Wake me up when September ends

It was National Poetry Day last week and Liv Torc, chieftain queen of the Hip Yak Shack was commissioned by BBC Somerset Sound to create a poem celebrating 'home truths' about the county. Liv visited Hunting Raven Books on Saturday to share this and other poems - you can listen here, and she'll perform this, and her now-viral poem Human Emergency, at the Green Platter event next week - if that's not in your diaries, put it in now!  Poetry's annual day was also marked by a performance in the now-disused Shepton Mallet prison choreographed by Frome's Rosie Jackson - I missed this, but there's an excellent blog account here by Deborah Harvey, one of the poets. The all-male prison closed except for visits 2013 after four centuries of chequered history: I visited it regularly for a while to tutor one of the prisoners who had a yen to write a play and a social worker prepared to support him, and found all the Category C lifers remarkably pleasant.
It's now five years since Flatpack Democracy - a guide to creating independent politics was published by eco-logic books as an account by Frome's IfF councillor & ex-Mayor Peter Macfadyen of the work behind establishing Independents for Frome, who took over the council and still hold it now. Flatpack Democracy 2.0 tells what happened next, which includes national and international connections formed in response to this template, and was launched last week at Rye Bakery (with nibbles and prosecco, Frome's pack isn't too flat for that.) Publisher Peter Andrews followed his role as barman with an intro to Peter Macfadyen's brief talk,which ended with a quiz for each table. Questions like Where was the term 'flat-packing' in this context coined?  (it was Amsterdam) and How many times has Frome's MP voted to reduce spending on welfare (it's 23, shockingly) generated much conversation at the tables, as independent councillors and candidates from Shepton, Bath and Wells had joined us for the event. For anyone interested in how communities function and thrive, Peter's sequel will be as invaluable as his first report, full of realism about group interactions and written with humour as well as the wisdom of experience.

Despite this week being short for me - Spanish sunshine was still the view even on Wednesday - there's a lot of music to report.  Visual Radio Arts featured an hour of The Hoodoos, Frome's 'funky swampy' new sensation - you can watch it here, as VRA keeps an archive of all its shows - with Carl Sutterby stepping out of his Raggedy Man role to interview the band members: here he is talking to multi-talented David Goodman.


The Hoodoos  headlined at the Grain Bar Open Mic on Sunday too, in a crammed programme with a large attentive audience and, unusually for this venue, onstage lighting -welcome in theory but somewhat eyeball-challenging.

Ben Hardy-Phillips, who recently set up this monthly event, has extensive contacts so it was great to see musicians from Glastonbury and Bruton - and young talent like the fantastic foursome '1156'.

Visual art now, and a brilliant new exhibition: Art Interiors: Garden & Home by Steven Jenkins and Jenny Raggett opened on Friday in a party atmosphere at the Silk Mill, a perfect location to display these beautiful ceramics and fabric items as well as wall art - all available to view and buy until 16th October, well worth a visit.

Also a visual treat, here's a glimpse of Patrick Dunn's 'Banco de Gaia' visuals at the Loft on Friday night - perfect for multi-sensational dancing as September ends and there's another Independent Market, where Frome's Red Rebels walk silently through the crowds to remind us that climate change protest is escalating as the new month begins.

Apocalyptic drama in Bristol, Festival fever in Frome

Big stage news of the week - Kneehigh's Dead Dog in a Suitcase is back at Bristol Old Vic - until 13 July, when the tour continues on to Galway International Arts Festival - and it's as fearsome and funny as it was five years ago and, grimly, even more recognisable as a darkly-mirrored but realistic world. I see was too overwhelmed back in 2014 to blog a coherent account, and feel much the same now: this production is a jaunty remake of The Beggar's Opera, a show-case of performance skills, and a fiercely furious satire, all mixed apocalyptically into a kind of real-life Punch & Judy show. The performers - there are fourteen, including musicians and puppeteers - are all incredible, especially Rina Fatania whose evil vivacity will haunt your dreams, while Dominic Marsh as murderous philanderer Macheath must be the sexiest hitman in the galaxy (after Stephen Mangan in Pinter's Birthday Party - unless you count a psychotic terrorist as a hitman, in which case Aiden Turner in The Lieutenant of Inishmore remains unsurpassable) - but back to Dead Dog... Writer Carl Grose and director Mike Shepherd worked with composer Charles Hazlewood whose 'mongrel score' ranges from evocations of 18th Century opera to ska, disco, grime and 'songs culled from the edge of existence'. And like John Gay's 1728 bawdy backstreet parody of grand lives which provided the characters and the plotline, there's a serious punch beneath the fantasy and frivolity - as significantly forewarned in the opening scene of the show: "Look closer, you might realise this world is no different from your own.” Except perhaps that this one has unforgettable special effects at the finale - no spoilers, but the standing ovation was well deserved.


