A new project – Creative Conversations

I’ve just started work with Creative Conversations, led by Arts Alive and Media Active. This three year partnership development links experienced agencies for arts and health to help establish new creative opportunities for people aged 55 and over. Participants may want to develop their own creative ideas, acquire new skills that can be shared with others, or may simply wish to try something new.

This is a really exciting project, collaborative and specifically in search of new ways of working. Professional musicians, poets, writers and digital artists will regularly visit various groups and venues to have creative conversations, gather stories, share music, write songs and poems, make films and digital drawings. Over the next two years we will be collecting these and feeding them into the production of a touring Variety Show and exhibition; this will tour around to many small community spaces and village halls across the county, celebrating older people and putting their creativity quite literally centre stage.

I’ve just done the first ‘taster’ sessions at Shropshire day and community centres – and we’ve had a wonderful time making poems together from stimuli such as a heavy horse bridle –

On Clee Hill there was a Shire
across the railway line.
Sometimes my cousin’s husband
would put a saddle on that horse
and ride it
like a medieval knight.

I saw a Shire horse in a field,
before our time.

and on a different day, from a painting by Anthea Craigmyle –

I write down what people say, trying to keep up, trying to keep the way and the exact words they choose, then we read them back. Maybe add a bit more. When we’re done, I chop it up with the scissors, do a swift shuffle and edit, then sellotape the bits back together. Then we read it all again, much clapping and laughing. Here’s one:

I thought it were one of them roundabouts.
Can you write Yorkshire?
I said a leprechaun, but no,
a unicorn by the river.

We three kings,
being as it’s coming to Christmas,
and a spotty dog, all
on their way to Bethlehem.

Spell to be a Unicorn for one day only

Christmas is coming! I’ve just been The Spellwright again for glorious Ludlow Medieval Fayre, wearing my best big dress and thermal underwear, writing spell after spell in the Hands on History tent. For two days my fingers have been soaked in black ink, and I’ve used up an amazing amount of sealing wax.

Here’s a selection of requested spells:

November 26, 2018 0

Start 2019 with Café Writing!

Start 2019 with some Café Writing! Join me for six weekly sessions of inventive prompts, ideas and lots of encouragement, not least being fuelled by Ludlow Kitchen’s exceptional coﬀee and cake!

This will the third series of Café Writing at Ludlow Kitchen. I love teaching this course, always a joy.

November 20, 2018 0

Stir a pint of midnight into a sack of fog

I had to lie down on the sofa and hold onto a cup of tea afterwards, but I had the most amazing weekend at Shrewsbury Museum in the company of a seemingly endless stream of inventive young witches and wizards #MuseumsAreMagic.

Staff at the Museum had done a stunning job lighting the staircase with candles, providing a hatstand to leave your portkey on, a wand shop, a potions chamber – and provided me with a vast wizard’s throne and a high table decked with quills and sinister pots. I brought my own skulls.

Here’s a selection of Spells:

and more below. I always ask the customer for their thoughts on the spell, and then incorporate their words where I can. Sometimes I can get their age, or their birthday month in there too, as with the Spell for a Mermaid. You will notice one of the Shape Shifter spells (above) was very effective.

October 29, 2018 0

Troubadour of the Hills

I’m delighted to tell you I’ve been appointed the first-ever ‘Troubadour of the Hills’ for Ledbury Poetry Festival and Malvern Hills AONB. The project launches next Thursday 4 October at 10am when I’ll perform at a National Poetry Day event at Ledbury Books and Maps.

But today was a less public, but (I reckon) more energetic Troubadour happening, in the marvellous company of Y5/Y6 of Bosbury Primary School at Old Colwall. A cold night was warming to golden sun under the Malverns when I turned up.

We were welcomed into an attractively dilapidated 19th century conservatory beside Old Colwall’s extraordinary Cloud Hedge. The plan was to work with the children so they had the chance to respond in poetry to both the Cloud Hedge and Old Colwall’s 1000+ year old yew on the hillside.

We explored the Cloud Hedge, which dates back to the 18th century (at least). Children raced through its passageways, stroked its bark, discovered the strange red sap of the yew that helps associate it with blood and death. We talked about yews in churchyards, yews cut for longbows, yew that lasts longer than an iron post.

Then we went back into the conservatory and wrote. Each pair of children provided me with a line for a collaborative class poem which I scribbled down then edited over my sandwich at lunchtime. Here it is:

The Cloud Hedge
has leaves like bubbles in air
has twisted faces that mutter in the wind
The Cloud Hedge
is shady like a tent and stormy like the Channel
is a mysterious tunnel stretched like a witch’s broom
is textured like bubbles outside, and inside dark and poisonous
The Cloud Hedge
has branches that flow through an everlasting maze
has branches that flow like water
has branches that reach to sky like hands reach to the heart
The Cloud Hedge
is ancient spindled roots
is green patchwork silky leaves
is puffy and shady like a comfy dream
The Cloud Hedge
has spooky spidery branches
has hot air going in but cold air coming out
is fat like a hippopotamus tree
The Cloud Hedge
is a dark sharp spike, a pin that blows in the wind
is as grumpy as a cloud
The Cloud Hedge
swallowed us like flies
never stopping to wait for us
the dark green silky dim curved green long stretched-out
Cloud Hedge

We had enormous fun performing this, with everyone doing ‘The Cloud Hedge’ each time I raised my pencil!

Then there was cake.

And after that we all set off through a field and up a steep hill to visit the great Yew of Old Colwall.

