Esme Ellis hosted the launch of her latest book Dreaming Worlds Awake at her Combe Down home on Sunday, providing warm hospitality as well as a fascinating insight into the creative journey of this reflection on synchronicity in our lives. For me it was also a chance to catch up with some Bath & Bristol writer friends & hear some great poetry - here's Skip reading a piece inspired by Brian Patten. A sculpture student in the crucible 1950s, Esme remembers furore over Epstein's 'obscene, brutish' works: Jacob, assaulted by an angel in this 1940 alabaster piece, is one of the voices in her book and Esme also includes a poem I wrote at the same time, without knowing about her reflections.
Jacob meets the angel
I didn’t know what to expect – well, would you?
An angel descending suddenly, heavily,
wings like tombstones, dishevelled hair, staring eyes.
A gargoyle on acid he looked, this heavenly apparition.
He swung like a wrecking ball towards me,
clung to me, clouting my thigh. I almost fell, and he held me,
his stony arms grasping, his huge legs buckled under me.
I should have felt pain, but I didn’t. I felt sustained.
It was what I had always wanted. Maimed, and claimed.

Poetry & a Pint at St James' Vault on Monday night found itself in scheduling conflict with the opening of Bristol Poetry Festival, but Stroud poet Adam Horovitz validated my channel choice with readings from his new book Turning. His poems are both tender and shrewd: they delicately normalise the raw painfulness of life and loss, Carol Ann Duffy, who puts things better than me, reviewed this collection as 'physical language of scrupulous integrity'.


Back in Frome, for crouching theatre, hidden talent... Nevertheless Productions pounces once again in November with a performance with the working title Agony Ecstasy and Gin Sling - ok that will change - which will introduce Lady Philadelphia de Courcey to an unsuspecting audience. Let's hope everyone's ready...

Finally: Art with attitude at the Silk Mill gallery: ecological attitudes and sexual politics tersely challenged in a surprisingly alluring exhibition, on till 25th September. Recommended.

"Your dreams are potent fields of creativity, understanding, and wisdom."
Esmé Ellis has finished her new book Dreaming Worlds Awake, an intriguing patchwork of reflections about the elusive but palpable connections between our conscious and unconscious worlds. We use the term 'dream' both for imaginings in sleep and conscious aspirations, and Esmé explores these interactions in a fascinatingly personal way. I'm delighted my poem Jacob and the Angel is included among her fragments of synchronicity.

Back in Frome, The Lamb is no more! Well not with that name anyway: Martin Earley, charismatic host and owner of the pub where Nevertheless Pub Theatre began, has changed the name to The Cornerhouse with a cool new look to match. Launch night with the Zoe Francis Trio playing Gershwin to Frome's glamorati gave a foretaste of sophistications ahead.

Back to Bath again for something very different: 24 Hour Plays at the Ustinov. "24 hours ago", project director Shane Morgan reminds us after the cast have taken their final bows at 10 pm tonight, "not a word of this production existed. In the last 24 hours, 6 plays have been written, learned, rehearsed, and performed." It's an amazing and wholly admirable achievement, and though the writing was understandably variable, the acting by each team of five was superb. The same props - a venetian blind and a suitcase - featured in each play, as did the notion of wind, and there were thematic synchronicities too: motherhood, both surrogate and abandoning, with the end of the world threatened twice. My favourite was Maria by David Lane, both for strongly developed characterisation and pacey direction: all characters on stage from the start allowed Sam Berger to avoid the dozen or so blackouts that fragmented the opening play Tiny Little Lost. Chris Loveless also did well to create a sense of cohesion with his slightly Am-Drammish comedy material Exit Only. And despite any personal nit-pickings, overall this event was an absolute triumph: two hours of engrossing dramatic entertainment, whipped up by six inventive writers and a cast of thirty talented actors. Bouquets all round.

And as we freeze in bitter winds, I see Skyros island is set for another week of 22 degree sunshine... roll on June 11th, when I'll be in Atsitsa Bay, watching the water, smelling the oleander, tasting the retsina, feeling the warmth, listening and talking about writing to anyone who wants to hear and share.