Music & words mostly this week

I'll meet you on the other side, I'll meet you in the light -  If only I don't suffocate, I'll meet you in the morning when you wake...  Yes folks & fans of early 2000 alt rock, it's Bend & Break from the awesome voice of Tom Chaplin at the Keane concert in Westonbirt Arboretum on Saturday - still with his idiosyncratic keyboard lead plus just bass & drums. As a fan of this band since Everybody's Changing was released in 2003, it was a thrill to find my birthday present from number-2-son was two tickets for this concert... back in 2020... and after being twice locked-down, the show finally arrived here on a glorious sunny evening, and was sensational. Very well organised gig, good-humoured and friendly.

It goes without saying that if you step out of Frome on a Friday night you'll miss an excellent local gig, so apologies for no report on the bands the Granary, but here's Esben Tjalve on keyboard joining Iain Bellamy's band at Bar Lotte on Wednesday.

And now for Book News, starting upstairs at The Three Swans on Monday, as Mel Day (illustrator) joined me (poet, with Hazel Stewart) to co-host the local launch for our absurdly-titled poetry book with Caldew Press: What's It Like For You/Dance for Those Who'd Rather Not.  This small but delightful event morphed, as the evening wore on, into a poetry soirée, with several guests sharing readings and quite a few copies sold - thanks Mike Grenville for the snaps. And thanks to Frome Times, too, for featuring a piece about both my current book-y ventures with this super picture of me looking mega-chuffed, taken by Suzy Howlett. This double-covered collection is on sale at Hunting Raven Books now, or from me or from the publisher.

And Thursday saw another launch - this one for the wonderful new novel by Frances Liardet, Think of Me, now on sale in Hunting Raven Books where the event took place. It was my absolute pleasure to talk with Frances about how the story connects with her previous best-selling novel We Must Be Brave, and her writing process, both topics eliciting fascinating responses. Appreciation to bookshop manager Tina Gaysford-Waller  for hosting and thanks Nikki Coppleston for this super picture taken during the event.

A slight shift now from words-on-a-page to words-online, as it's nice to see that my short piece on recent 'Theatre in the Southwest' has made it to Plays International - special mention for Frome's Merlin for nurturing young talent, and the new direction at Cooper Hall. 

Final image of the week, from Whatcombe Fields where the buttercup crop has self-harvested, but the long grass and daisies are magnificent.

Dancing with Death, and more cheerful things

"The Dance of Death is August Strindberg’s landmark drama about a marriage pushed to its limits," explains the promotion for the current production, adapted by Rebecca Lenkiewic, at Bath's Ustinov theatre. On a small island, an irrational tyrannical army captain controls his gloomy wife who regrets giving up her dramatic career, both snarling at the other but somehow feeding off this enough to survive. They are joined after a while by the wife's cousin but there’s no real shift in the unpleasant dynamic: it’s like Waiting for Godot without the subtlety or humour.  

Hilton McRae is powerful as the appalling husband; Lindsay Duncan as the appalling wife is more stagey, frittering sympathy by being generally annoying, while the cousin (Grainne Dromgoole) doesn't have much of a role except as a butt for their vindictive games. The set (by Grace Smart) is just that, a set. Changes  to the original play (the gender of the visitor, the repeatedly shouted expletives) seem repellent without resonance and the tone remains level throughout despite accelerating mini-dramas, with a sense of hopeless despair over the entire proceedings.  In short, this is a story of rage and recrimination, irreparably damaged relationships, mistrust and self-inflicted chaos. A story for our times.  photos Alex Brenner

It's always a pleasure and a privilege to be invited to join Eleanor Talbot on her weekly online programme Variations on a Theme and this week's upbeat show features the new-out poetry-&-pictures compilation from Caldew Press, words by me & Hazel Stewart and images from Mel Day. This image is her show's promo: us performing as Live & Lippy back in the day, and us on a weekend trip to Lille a couple of years ago, plus our book covers and launch promo. Her interview starts around 29 minutes into the show. As well as recording us reading some of her favourite solo pieces, Ellie has cleverly managed to create one of our shared poems - What's it like for you? - by splicing our recordings - and also included the soundtrack of one of the videos of us made by Howard Vause - you can view Onomatopoeia here, it's currently registering 8,910 views. Howard also made a great little vid of the poem that's (one of) the title(s) of this odd little volume - online here. It's one of my favourites. 

