ve longed to hold a book of her poems in my hands for years. Now, thanks to Ama and Mo, that dream has come true. This book really is an act of love.

‘Waiting for a Change’ is available from bookshops or – if you must – Amazon: ISBN 978-1-914398-15-5.

Someone called Deborah Harvey has this to say about it:

‘A love for nature infuses these poems, though it’s never romanticised, Sara having both an eye and an ear for the dark and the all-too-human. And there’s always the laughing ‘yes’, and sexiness, and a desire for something better, which is found and made real in these poems.’

I had another enjoyable evening at a second launch, namely, the Zoom event celebrating the publication of 'High Nowhere' by Jean Atkins and 'What it Was' by Tina Cole. It was a treat to hear the poets read their very skilled and thought-provoking work. 

I also read some poems, as a pre-launch of my forthcoming collection, 'Love the Albatross', which is now at the printers and due to be published by Indigo Dreams Publishing at the end of August. Here's a preview of its cover, which has been beautifully realised by Katie Marland.

The poems in 'Love the Albatross' are about estrangement. Two of them have recently been published in journals, and can be read here and here. 

A Poetry Spring

I've had an excellent couple of months as far as poetry's concerned, not least the chance to go to readings by some of the country's most celebrated poets, including ... 

... Don Paterson ... 

... Simon Armitage ...

Photo by Tim Woolf

 ... Alice Oswald ... 

and Caroline Bird, all of whom I've been privileged to hear, courtesy of Bristol Poetry Institute and the Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival. 

In particular, Alice Oswald, who was at St George's, blew me away, as she always does. I think this must have been the fourth or fifth time I'd seen her read, and as always, her performance was mesmerising. Except you can't really call it a reading because Oswald speaks her poems from memory. I was quite near the front of the audience this time, and I watched carefully as she announced the title of each poem, paused and then disappeared somewhere else altogether. Pure concentration. I was especially delighted to hear her speak extracts from 'In Memoriam' and most of all, 'Dart', as I'd travelled to Bath back in the early 2000s, I think, to hear her read it and she'd been unable to appear. It's been a lasting disappointment.

Walking back down Park Street to the car park I realised I had my hand clamped over my mouth. This has happened before, notably when I've seen my heroes perform; it's the principle symptom of Bowieitis, which is also known as Leonard Cohen Syndrome. I'm not sure if it's because I get dumbstruck or if I'm trying to stop my heart leaping out of my body through my mouth. I don't think it had happened after a poetry reading before, but there I was, having to remove it to speak to my fellow-IsamBard, David Johnson, at the bus stop. 

Talking of the IsamBards, we've been out and about, conducting a fourth poetry walk through the centre of Bristol, from Queen Square to Millennium Square, again as part of the Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival. Unfortunately we had to do battle against a rather loud funfair, which wasn't there when two of our members scoped out the route a couple of months ago, but poetry prevailed and our audience were enthusiastic throughout.

Cwtch the collie - photobombeuse extraordinaire - trying to include herself in the performance at the entrance to Queen Square

Dominic, David and Pameli by the Seamen's Mission and Chapel 

Photo by Tim Woolf

The final event of the Poetry Festival was 'City of Words', a showcase presented in partnership with the Bristol Festival of Ideas. It was a special joy to see my friend  Hazel Hammond on stage reading a poem, five years after a stroke that left her with aphasia.  

I read a commissioned poem I'd written called 'Psalm for the unnoticed Places'. It's about the local pockets of edgeland that are so important for wildlife, diversity and our own well-being, and which came into their own during successive lockdowns, when we were unable to travel outside of the city. It was good to have something to work on while I'm between projects.

Equally enjoyable - because it's a joy to see your friends excelling in their craft - have been the smaller readings, book launches and shows. Here's Melanie Branton taking us on a guided tour of 'The Full English' with her knickers on her head ... 

... Lizzie Parker launching her collection, Cormorant, for which I was honoured to write an endorsement, with support from Bob Walton and Claire Williamson ... 

... and Rachel Clyne returning to the city that hosted the launch, a year ago, of her collection, 'You'll Never Be Anyone Else'. 

