Art and life: reopenings, trips & plans and local heroes.

Last Monday celebrated another cautious step forward into community life when Words at the Black Swan poetry group reconvened in the Round Tower to create responses to In Pursuit of Spring, the current exhibition of artworks created in response to the book of that name written by poet Edward Thomas, which you can read for free here or buy at the gallery. Our group discussed the art on show - this is the ipad response by David Daniels, an image of the River Frome which we all liked - and we reflected also where our own personal journeys might take us, with some very moving poems crafted and shared by all the group. 

Still in the arty centre of Frome, congratulations to Daniel Musselwhite - who works, usually, in his jewellery workshop at the Black Swan -  for reaching the final of BBC's show All That Glitters. The task for the three stunningly talented finalists was to design and make pearl drop earrings and a bridal tikka. Here's judge Shaun Leane modelling Dan's pearl earrings, and Dan in his Frome workplace.

Mega congratulations too, to Andy Wrintmore, here posing for probably the most unconventional official mayoral portrait in history. Andy is Sick Ones' drummer & a tremendously popular figure in Frome, and I'm immensely pleased his talent and energy is represented in my book Frome Unzipped - from Prehistory to Post-Punk, where he talks about his music and his commitment to the town. Supporting him as Deputy Mayor, we now have Sara Butler-Bartholomew, another big personality with high energy. (I'll add picture credit when I find out!)

A change of theme now, with online drama from Stepping Out Theatre Company in Bristol: Pumpgirl by Abbie Spallen, set in Northern Ireland and first performed back in 2006, is a harsh story of drab, loveless, lives told in three separated monologues. A good choice for lockdown production for this last reason, it's also particularly pertinent in a year which has put a public spotlight on women's vulnerability. Danann McAleer is excellent as Hammy, car-obsessed and brutally sexist; Neroli Trammell strong as his emotionally unstable wife, with Emma Stadon memorable as the vulnerable pumpgirl who feels gratified by his attentions.  The virtual backgrounds are sometimes distracting but this production is an impressive achievement and a credit to the company. 

Ending now with some images from local walks, as spring merges with early summer with little cessation of howling winds and rain, but bursts of sun have allowed short sorties: a jaunt with friends to The George in Norton Saint Philip, in 1685 during the Monmouth Rebellion used as headquarters for the rebel army, and in the terrible aftermath used by Judge Jeffreys as a courtroom: these idyllic lawns now being rolled as an immaculate cricket pitch saw hangings in the Bloody Assizes.

The short (under an hour) walk to Marston Park seems to have become a regular route for me so here again is the lake beyond the bluebell wood, where you can sit with a drink from the tiny bar and look ahead to Frome Festival, only 6 weeks away, when this will be the venue for many of the bands.  

Brochures are out now, and despite all uncertainties and anxieties, their 36 pages are crammed with events : walks and talks, performances of every sort, displays, workshops, and general celebration. As Festival Director Martin Bax explains in his welcome letter: We thought we might produce a much smaller festival this year. We have failed abysmally.  Don't forget the Poetry Cafe - page 12 - where as well as the quirkily egalitarian open mic, you can hear wonderful Liv Torc - the Best Fest Guest in the West.

Rites of spring... and some older wrongs

April 1st meant only one thing in Frome: forget fool tricks and mystic elevations, the market is back! Frome Independent had to cancel its original spring return due to the slush-fest that heralded March, but on Sunday the sun shone, the crowds came to enjoy the stalls and the snacks and the musicality that makes Frome so special, in streets in the morning and in bars during the afternoon and evening.

Next day we were promised thunderstorms but luckily, since the river was already spilling, they didn't arrive. I usually go to Mells for the daffodil festival, but this time went on an Edward Thomas walk based around Tellesford village and weir, with exceedingly good refreshments at the mill. This old flocking mill has been superbly renovated by  Rachel Feilden and Anthony Battersby, and now generates enough electricity for 80 houses, yet the location still looks exactly as described by Edward Thomas from his journey In Pursuit of Spring. John Payne read some of the relevant prose sections of this book, with related poems interspersed by me & Martin Bax. This Easter Monday is 101 years to the day since Edward Thomas was killed in the Battle of Arras, so it was especially poignant to read his 4-line poem: In Memoriam:  
The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood 
this Eastertide call into mind the men,
now far from home, who with their sweethearts should
have gathered them, and will never do again.