Black Swan Arts enjoyed a double opening on Friday, with Lucinda Burgess' exhibition On Repetition in the Long Gallery, and the Frome Creatives in the Round Tower.  Lucinda was a garden designer for many years and feels this has significantly informed her interest in materials that appear to change form, sometimes over time as with rusting metal, but also in different viewing conditions - as with poles viewed side-on.

 

In contrast to these thought-provoking large-scale pieces, the Frome Creatives have filled their exhibition area with a huge diversity of work of an extremely high standard - paintings and prints, photographs, ceramics, fabric creations and artefacts in every kind of media - a busy, friendly launch with much chat and bowls of chocolates. Postcards & cards available - recommended.

Music now, and a folksy vibe from Bama Mine from Bristol at Bar Lotte eon Wednesday. The monthly Independent Market survived, just about, the weekend rain, and provided some excellent performers on the Band Stage, including the trio Cura -who will be performing on this year's Farmfest. Sunday evening at The Cornerhouse put on its monthly jazz jam with the usual performers - here's Simon with singer Nicola Maskall, and Dave Wallace on bass.  

Ending this June medley with some out-and-about-this-week images: walking to Mells along the river, and a preview of three novels by Frome writers (to be featured later) displayed in Hunting Raven Books! 

and the roses in my garden. Just because...

Striking art, funky music, & other entertainments...

Regular followers of this blog may recall that one of my much-lamented covid losses was the Ida Applebroog exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in Bruton. This box has now been ticked, and exploring this extraordinary work on Thursday afternoon gave, probably, a better viewing experience than the party on opening night could have allowed. Both galleries are filled with Ida's bizarre 'scavenging' art style, involving repeated themes of pain, gender politics, and family relationships. There's a lot of violence and violation, expressed in story-telling that varies from comic-book jokiness to savagery: it's extraordinary to realise that this boundary-breaking woman was born in 1927 and has been producing challenging artwork for half a century. 

The current exhibition is curated really well, and visitors can take home a 'goodybag' set of reproductions of some of Ida's key works - a really generous touch, especially as the show is free to enter (though you do have to pre-book and choose a time, to ensure no overcrowding.) Showing till May, lots of time to book see it, and the ever-lovely gardens too.

Back in Frome, where a new art gallery is always exciting: This one at 22 Christchurch Street West is called simply The Frome Gallery, and is a sibling of the Woolverton Gallery, displaying work from several of the same artists and also curated by artist Ray Jones. Here (above) is Ray with one of his trios of famous faces. Strong colours are important to him when selecting work to exhibit: he has some wonderful pieces from highly regarded local names like Amanda Bee, Moira Hazel, and David Wilkie - who created this painting She Sold Me Magic - and several others.

Still with visual art: the National Gallery in London has released more its excellent - free - short online talks about the treasures in its collection. Among various options, there's a fascinating surmise of Bart Cornelius, curator of Dutch & Flemish paintings, about the  real story of Rembrandt's painting of 'A Woman Bathing in a Stream.'

Moving on to music now - and yes, it's wonderful Rosco Shakes again at Bar Lotte - the full team this time: (L-R) Josh, Dom, Ned,Tim, and Steve all on fabulous form. These lads either rehearse every waking moment or they're intuitive geniuses - there never seems any doubt who's doing what when - and their sound is instantly exhilarating, so there's dancing in the bar from the start.

 

Also accompanied by energetic audience action, the annual Frome Punk Festival at the Cheese & Grain offered an evening of popular local live bands.  Here's the ever-wonderful Raggedy Men, recreating the incendiary sounds of the late-70s with a few added riffs - lighting in the hall, as evidenced here, was more for mood than clear illumination, but that didn't matter to the avid audience and dancers.