And now to spectularly sunny Frome:
Matt Owens, founder member of Noah & the Whale, has since moved on to a successful solo career (and don't ask where he'll be in five years time) - entertained an enthralled crowd at the Wednesday Grain Bar Roots Session with Kerouacian tales and original songs.

After that, Frome moved up a gear to festival mode: there's an impressive exhibition of the work of JW Singer's foundry & its aesthetic impact around the world at Rook Lane Chapel, and - with 23 more visual arts venues poised to open - there were two excellent events on Friday: painter Mark Jessett at the HUBnub centre (he says he does try to use laid-back, calm, colours but it just doesn't happen, you can see the vibrance right across the gallery!) and Ann Harrison-Broninski sharing her sketches of the life of Frome in the gallery room at The George with sunset views across town, accompanied by folksy sounds from Crossing the Rockies. Both delightful events.
 








The focus shifts to literature on Saturday morning, as Frome Writers Collective took over the Silk Mill for their Small Publishers Fair, a superbly organised, very busy, event. Barry Cunningham, MD of Chicken House and patron of FWC  opened the day with a few perfectly pitched words about the need for imagination in order to create change, and the famous festival cantina opened at noon to provide refreshment outside. For me this was an anniversary: one year ago Frome Unzipped - from prehistory to post-punk was launched here, so it was really nice to meet up again with my publisher,  John Chandler of Hobnob Press.

Also on Saturday, the sofa on Catherine Hill returned to feature the striking sound of Otto Wilde, dubbed Cab Calloway channelling the future soul of Jack White, and Artisan pub garden enjoyed sunshine and swing with Alexandra's Washboard Band.

For the evenings, Cornerhouse was the go-to music place: an exuberant set from quirky Back of the Bus, and Pete Gage Band excelling even its own usual brilliance on Saturday night.

So as you can tell there was much to enjoy but I can't tell you anything about the official festival opening at the International Food Feast with its tantalising stalls, or the traditional flamboyant entry led by the Street Bandits, the excellent bands and entertainments... with an afternoon dress rehearsal for our Nevertheless Pub Theatre show Where the Fault Lies too, something had to go...  (There'll be a same-night second performance at the Cornerhouse now, too, at 9.30 as the 8.00 tickets sold out so quickly)   So I'll end on a comedy note, with Peter Fleming- have you seen? at the Granary with an ageing BBC children's presenter, nostalgic for the old days of glove puppets and making things with sticky-back plastic... endearing and very funny, this should go well in Edinburgh.

Final non-artsy footnote, purely because my recent gloomy forboding of curtailment in reports met with several concerned responses from kind blog-followers: normal service now expected to resume, as I've had an alternative diagnosis with much more positive prognosis.  Smiley face - and thanks all.

Beltane bulletin: summer ahead & the Greater Good

To begin in the middle: This week was the 10th anniversary of possibly the most momentous moment in the impressive history of Wells: the special premiere of Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz, with unmistakable town locations thinly disguised as the Sandford, the rural village that made murdering Midsomer look like sanitised Stepford.
So significant a date clearly required celebration, and what better way than hoisting a giant screen in the Bishop's Palace Garden and inviting a few hundred people to park their chairs on the billiard-table smooth & verdant lawn to enjoy a Hot Fuzz quiz, Hot Fuzz fancy-dress contest, and ~ of course ~ a late night screening of Hot Fuzz. The event sold out in days. It was all tremendous fun: the rain stayed off, organisation was amazingly smooth, speedy & good-humoured, and ticket price included barbecue, drink & goodie-bag. Now I want to go back for the Hot Fuzz walk...