Hunting Raven Books on Tuesday had a big audience for David Lassman's Frome launch of The Awful Killing of Sarah Watts (written with Mick Davis) - a richly researched and thrilling account of the days when Frome was seething with pickpockets, cheese-rustlers, and ruffian gangs with names Dickens would envy (was Magwitch, in Great Expectations written 1861, inspired by the Maggs gang terrorising Frome in the 1850s?.... just a thought!)  'Crime capital of the kingdom' may be a tad hyperbolic, but certainly Frome was in a desperate state after the cloth trade collapsed, with around 97% unemployed workers and no professional support for the duo of citizen constables, as Somerset inexplicably ignored the County Police Act of 1839 for seventeen years. This fascinating tale will rank with The Suspicions of Mr Whicher as a vivid and informative show-reel from the past - interestingly, Mr Smith, the London inspector sent to solve the crime, was a friend of Mr Whicher, preceding his colleague's legendary visit by nine years.

Apart from these outings, if you've turned to my blog for a roll-call of the never-ending stream of Frome's events you'll be disappointed: I'm still on short-time for another month. I couldn't resist Al O'Kane and Rivers of England at 23 Bath Street, but other than that I've been self-exiled from the temptations of the town, so have missed most of the excellent music acts around last week.


Instead here's a picture of what spring appears to be doing, from one of my thinking-plods. Nietzche said all great thoughts are conceived by walking, and I bet he kept to his deadlines... mind you Douglas Adams claimed to love deadlines because of the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. I may have to learn to love that sound too.

Poetry walks, Smoking Bears, alien mystery & more...

Frome's annual celebrations lingered into this week, with a post-festival 6-mile walk around Adlestrop with led by the admirable Cotswold Voluntary Wardens, followed by 38 hikers all revelling in this 'Area of Outstanding Beauty' and compliant at the addition of an Edward Thomas element.
Here's Martin Bax reading As the Team's Head Brass Flashed, a poignant poem evoking the effect on the farms, as well as their families, of the deaths of so many young men. This was at Chastleton Barrow, the remains of an iron age settlement, a perfect circle 162 metres in diametre.
Adlestrop, while the focus of this route, was not the only interesting feature and leader Margaret Reid pointed out several other fascinating places like this as we passed, including Chastleton House which boasts not only originating croquet but also housing the bible used by Charles II on the scaffold. A lovely walk through fields filled with wild flowers and insects, and sometimes sheep, ending in the traditional way with tea and cake.


Another literary anniversary: 200 years on Tuesday since the death of Jane Austen, aged only 41 and in relative anonymity ~ her epitaph runs to 125 words without mentioning that she wrote books. Nowadays of course the Janeite industry almost vies with 'the man from Stratford' (with equally little data to go on, as Jane's sister Cassandra burned three-thousand-plus letters which would have chronicled her life) and there's now a ten pound note in Jane's honour. Bath, where Regency streets remain largely unchanged since Jane's eight year stay, naturally honoured the bicentenary with various events including a series of walks through the city to the Jane Austen Centre. There's also a massive floral plaque in the Parade Gardens which reads OH! WHO CAN EVER BE TIRED OF BATH? ~ a quotation which would have either entertained or exasperated Jane, who detested living there and attributed such fulsome sentiments to her most shallow characters. Ironically, the quote on the new tenner is also a parodic one: I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! is uttered by sly Caroline Bingley to lure Mr Darcy's interest away from Elizabeth Bennett, and we all know how that ended...

Still on the subject of witty novels with acute social observation, Debby Holt has a new one out: The Dangers of Family Secrets,"a gripping story about trust, love and the destructive effects secrets have on a family" according to the blurb. Debby lives in Bath but has strong writerly connections with Frome so her first launch was at Hunting Raven Books on Tuesday evening, where we were treated to a sparky talk on her chosen stimulus ('Every family has secrets, and the 'perfect' family has more than most...') and a couple of tantalising extracts... Naturally there was a long queue for signings, and then clutching our copies with tingling fingers, we made the most of the evening sunshine with a Writers' Group chat in the courtyard of a local pub.

Back to poetry now: Richard Carder who runs Poetry & a Pint at the delightfully bohemian St James Wine Vaults in Bath, invited me to guest at his final event of the summer, to share some of my Crumbs from a Spinning World. Sue Boyle, who also featured, shared her heartfelt 'Reading for a Disappearing World' and the theme of planetary destruction continued in several open mic readings so you could say this was overall quite a cosmic event.