Theatre now, as New Old Friends deliver Crimes, Camera, Action, their spoof tale of a hard-boiled private-dick negotiating murder and blonde bombshells in golden-era-Hollywood.  Most of the entertainment is provided by the ever-more-elaborate negotiation of props and costumes in ever-more-unlikely crime scenarios, and while some of it incomprehensible, a lot of it is very funny indeed.  Great to see a full house at The Merlin, & a young audience clearly enjoying the show. Here's a sneaky shot of one device they used to boost the (apparent) number of performers, in one of the most hilarious moments. 

Frome's Proof Pudding Book Club, the brainchild of Hunting Raven Bookshop's inspirational doyenne Tina Gaysford-Waller, met on Sunday to review & discuss new imprints - and eat cake - at River House. It's a great format: small group discussions, plus a final feedback to share the most interesting titles. And we keep our proof copy! My lucky random choice this month was Who Are We Now? by Jason Cowley, a non-grabby title for a profoundly felt & well-argued analysis of post-Brexit Britain - how it happened, and what next.... 

Ending this edition with a view from the sunnier start of the week: the field beyond the beautiful church of Mells. This lovely little village tracks its fascinating history from Mesolithic days (c. 6000 BC) and that quaint circle of trees, according to a local historian, is the remains of a round barrow, one of only a few of these Neolithic burial places still surviving. 

 

Fast dance, slow art, & Boxes - a week of permitted joys

We live in interesting times, don't we? This is allegedly a Chinese curse but 2022 is taking it literally. Parties and protests, operation Big Dog/ this is the background to January's blog, as Julie Andrews might not have trilled in 1965. However this is an arts blog, so ignoring protest marches & the bumper batch of bulletins about ludicrous misbehaviour in the corridors of power, let's go direct to Frome's Merlin Theatre for a double bill of talent and innovation on Saturday night. First aKa dance theatre presented a speechless solo show of brilliant parody, dance, mime, and mimicry all exquisitely synched to a clever topical soundtrack.  A Real Fiction (do check this link) had the circle of audience transfixed by stunning moves and surreal comedy, including an 'intermission' where we all got jellybabies and concluding with a short series of 'out-takes'.  Next, the fable of Pandora's box was given a new twist with puppetry and current context by Kerchief Theatre in their short performance Boxes - basically a simple piece of story-telling made enchanting by the rapport between the two women performers, Esme Patey-Ford and Maddy Herbert, emerge from boxes with different perspectives which are increasingly highlighted throughout their drama, ultimately resolved not by 'hope' as an  abstract injunction but by their playful Tiktok. There's more about this delightful production here.  

From hi-energy drama to silent art, as Black Swan Arts has re-opened the Long Gallery after its long break for Slow Time, a fascinating exhibition of pin-hole camera photographs taken in Somerset on long settings - a week, a month, or longer. This project began as a creative response to lockdown, inspired initially by Steve Poole & Jannette Kerr who provided neighbours and friends with pin-hole cameras created in cans, and a brief to leave them in any situation for long enough to register the changes of light over time. With support from John Gammans of Somerset Arts Work, this project developed into a fascinating collection of images that in their distorted stillness seem to chime with the strange life-reorientations of our community during these times of stillness imposed by the pandemic. Here's Steve showing me a typical pinhole camera, and one of the images created by months beside an immobilised concrete works when the passing of daylight was its only illumination. (workshops available - check Black Swan site.)

Other than that, my week has had a focus on written word: two live writers' group meetings, now that we're allowed indoors, a meeting of Hunting Raven's Proof Pudding Book Club at River House on Sunday, plus a zoom discussion with Hazel Stewart on the progress of our twin-twin poetry collection (two writers, two reading routes) now that our commissioned cover imagery* has been delivered to our publisher. What's it like for you? and Dance for Those Who'd Rather Not are both pamphlet-length collections jointly devised, exploring & expressing our personal themes as well as our long friendship: we're both beyond thrilled that this Caldew Press, who recently published John Hegley's collection A Scarcity Of Biscuit, has now added us to his stable of quirky poets. *images available soon!