Back in Frome, it's been another busy week.

Spoken word first: Frome Poetry Cafe enjoyed two terrific guests and an outstanding open mic session.  Matt Duggan read from his new chapbook Metropolis, evoking the moods of Bristol life through sounds and visual details: glass shards, city sirens, and no stars...  Lindsay Clarke, our other guest, reading from his recent collection A Dance with Hermes, imagining the trickster god still present in our world, timeless and deathless, reminding us the only remedy for life is love. Poems from the floor chimed with these powerful themes of time & place and life & death: there were moving memories and inspiring glimpses as well as delightful lighter moments. Huge thanks to all who came and all who read, including Rose Flint and Rosie Jackson who shared the her award-winning poem in the 2017 Hippocrates Competition.  (Thanks Matt for the picture)

Not one but two great bands at the Grain Bar this week: Wednesday's Roots Session featured fabulous blues trio The Spoonful, and on Sunday night we had a fantastic jazz special from John Law's Re-creations. This virtuoso quartet comprises John on (double) keyboard, James Agg on bass, Sam Crockatt on sax, and drummer Billy Weir, dynamically 'recreating' other composers' tunes like you've never heard them ~ just check out their Norwegian Wood...

Now here's the thing: we all know Frome is twinned virtually with the Eden and the national press bubbles with adulation for for its quaint cobbled streets, entrepreneurial market, entertainment options and general creativity, but the outcome of this,  combined with market profiteering, has pushed the cost of a house up by an average of £36,000 on last year's prices, scarily out of reach of most young local people wanting to buy or even rent.  Fair Housing for Frome, a community group run by volunteers with support from the Town Council, held a public meeting on Saturday afternoon to outline the problem. Solutions won't be easy, but there's clearly support for finding initiatives and answers.

Merlin Theatre 'Short Play Competition' performance of the winning submissions, fully-rehearsed script-in-hand, is coming up: the winning scripts have been picked from a strong long-list ~ in fact so strong, there was no short-list as such: these six very different scripts should create a fascinating evening of dramatic action.

Looking further ahead to July: an exciting but somewhat confusing headline appeared on Frome Festival website last week: FROME FESTIVAL RECEIVES EU AWARD. Nope, our town hasn't been exempted from Brexit doom, but our festival did pass the rigorous application procedure of the EFA, a prestigious organisation of arts festivals part-funded by the EU. The ECOS stone circle helped: built in 1992 to celebrate the European Union, this amphitheatre hosts summer productions, with two in the festival ~ check the brochure, out now, for these and other July delights.

So now it's May, and officially summer. Beltane is traditionally celebrated with bonfires but we celebrated it here with a dawn trip to Saxonvale, an unofficial park/wasteland hidden in the heart of the town, part public dump adorned by amazing creativity, part woodland waist-high with cow parsley and thick with the scent of wild garlic.


We sang a few songs, in old English and rather randomly in French, and listened to the birds, and then had an excellent picnic of home-made bread and marmalade, with coffee, all provided by members of the East Mendip Green Party. They public-spiritedly stayed on to do a big litter-picking blitz of some of the messy bits, and I went back home to bed.

Slipping icily into the festive season...

'The cold never bothered me anyway' trills Frozen's Elsa bravely. Don't mistake me for Elsa. As frost grips leaves (prettily) and windscreens (annoyingly) I strive to muster the stoic resilience of Albert Camus who wrote In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. Good luck with that, then, my less stoic self mutters. But it's beautiful, I concede, that icy clarity of winter sunshine ~ this is how Stourhead looks when half the lake is solid and the grass is a field of tiny sabres.
And now it's December there's no avoiding the beast that lurches toward Bethlehem to be born again as a Retail Festival. Frome had a low-key lights-switch-on event this year: singing in the streets and tree sparkles which all lit up at the right moment ~ the mass 'Ooh!' gasp in response was more of an Oh!' of surprise from Fromies familiar with such events.
There was plenty of good music & other stuff around too: Dexters Extra Breakfast after the festive market at the Grain Bar were followed by the foot-stopping Buffalo Gals, and on Sunday Jazz Jam at the Cornerhouse gave us Simon Sax's lineup of superb performers. And Cafe La Strada is now featuring an exhibition of David Goodman's characteristically lucent eclectic photographs.