Elsewhere, the first draft of my forthcoming collection, 'Love the Albatross', has returned from my publishers, Indigo Dreams, and is awaiting my attention. One of its poems has just come home flushed with success, having been highly commended in the 2024 Slipstream Poetry Competition. A second poem can be read here in Fragmented Voices, while a third found a very stylish home in the latest, 20th anniversary edition of 'Abridged', an compelling journal of poems and photographs based in Northern Ireland.

Also - very excitingly - the collection's artwork, by the very talented Katie Marland, is now in the world. It's way too early to reveal it, but here are some photos Katie took on her visit to Bristol City Museum, where - excitingly - staff brought her albatrosses to sketch. Admittedly they weren't Laysan albatrosses - the title of my collection is, of course, a nod to Wisdom the Albatross - but even so, they had, as Katie puts it, 'a LOT of birdy character and helped [her] to learn a lot about the way they work'. My grateful thanks to her and them. 

Frank Brangwyn at Ditchling and Katie Marland in Bristol and Crediton

I've been to a couple of exhibitions lately. One was at Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft, which I'd wanted to visit for ages, having been a devotee of the Arts and Crafts Movement for years.

Of course, the difficulty with the Ditchling artists' community, which flourished from 1907 to 1924, is its association with Eric Gill. (I still admire his art, even though we now know he was a child rapist.) It turned out, though, the museum was showcasing eight mural panels from Frank Brangwyn's The Skinner's Hall murals, which was altogether more acceptable. 

The murals were commissioned in 1901 to decorate the dining hall of the Court of the Skinners' Company ('above the oak panelling'), but which were delivered late on account on Brangwyn's apparent inability to refuse a commission. It was 1937 before the job was completed. 

Here's one of my favourite details, from 'Education'. Apparently, Donald Sinden, who grew up in the village, was the model for one of the pupils in the mural.

We also had a wander around the village, which is full of endearing buildings. 

Bank  House on the right

Crossways, formerly Catlands, c16th century

This is Wings Place, also known as Anne of Cleves House, having been given to her as part of the marriage annulment (though she never stayed there). The current house appears to be mainly 16th century.

The Ditchling war memorial project was overseen by Eric Gill. The lettering, carved by Joseph Cribb, proved impossible to photograph with my phone in brilliant sun.

We had lunch in the White Horse, which serves Harvey's beer. When she saw my name, the landlady very kindly gave me a stash of unsullied beer mats with the brewery's strapline (and unofficial motto of Sussex) 'We wunt be druv'. Sounds good to me.

After lunch, we visited the oldest building in the village, which is the Church of St Margaret of Antioch, the lower walls of which are Saxon, with the remainder dating mainly from the 12th and 13th centuries. I loved the simplicity of the interior ...

... and the 13th and 14th century stone slabs in the porch. 

 The sun dial in the churchyard, designed and carved by Gill 

Day trips to Sussex are necessarily flying because of the amount of driving involved, but one day I'd like to return to Ditchling for a more leisurely study of the headstones in the churchyard, some of which are very finely carved. 

A few days before my Sussex sojourn, I'd visited an inspirational exhibition closer to home, in the Park Street vestibule of Bristol's Council House. Entitled Folklore, it comprised a series of drawings by Katie Marland, the hugely talented daughter of my friend, Dru Marland.

Having an interest in the old stories, I'd been really looking forward to seeing it, and as I'd suspected, it was fascinating. I especially loved the Mari Lwyd, which I first met in the flesh - so to speak - when on a jaunt to Crickhowell with Dru back in 2016 ... 

... the Barghest, which frequents the lanes of Suffolk but is definitely a cousin of the black dogs of Devon ... 

 

... Black Annis, of Leicestershire, who skins and eats children and lambs ...

... and the Hairy Hands, which are definitely of Devonshire origin, being associated with the stretch of the B3212 that run between Two Bridges and Postbridge on Dartmoor. 

Indeed, since ending in Bristol, Katie's exhibition has made its way to the Folklore Library and Archive in Crediton, Devon, and is well worth seeing.  

Having spent part of the afternoon in such company, it was perhaps fitting that the waning moon that evening was decidedly strange, appearing to get stuck in the top of my neighbour's weeping birch, and reflected so weirdly in the cloud that it resembled the head of a child's doll.