On Saturday I was in Bristol for Wardrobe Theatre's revival of their notorious 'alternative comedy' Goldilock, stock, & three smoking bears. This anarchic company-devised 'madcap merging of the classic porridge-thieving tale with Guy Ritchie's cockney caper' sold out when it premiered 2 years ago, and when it was revived last year too. I'm not surprised. All four performers ~ Emma Keaveney-Roys, Lotte Allan, Andrew Kingston, and contortionistic Harry Humberstone ~ mesmerise from the start & escalate in absurdity. I don't think I've ever heard an audience laugh so much. The saga is set in that part of London where thugs & entrepreneurs mix & merge, some living in squalor, some eating money, all capitalists. This is where the three bears, dorky Paddington, classy twit Winnie, and psycho Rupert, head for the Artisan Oat-Stirrers for an over-priced breakfast... there's porridge-stirrer-slaughter, chair-theft, pill-popping, and when-Harry-met-Sally turning into bromance with Barry, and altogether far too much to explain. It's all brilliant.
As the production had transposed, in this incarnation, to Tobacco Factory, my walk from the station took me through the Harbour Festival a massive family-friendly celebration of dance, music, circus, funfair, poetry and play, crammed with stalls selling everything saleable from a stall including snacks from paella to Pimms, with a flotilla of boats going up and down alongside a steam-train and yet more stalls all along the waterfront. And so many people it seemed like someone had invented a happy-making human-flesh-attracting magnet to irresistibly pull in the entire population of Bristol. The sun emerged again, too, so a result all round. Here's me, sucked briefly into the festival atmosphere, with some very sweet people whose names I don't know but sharing two minutes of my life with them was fun.


An unusual new exhibition, SKETCH is now showing at Black Swan. Meryl Ainslie, founder and director of the Rabley Drawing Centre where this touring initiative began, spoke at the launch on Friday of the importance of the sketchbook in every artist's practice: ' undefined, incomplete, and investigative.'  Words at the Black Swan will have a workshop on Monday, 3-4.30, with poet Louise Green, exploring the 100 on exhibition as stimulus for writing.  

Also unusual, or perhaps not, there's another crop circle just below Cley Hill (technically Wiltshire but only four miles away.) The unfortunately thus-blessed farmer has appealed for UFO fans not to do the Theresa-May-thing and rush wildly through his crop but some have. I didn't, and hopefully the solemn group in the centre at sunrise on Sunday morning did either.

Ending this post with a last look at the festival with two pictures by Ben Mackay who came from Bristol to join the Frome walk, and a group photograph by David J Chedgy.  And a thank-you to the Frome Times for their supplement crammed with images of just about everything that went on!

Post festival posting

And the Festival is over, so Frome town can return to its usual status of chronic creativity without the mass overlaps which saw everyone rushing between venues and angsting over impossible choices every night. I'll skip the list of all that I missed, and skim you through some personal highlights:

A sublime evening on Monday ensured that, for only the second time since its inception in 2003, the Frome Festival Poetry Cafe was held outside, enabling around fifty poets and lovers of spoken word to enjoy the Garden Cafe at its best. Guest poet Deborah Harvey read from her new collection Breadcrumbs, delicately beautiful poems with an extraordinary emotional charge, and also had the near-impossible task of choosing the 'Festival Poet Laureate' from 25 open-mic readers all responding to the theme 'That Adlestrop Moment' in honour of poet Edward Thomas, killed in that iniquitous war 100 years ago.

The standard was superb and every poem was appreciated & enjoyed: three poets from Bath (Jinny Fisher, Rachel Clyne, and Jo Butts) nearly stole the title, several men (Mike Rogers, Alan Overton, Kieron Bacon) were strong contenders, but our new Festival Laureate,  with signed certificate and bottle of posh wine from Frome Wholefoods, is 'B' ~ B Anne Adriaens ~ with Liv Torc the popular choice for a 'special' prize from Hunting Raven Books.