First Sunday of the month is Frome Independent market and minus- zero temperatures didn't stop the crowds pouring in. Cerulean skies and sunshine helped, and despite the whole town bordering on gridlock status (especially around hot-drink stalls) there was an upbeat atmosphere.
This month I was on the market myself, spasmodically declaiming poems from Crumbs from a Spinning World outside Hunting Raven Books, along with World Tree Story author Julian Hight who was also selling and signing. Great fun, and lovely feedback from buyers.

Earlier this week I'd met up with Burning Eye Books press officer ~ delightful Jenn Hart, here setting up for a podcast to give my progress report. My idea is a kind of scatter-gun approach to launching, with pop-up events in various locations (Frome Library next Saturday, December 10) and open-mic performances in Poetry Cafes and clubs. "If it isn't any fun, don't do it" D.H.Lawrence said, and he was right.
 So far, I've done spots at events in Bruton and Wells, acquiring after the latter a review in the Wells Journal I shall quote endlessly: Praise ... to Crysse Morrison, whose alphabetical 26 word review of Austen's Pride and Prejudice allied form and function in a way the Bauhaus would have applauded.  So it's a watch-this-space situation, or check my facebook page should you want to know upcoming.

Footnote of the week comes from a marvellous piece in Index: Wiltshire in which a Devises resident yearns fractiously for some of Frome's iconic charm. Oh, blast that funky freewheeling Frome... Here we go again, I swear every news story I hear about Frome is a happy-ending-tale of civic action... 

...not a constant free festival or a hippy commune, Frome is an organised community acting upon issues, often against conformity, to create a distinctiveness and liberal attitude which makes Brighton look like North Korea. Full of facts, and funny too ~ Darren Worrow, you may not be Bauhaus but I enjoyed that very much.

Shop Local, play local, dance exotic...

Focus entirely on Frome this week, with the Frome Shop Local day on Saturday ~ an exciting range of performances in nine different venues throughout the day. With puppetry, poetry, and fantastic music in shops and cafes throughout the town, totalling six hours of free entertainment for all. We had Pete Gage, Nikki & Griff, and Dexters' Extra Breakfast with our croissants and coffee, Vikki Burke's harp and Gina Allen singing up the hill, Eddie Martin rocked Raves from the Grave, Annie Aldam held the children rapt in Ellenbray, and here's Hannah Teasdale in Hunting Raven Books and Al O'Kane in Frome Wholefoods.  Big thanks to the town council, this was a great initiative which will hopefully be repeated next year even bigger and better!

Moving on to art: two exhibition openings The Binding Grid of Creative Connection from Bridport artist David Smith, promoted by Black Swan Arts, is featured at the Round Tower and represents for the artist 'a celebration of the affirming nature of my experience of Twitter' to collect work on the theme of 'black squares black lines and black magic.' Frome painter Amy Yates, in contrast, uses lucent & evocative colour for her images of Frome: her work is displayed in the Grain Bar throughout November, with cards for sale.

Local drama company Tic Tac Toe were at Frome's Merlin Theatre with The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) ~ a lighthearted, often witty, sometimes very funny, deconstruction of the bard's themes & works that always entertains a young audience. For the more sophisticated, there was exotic dance at the Silk Mill with an amazing Bollywood routine.

Looking ahead theatrically, Nevertheless Fringe Theatre will be upstairs at the Cornerhouse with our new show Toxic Cocktails ~ 'contempory comedy with a toxic twist' on Dec 16 & 17. Hold the dates and watch, as they say, this space...

