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.  

The Romantic Poets and Bristol: A New 'Lyrical Ballads'

Since I broke my leg, I've only got out of bed - or at least off the settee - for poetry.  A marathon 12 hours yesterday at Bath Poetry Cafe's annual event, Voices In The City, was preceded the night before by a remarkable gathering of poets at @Bristol, under the auspices of the Festival of Ideas.  

Both Samuel Coleridge and William Wordsworth had links with Bristol, and so to celebrate Bristol's year as European Green Capital, 23 of the UK's most prominent poets were invited to respond to poems from Lyrical Ballads, for this reading and a two-part Radio 4 documentary.  

The evening began with a series of introductions including one from Mayor George Ferguson, who spoke about how the evening would celebrate Bristol and the richness of its urban wildlife.  He also mentioned the city's commitment to promoting and developing poetry, especially for children.   Then it was the turn of the poets, the great majority of whom had been able to travel in person, to read their particular poem, each introduced by honey-tongued Ian McMillan, who also read a poem of his own.  

Gillian Clarke, the National Poet of Wales, remarked that it had been a long time since she had taken an entire reading from her pocket, and indeed it was odd to see such luminaries as Makar Liz Lochead, Sir Andrew Motion, Don Paterson, Alice Oswald, John Burnside, Paul Farley, Fleur Adcock, Jean Sprackland, Ruth Padel and Sean O'Brien shuffle on and off the stage as if they were at school assembly.  As much as I was delighted by the opportunity to hear so many of our best contemporary poets, I wished the event had been divided into several throughout the year, so that the poets had a chance to introduce us to some of their other work, to give these new poems some context.  My guess is that it was done like this partly to create a one-night extravaganza and partly to facilitate recording, but after a while I began to feel slightly sick, as if I'd opened a big tin of Quality Street and eaten all the orange and strawberry creams, one after the other.

My favourite poem was Alice Oswald's elegiac description of a dead swan, which she'd passed on her daily walk for a month earlier this winter, as a counterpart to the rotting albatross strung around the neck of the Ancient Mariner.  It was a beautiful, startling piece and I am in awe of her fearless nose.

Other quibbles - no, actually, these are complaints - include the description of the evening as a celebration of Bristol and its urban wildlife.  In fact, the city was largely overlooked, and when it was mentioned, it was in reference to the natives' 'somnolence' or as being a place where its inhabitants 'slur their words like drunks'.  Of all the poets present, none were born in the city and only one lives locally.  As for Thomas Chatterton, our own Romantic poet, Wordsworth's 'marvellous boy', he was completely ignored.

Finally, that far from promoting poetry, as the Mayor claimed in his introduction, the city council has this year ceased its funding for Poetry Can, the lone poetry development agency for Bristol and the south-west, thus jeopardising not only its programmes of work with school children and resident, council tax-paying poets, but also the biannual poetry festivals and the agency's very existence.  I saw quite a few seething local poets exit the reading, their faces almost as red as Mr Ferguson's infamous trousers.  

  Bristol urban wildlife

Photo montage © Dru Marland