Final gem in this glittering collection of readings came from Louise Green, who read her 'Glosa' based on Adlestrop which won the Torbay Festival of Poetry competition last year. An awesome evening - thanks David J Chedgy for the picture of me on that night with Martin Bax, inspirer of the Edward Thomas theme in the festival. Deborah has given us a great write-up in her blog, too.
This segues nicely into another really lovely event: the river walk In the footsteps of Edward Thomas, which must surely have convinced everyone taking part (there were about 40 of us) that there really is nothing nicer than strolling beside a river on a sunny afternoon, with a pause now and again to read poetry. Martin and John Payne had planned the poems to suit the 3 mile route: mostly idyllic rural observations of nature, especially the mill at Tellisford, where we stopped for tea, with a more sombre mood beside the church. Tellisford is a 'Thankful' village, one of the nine in Somerset which lost no men in the First World War. There are 53 villages identified for such gratitude but as there over 4,500 villages in England, it seems a dubious reason to rejoice. Edward Thomas would have thought so, had he survived. He wrote his own memorial two years before he was killed by a shell blast: In Memoriam (Easter, 1915) 
The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood 
This Eastertide call into mind the men, 
Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should 
Have gathered them, and will do never again.

Speaking of war,  Love, Bombs and Apples, written by Hassan Abdulrazzak & performed by Asif Khan, came to the Merlin on the initiative of Frome Friends of Palestine. This award-winning AIK production brilliantly demonstrates how politics without polemic can make fantastic theatre. The play comprises four short monologues from four very different young men: In Palestine, oppression is so normalised that 'the wall' can even be a stimulating support to a date with an English do-gooder ~ this one is graphic and hilarious ~ while a Bradford lad finds the mosque is a lot less impressive than the Apple Store. A young writer who longs to be 'East Acton's answer to Zadie Smith' is arrested under Section 41 of the Terror Act (there's some helpful critique from the officer in charge: "Characters should have inner life - this is not a story, it’s a shopping list. If ISIS ran Ikea, this would be their catalogue.")  The final play for me was the most powerfully thought-provoking, and inescapably relevant. Here the young man is virtually apolitical: he admires his pro-AIPAC father as a role-model, but his girlfriend is leader of an anti-Israeli boycott movement, and she's demanding he makes a choice...  Again, political potency is brilliantly crafted into a human drama, about a very real ongoing situation as AIPAC is active in US colleges 'educating students about Zionism' with the aggressive assertion 'anti-Israel is anti-semite.' It took me back to Belfast in the 1970s troubles when Loyalists targeted not only Catholics but 'sympathisers' ~ that meant anyone refusing to join their extreme enmity. Watching a play doesn't make anything go away, but for all of us who support Palestine, it does give more context of the complexity of the issue.

The festival Art Trail features studios and galleries all around Frome, twenty-nine venues in all, mostly with more than one artist exhibiting. Time, or rather lack of it, precluded a full exploration though I saw much that was unusual and intriguing and some classy pottery and paintings. Here's the Vicarage Street Gallery, and Raggedy's studio at Silk Mill. The 'Art Car Boot' event in the market yard was hugely popular too.

Music is always a big draw in the festival and though I missed some spectacular-sounding classical performances, I did catch most of the great bands performing in the pubs and bars. Roots Session at the Grain Bar featured Littlemen with support from Al O'Kane, and Wonderstuff came to the main hall, while Cornerhouse brought us two fantastic bands: popular favourites Flash Harry, and the amazing Pete Gage Band ~ Richie Blake bass, Eddie John drums, Craig Crofton sax, the legendary Paul Hartshorn on guitar with Pete's superb voice and keyboard. 'Awesome' barely scratches it.

Frome Writers Collective, having started the festival with their very successful Small Publishers Fair and Writers In (shop & cafe) Residence events, concluded on Sunday with the Short Story Contest prize-giving in the Library. Novelist Laura Wilkinson, who judged the short list, gave a lively talk and presented cheques to the winners: Mark Johnson and Jo Else came joint second with Rhiannon Lewis in first place. Rhiannon read her story to the audience, as did local winner Margaret Histed whose story The Button Game will have stirred memories for many of my generation. Here's the prizewinners with first judge Alison Clink (R) and Brenda Bannister who compered the event (second L) During the week FWC had organised other events for members ~ a book quiz, and a flash fiction contest requiring an imagined monologue from one of the characters in a Jane Austen novel: my interpretation of secret malice from Persuasion's goodie-goodie Anne was voted second in absentia (I was at the Merlin) but I got the prize as first-placed Brenda Bannister had also organised the event. (Pic taken at our next writing group, not at Three Swans where Gill Harry read for me.)