And finally, in international news:  one week after Frome Town Council won Council of the Year in the National Association of Local Councils’ Awards comes news that Frome, in its entirety, is now officially the greatest town in the country.  The Great Town Award 2016, identified by the Academy of Urbanism, looks for places with 'innovation and excellence in all aspects of urbanism' and Frome's list of achievements were recognised to include: progressive & caring work of the Town Council,  exceptional cultural & community opportunities, sympathetic blending of new with old (many listed)  buildings, lively events in the town centre (Frome Independent Market has been voted one of the best in the country by Observer Food Magazine), 'astonishing' commercial vitality & a vibrant independent retail sector, and 'impressive' response to environmental issues. No better way to end this post than in the words of Cllr Pippa Goldfinger, accepting on behalf of the town:
‘Many people in Frome have long felt that it is a great town but the secret is now out. This new award owes much to the spirit of community, innovation and enterprise in the town and I am certain that the people of Frome will be very proud that their efforts have received such national recognition.’

Biking & farming & writing that makes you go Wow

BIKE was on my must-see list for several reasons: a new play by southwest writer Katherine Mitchell, developed under the Original Drama programme at Salisbury Playhouse, staged in the exciting theatre space of the Salburg studio. If I watched more telly I'd have known to add that it's performed by Lucy Thackeray, who is simply marvellous as the girl: she can show every age from child to middle-age wearing the same teeshirt & leggings and convey a three-sided conversation with no more than a nanosecond to change from angry woman to wounded husband to irritatingly empathetic therapist. Her comic timing ~ this is definitely a comedy despite dark themes ~ is superb, and so is the synchronised sound and mood-enhancing lighting. She has some strong material in this tautly scripted monologue, which uses 'bike' as an image of independent travel, a slang sneer, and a symbol for structure in life. Like Fanny Hill, this girl narrates her chaotic life with a mix of joy, defiance, and pathos: left emotionally adrift by her family she discovers what anyone could have told her (well I could, anyway) that "Having sex feels a lot like being loved" and relationships are more difficult. Ultimately this is a morality tale, but the telling is fast and funny. It's on till 17th October, recommended.
Also on till 17th October, and top tip from The Guardian, Bristol Old Vic studio theatre is showing And Then Come The Nightjars.  'The bloodbath of the foot-and-mouth crisis' (also the funeral pyre of ten million cows) didn't sound an appealing theme, but the play was developed through Bristol Old Vic Ferment and written by southwest writer Bea Roberts and according to the buzz on the dramatic street this is also a don't-miss, so I went, and the buzz is right. It's immensely moving to see that mass slaughter from the intimate perspective of this story of a friendship and a farm that survives against all odds. David Fielder is utterly convincing as Michael the solitary farmer, with Nigel Hastings as Jeff the vet who helps him with calving and comes again to kill the herd in a scene that evokes not only England 2001 but also scenarios the world over where powerless individuals face state control. "They're not sick." - "It doesn't matter. They just put rings on the map." - "But this is my farm!" - "They've called out the army, you'll be arrested and they'll come in anyway." Tight powerful writing, in places very funny as times change and the barn becomes a potential asset. "It's a cow-house, not a spa!" Michael spits, but Jeff is right about land being 'real estate' now (Babbington House cowshed 'Cowgroom' treatments start at £80 for an eyebrow tidy) and the play ends with rapport between the two men, even an awkward though warm bromance. Strong acting, atmospheric set and lighting, highly recommended.  (image Jack Sain) 
And great to see two talented women writers supported by local initiatives to develop their scripts to this standard ~ big thumbs up to Bristol Old Vic and Salisbury Playhouse.

Finally this week, Jon Amor at the Grain Bar Roots session, with a fabulous double set. Here's a sample: 

The Rules  and Just Another Stitch In Your Party Dress, dedicated to tiger-girls and cougar-women everywhere. 

'An age when we treat art as autobiography' and blog our diaries...

To live is the greatest thing in the world ~ most people merely exist.