Patchy sun this week has allowed for some very pleasant local walking too, so to conclude this chat on disparate topics, here's Nunney Church looking particularly lovely as the snowdrops in the graveyard start to flower.

Words and music - and more cake than usual

As this week's bulletin is mostly on a writerly theme, let's start with a blast of music: Saturday evening saw the much-anticipated return of Frome's hugely popular quartet, The Raggedy Men, playing at The Sun to an enthusiastic audience. The songs are all punk classics, but the skill and polish of the presentation isn't '70s-rough: these are all seriously good musicians and terrific  entertainers. The Guns of Brixton is still my favourite, but Andy, Bugsy, Pat & Carl make every song special.   

Now buckle up for a lot about writing. It's been five years since Frome Writers' Collective launched 'Silver Crow', a quality-control system to support self-publishing authors, so Friday night saw a birthday party at the Masonic Hall, with all FWC members invited.  This was a chance for authors to mingle, with a complementary drink, and show off their books, perhaps selling copies too. The sitting-down part began with a few words of encouragement from Mayor Andy, before Alison Clink, well-known in Frome for leading writing groups & classes in Frome, spoke of their benefits for writers.   

There are currently 18 books boasting the Silver Crow logo, and Nikki Coppleston, who launched her 'Jeff Lincoln' detective series in 2016 this way, talked about her experiences and her new novel The Promise of Salvation. Gill Harry shared the story and images of her engaging new book for children with an interest in history: Zoe and the Ancient Egypt Adventure - superbly self-illustrated. Here's Alison, soon to be published by John Chandler of Hobnob Press (on R) who has added several  Frome writers to his list, including poet David Thompson (on L). There are more pictures of this event on the FWC facebook website.

Writing continued the theme of my week on Saturday: Following my talk on writing short stories at the Library to a small but delightfully enthusiastic group, I headed for the upper rooms of the Black Swan, where The Write Place was hosting a tea-party, partly for self-promotion and partly for fun and mince pies with mulled wine. This popular project was the inspiration of Frome writer Kate McEwan, and has a big following now among writers who like to write in a quiet place but with a sense of surrounding support - sounds like the perfect combo. There are monthly one-day writing retreats which include a starter-session, too. The 'Chat Room' was full and very friendly - here's Kate (on the right) at the end of the event. Kate started her literary success in 1983 with an illustrated history of the south-west suburbs of London, and she reminisces entertainingly about initial struggles,  until Ealing Walkabout sold out its first print-run of 3500 and rushed to reprint 5000 more.

Proof Pudding Club night at River House nicely rounded off this wordy week: this group's role, devised by Tina the ever-inventive custodian of Hunting Raven Books, involves appraising the promotional proof copies of new titles, and eating cake. In the final roundup, Ai Weiwei's tale of 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows emerged as an absolute must-read - this isn't surprising: I still have disturbing memories of his exhibition in London six years ago filled with courageous criticisms of the Chinese government, highlighting their callous treatment of their people. The odd, jelly-baby, look of the book jacket almost, but not quite, evokes the collections of little faces released by campaigners attempting to stop human traffic of hundreds of thousands of children in China...  One to read, if you can.   

And while we're still on the subject of books...this was the week that should have seen a high profile party launch for Struck Off at the Silk Mill - another Hobnob title -but, sadly though wisely, author-host John Killah decided to cancel rather than cause Frome the anxiety of a large group gathering from other areas. His novel now has its own private window-party in Hunting Raven, ready to delight fiction readers who may wonder what goes on in the world of a successful trial lawyers... think insider knowledge plus satirical humour, this tale may do for the legal world what David Lodge did for academic life in the '80s.

So this week's verbosity ends with an apology to Walking Festival, and the '6x6' Art exhibition at the Silk Mill, both of which sadly were squeezed off my to-do list, and with a picture of dawn over the Cooperage estate.

 

Forget the lost summer, there's post-equinox fizz now...

After a skimpy summer, and a heatwave that went awol, this was a good week for autumnal indulgence.