So that's it for another year. The bunting can come down, GWR can take our brochure image off their station posters, and Froomies can go off to other festivals ~ there's several good ones coming up locally.

My final event was a quirky one: Dudley Sutton, octogenarian actor of TV 90s fame who reinvented himself 14 years ago as a solo performer with a startlingly scurrilous show called Killing Kittens at Edinburgh. For Frome's Granary he toned down his material and gave us a whistle-stop tour of a life zestfully spent in Old Enough to Know Better. Clever versifying combined with great audience rapport made for an impressive performance, and if Dudley could bottle his talent for word delivery, stand-ups would be queuing to buy. Here's a picture from 1964, when Dudley was cast in Joe Orton's Entertaining Mr Sloane after he 'found freedom' in London after arriving as a Daily-Mail indoctrinated 'anti-semetic homophobic racist'. With the lefty politics of Grace Petrie, the wicked wit of Frankie Boyle, and a manner all his own, Dudley's show made a perfect ending to a week of magical variety and ~ delightfully ~ near constant sunshine.

A week that wasn't, ending with drama and a Big Bash

I'll begin at the end of the week, because that was the best bit: The Merlin Short Play Competition had its superb finale on stage, with rehearsed readings by Frome Drama Club of the six winning plays. Here's the final line-up, chosen from seventy-seven submissions and a very strong long-list, and here's Claudia Pepler who initiated and master-minded this brilliant celebration of new drama, in role with Philip de Glanville in the gentle mystery Meet me at the Nightingale. 
Allison Herbert and Dan Gaisford here are in the dystopian satire Post Truth, and Tracy Ashford is looking askance at Nick White in Plan B, a comedy with an unexpected twist.

These versatile actors also took on Hot Tub Blues, a comedy of bickering with a happy ending, and Not Dead Yet, a very unusual vampire story. Mhairi Milligan's reading of Just of the Boat, a moving monologue of our times ended the performances, and a short Q&A afterwards confirmed audience appreciation of this varied & entertaining selection of winning plays. Congratulations to all the writers, who can list this success on their CV in future submissions, and hopefully the two able to come and see their scripts 'go live' found the experience a valuable part of the process of play-writing. Win-win all.

Friday night was also the Mayor's Charity Bash, an important night in Frome when the outgoing mayor organises a public entertainment with all proceeds to local organisations, and this year Mayor Toby Eliot had a new Town Hall to do it in.  So after the show at the Merlin we scooted across town to join the celebrations organised, too late to hear the excellent set by Deputy Mayor Al O'Kane but in time for the excellent set by Mayor Toby's fabulous band Back Wood Redeemers. As well as mandolin, those chains in no way impede his harmonica skills either!  We were in time too to see Des Harris win the hat competition, here he is with Stina Harris, and here's the one he took of me in my hat, looking like I think I'm still holding a glass of prosecco... After the band there was disco & dancing till midnight ~ a great way to finish a week that had up till then been pretty rubbish.

My persistent cold-&-throat thing had become unignorable, revealing its true colours (lurid) and literally silencing me. Most of this week has therefore been about cancelling: a meeting about a play, a meeting about a performance, a writers' group meeting, a theatre visit for review, the Last Tree Dreaming commemoration plaque unveiling, and an open-mic night of 'perilous reading' to celebrate Dracula's 120th publication-birth, and the Roots Session at the Grain Bar, where I really wanted to hear the Fos Brothers who grew up in Belfast in the troubled '70s not far from where I lived at the start of that era.

So here's two snippets from the week before - plans for future events - when my lurgy was gripping but my voice hadn't gone completely awol: I had a useful meeting with Phil Moakes, founder and organiser of Visual Radio Arts in his revamped home in the Old Fire Station, to discuss a future live on-air performance poetry session with four local poets.
And I was privileged to stand in for Stephanie Cole in a read-through of John Payne's script for the Life and Work of Edward Thomas event in Frome Festival, here's me with James Laurenson and Martin Bax.

Footnote to this ravaged week: I did manage a quick dip into the Museums at Night national project supported by Frome's Black Swan Arts, involving evening events at several galleries including The Good Gallery where Kate Cochrane is showing her splendid paintings of Tasmania. I'll leave you two images from the Cornerhouse, always a friend to live music: Graham Dent's new jazz line-up, and marvellous Blue Midnight, extraordinary ska/dub rhythms blended with a touch of scottish and turkish... Here's hoping for more happenings to report on next week.