The Yew is simply massive, a vast core trunk that sends tremendous branches out to all sides. The branches arch, re-root and grow further great spurs. The tree must have a radius of 40 yards or so. It was wonderful to see the children clamber into the tree, scrambling along branches, wriggling into the forks, feet dangling down, Poem Notes in hand and in use.

Back in the conservatory we wrote tankas about climbing in the Yew. Some absolutely outstanding writing – here’s some:

We finished the afternoon with a poetry reading, and shared so many wonderful and brand new poems about the yews. Huge thanks to all at Old Colwall, not forgetting Hetty the extremely popular dog.

September 24, 2018 4

Only the van

I’m just back from a rewarding morning making poems at Coldwells House, a care home near Hereford. Today there was a group of a dozen, quite a few of whom I’d met before, but not seen for three months. I took in copies of an Eric Ravilious print ‘Wiltshire landscape’ (1937).

We all talked about the picture, and what it meant, and what everyone saw in it, while I took furious and punctuation-free notes on a clipboard. It often helps to squat down next to an older person to talk and listen, so I did quite a lot of that. I try to record exactly what someone says, in their own words.

Then I read back what we had – and there were some additions to write in.

While the group of a dozen drank their tea, I knelt on the carpet and cut up my three sheets of A4 scribbles, and began to move them around – a quick edit on the ground – literally. Then I got the sellotape out and stuck them altogether. Everyone enjoyed watching this!

Then we read it all again. And again. There was so much smiling and nodding.

At home, I’ve done a final edit (I don’t add any words, but move words around and select a bit). Then I’ll email the finished poem to the Home for them to show to the participants, and put on the wall. I’ll be back to see everyone in a few weeks.

Meantime, here’s an extract from the end of our poem:

vi)
I’m sure I’ve been in a place like that.
Here’s the question. Where does that road lead to?
This is a main road and this is a side road.
The sky looks rather depressing.
All these hills and only the van on its way.
We can’t see where he’s going.

vii)
But that’s nice. I hope I can get through it.
The telegraph poles go far away.
We’ll have to wait and see.

viii)
To be honest I have to think straight through
to my mother, or father.
It’s lovely, a beautiful place.
A road going home.

August 30, 2018 0

And though she be but little, she is fierce

Last week I spent an extremely hot, but very satisfying day with the children and staff of Rushbury Primary School. It’s one of the smallest schools I’ve worked in, with only 46 on roll, and so I spent the morning with KS2, and then the afternoon with KS1.

In KS2 the children have all been studying Shakespeare, and life under the Tudors. So we started off by reading a broad selection of famous quotes, choosing the one each child liked the best, and talking together about why. Then I set them to do some freewriting inspired by the quote, emphasising that the link could be as close or as tenuous as they liked. So I got some enthusiastic pony-lovers responding to ‘My horse, my horse! My kingdom for a horse!’. Then from the freewriting the children worked up a first draft.

Here’s a marvellous development from ‘And though she be but little, she is fierce’.

On the left is the writer’s first draft, only partially photographed (oh dear!) which I borrowed from her to write onto the smartboard so we could all talk about line endings, and how to decide where to put them.

Here’s her revised first draft:

Here’s a mature, thoughtful first draft (arriving almost complete) in response to ‘All that glisters is not gold’.

And I worked with this student on a response to ‘The empty vessel makes the loudest sound’, asking her for similes which she provided readily, and wonderfully, for me to write down –

By the afternoon KS1 had already been out to a sports event, and the thermometer in their classroom measured 30 degrees. We gratefully went and sat under a big tree in the corner of the playground, read lots of poems, joined in and made up actions. They were lovely, and on discovering a little boy who kept bees (and knew everything) we made up a whole group poem called ‘Nine Ways to Look at Bees’, and performed it to KS2 just before home time.

Thank you for having me, Rushbury, and thank you to Wenlock Poetry Festival who provided the funding for this day.

July 9, 2018 0

‘At midnight, pick half a pound of hail out of a blue lake’

In the midst of summer 2018’s heatwave comes Ledbury Poetry Festival, rich with words and sunstruck sofas out on the cobbled lane as ever. Dressed rather warmly in my best ‘medieval wise-woman’ garb, with large straw hat, I set up in the Walled Garden alongside a colourful spread of tents and stalls providing entertainment to all.

Ledbury PoetryFest 2018 Spellwright (14)

I wrote spells for all ages, requests ranging from dinosaur seeds to relief from headaches. It was an inky joy. Thank you Ledbury!

July 3, 2018 1

‘A rain of sixpences and hunger’ – watch the video

We made a little video for ‘Tom Palin at Cinderloo’ – do share, do tell us what you think!

We’re starting to spread the word about ‘Understories‘ – a new poetry and music collaborative project between myself and musicians Charlotte Watson, Steve Downs and Sarah Ibberson of Whalebone.

‘Understories’ explores the new folklore of Shropshire. Here are both rural and urban myths, tales just out of living memory and tales re-told. They are the common uncommon.

We’ll be performing the new show in 2019. Join us to discover Shropshire’s last wolves and cloggers, its haunted roundabouts, railway lines and oak trees, not to mention the boy who burrowed under a church.

This poem, ‘Tom Palin at Cinderloo’, explores the story of a rising by ironworkers in 1821, as they protested against draconian pay cuts. It happened in what is now Telford. It’s a classic tale of abuse of labour in the interests of profit, and it ended in the deaths of several of the strikers with many further injuries to women and children involved in the protest.

The name ‘Cinderloo’ was coined at the time, following the notorious events at Peterloo slightly earlier. The Cinder Hills was the local name for the slagheaps. The site of the struggle is now overlain by Telford Forge Retail Park. Plaque needed, I think.

June 1, 2018 1