I've never before been to a Speakeasy, where you knock on a back alley door for entry into a den of alcoholic luxury,  but last week Eleanor Talbut initiated me into the HydeAway with its menu of exotic cocktails. In this Hollywood-rococo style bar we were served by professional mixologist Giles, who gave me the backstory of my negroni: he uses Holm Oak smoke to create the dramatic effect on arrival at the table, and sees cocktails as creative experiences, taking inspiration from memories of colour, smell and taste from childhood as well as the visual skills he used as a cameraman for BBC documentaries. Add Gilbert O'Sullivan in the background to complete the scene... another great night out with Ellie, 

which segues nicely into her latest podcast (here):  Déjà Vu is her topic this time, with the usual esoteric medley of tracks on the theme, plus an interview with me about my new book.

I'm not gonna lie, the big event for me this week was the official launch of Déjà Lu at Hunting Raven Books, hosted by dynamic manager Tina Gaisford-Waller, and well attended despite the evening storms.  Once again, thwarted by restrictive format of new improved Blogger, I've resorted to a screenshot image combo to show the welcome & support I enjoyed from Tina, who then took the shot of my audience, a smashing group who came up with great questions and were supportive throughout. 

Art now, and Somerset Open Studios continued throughout the week for the 205 artists particpating across the county - here's another report from a Frome studio: Clive Walley has developed his series of 'Birch trees in the mist' using tar applied by trowel after reading a book about the seige of Stalingrad and pondering on the primitive resources for art that would have been available to the soldiers.  By coincidence my photography that afternoon had included trees by the Frome river path, which in monochrome version are weirdly similar to these atmospheric images  - this is again a screen shot for comparison.

Friday night saw the opening of a solo exhibition from Mel Day at the WHY gallery in Frome. Mel is famed for her amazing twisted-metal writings and other art pieces, but these this prints and drawings show a different aspect of her skills, although these people are mostly bent and twisted too... Elegantly and impossibly contorted, their postures seem poignantly resonant of their internal lives, and perhaps all our lives nowadays.  Dancers and Dreamers is on until mid-November, so do visit if you're near Frome.  

Art is a useful segue into the Frome Independent, too, as this nationally-famous street market - cancelled for over a year - is now enjoying its first-Sunday-of-the-month status in the streets, alleys, and open spaces of our town, and art & craft feature even more than cheese!  (This month there were wild mushrooms too, collected by The Happy Forager). 

Local artist David Daniels who always pitches on Catherine Hill, has some fabulous new 'storyboards' of tiny landscapes, and - since encouraging young artists is a political act - these handcrafted resin earrings from the stall of Bristol jeweller Rosa Pietsch were irresistible too. And of course, there's the wonderful busking stage where superb sound is guarunteed from Luke Emery - this week with four top class acts: Nick Balura, the Bert Jansch of Frome, followed by the 'twisted blues and religious fervor of hugely popular The Back Wood Redeemers - then reggae rythms from the Mellowtones, and for the final hour, folk from Crossing the Rockies. Here's the irreligious Back Wood boys extolling their enjoyment of a chocolate Jesus. 

Party time this week started on Thursday at the Black Swan, with a welcome to Malcolm Lloyd, the incoming Chair of Trustees, with drinks & nibbles in the courtyard - a very pleasant occasion. And Friday's wedding party in Great Elm Village Hall had some great acts from a range of Frome performers all evening, and when the sound system collapsed, the Hoodoos simply leapt onto a bench and treated us to an unforgettable acoustic version of the Rattlin' Bog....

with Saturday's party at Frome's Rook Lane Chapel celebrating the birthday of a local opera singer who not only performed superbly herself but also inspired open-mic from many of her guests (who were polite enough to also applaud my unexpectedly-required and just-about-recalled poem rendition of You know it's a Fairytale) - was also impressive entertainment, again ending with dancing. So that's two nights of quality performances concluding with wonderful Anne singing like this converted nonconformist chapel was the Albert Hall.  The diversity of talent in this small town is astounding. 

And now that October has made the season officially autumn, it's time for the Ezra Pound poem that I generally offer at this time in the year:

And the days are not full enough

And the nights are not full enough

And life slips by like a field mouse

Not shaking the grass