Oscar Wilde is probably the most quoted playwright after Shakespeare, though not many know his passionate plea for reform in an England he saw as repressive of individualism and morally hypocritical: The Soul of Man Under Socialism.
Many of his best known maxims and bonne mots are found in his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. bringing both an opportunity & a problem to any stage adaptation: how to string these pearls of familiar wit together without sounding more like a parlour game than a dramatic relationship.  European Arts Company brought their highly-praised version of The Picture of Dorian Gray to Merlin Theatre, with some cast changes, in the final month of their long tour.  It's a terrible story: a young man possessed of everything superficially valued ~ youth, beauty, & wealth ~ looks at a painting of himself and impulsively wishes he could be always perceived that way, thus accidentally initiating a Faustian pact he can never reverse. Under the influence of a jaded aristocrat he falls into increasing decadence, but the ravages caused by his corruption and crimes are all held secretly by the painting in the attic until the dramatic climax.  (A slightly bizarre set came into its own for that haunting moment.)

Lord Henry of course has the best lines, expressing Wilde's own view that We are in the native land of the hypocrite as well as cynical maxims: "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."  There's humour too in the staging, with four actors taking on eighteen roles ~ Ben Higgins particularly entertaining as a dowager duchess and sleazy theatre manager. Guy Warren-Thomas is the motherless youth doomed by a moment of vanity, Helen Keeley plays Sybil, first step on his downfall. Adaptation by Merlin Holland and John O'Connor, directed by Peter Craze.

Back at Merlin Theatre, and still in the 19th Century, on Saturday for very different saga from Angel Exit Theatre: The Ballad of Martha Brown, the story of the last woman hanged in Dorset, is quite simply the most enthralling show I've seen for a while. Immensely slick physical theatre, great live music, superb lighting, amazing set, props & costumes, imaginative direction, tight script without a syllable of unnecessary exposition, and five actors who swung the mood from furiously funny to shocking savagery in seconds. That's quite a list, and to that you can add great foyer dressing creating a macabre fairground atmosphere from the start. The public hanging of Martha Brown made headlines in 1867 and attracted a huge audience, including 16 year old Thomas Hardy who later wrote I remember what a fine figure she showed against the sky as she hung in the misty rain, and how the tight black silk gown set off her shape as she wheeled half-round and back. Like all good plays, when the entertainment is over it leaves you reflecting on the extraordinary human capacities for cruelty, and love.

The new exhibition at Black Swan, in the gallery and Round Tower, is Step in Stone, part of a six month project with the old & disused quarries surrounding Frome.  As succinctly put by Mayor Kate Bielby opening the show on Friday: "Quarries are part of our heritage and this project brings together the industrial history, natural landscape, and immense creative talent of this town." Immense in scope too: massive credit to Fiona Campbell and all the artists and musicians ~ it's a fantastic project involving art inspired by every aspect of quarry history from rock strata to wild life.  And on Sunday the resultant show inspired writing too: after the Independent Market (as usual a feast of artisan goodies with some great busking) the much-respected poet Stephen Boyce joined Words at the Black Swan group to lead an excellent session ~ results will be on our group webpage soon.

With events layering up like the fillings in Flora's signature bakes, I missed Leander Morales' concert on Saturday but did get to hear some great music this week, including the new Music Club on Tuesday in the Grain Bar (what do you mean, Frome doesn't need another music night? of course we do) ~ then back after the theatre on Wednesday for marvellous Feral Beryl at the Grain Roots Session. I arrived in time to hear their memorable a cappella version of your children are not your children, and Gemma White's stonking fiddle in Take Me To My Wake Before I Die. 

Then on Thursday ~ this is beginning to sound like an old Craig David song ~ Sara Vian launched her EP at the Three Swans, and the week ended at Cooper Hall (a fine concert hall & striking sculpture garden) with fantastic Frome band Dexter's Extra Breakfast supporting O'Hooley & Tidow, a terrific duo and 'one of British folk's mightiest combinations' according to Mojo, Radio 2, and even Billy Bragg.  They deserve their 5 star reviews and every accolade for their 'sublime musicality and cheeky northern banter' and for dedicating their song Like Horses to Tony Benn with the quote "If we can spend money to go to war then we can spend money to help people." Which neatly bring me back to Oscar Wilde's plea for socialism as a way to free every individual to personal fulfillment, so I'll end with SaraVian's echo of his belief we can all look to the stars: "Everyone has a gift within, we have to find it and go for it."