Art thrice, poetry twice, and some witchery.

The Whittox Gallery opened five years ago, after this old chapel was converted to a thriving eatery plus an art gallery in the balcony area: RISE has already hosted fourteen stunning exhibitions, and on Friday their celebratory 'Retrospective' exhibition opened in party style. The variety of previous shows created an impressive diversity of pieces, from the 'playful Renaissance devotional imagery' of Leslie Glenn Damhus (R) to the We Feed The World exhibition from the Gaia foundation. As always, great hospitality from Ed and Sarah, and the wonderful backdrop of the massive organ in its starry alcove.

Still with art: having found that the new Frome Gallery opened by Ray Jones had a twin (or possibly elder sibling) in Woolverton, it seemed a good idea to take a look there too. Most of the paintings in this excellent collection show the same love of vivid colour and story-telling, like this landscape by Moira Hazel.  Here too, in contrast, is a tree-painting from Frome artist Alexandra Howell, "I’m quietly obsessed by light and shadow, colour and texture and constantly inspired by the natural world," the artist says. (These impressive pieces aren't scrunched together like this in the Gallery btw, but this blog's formatting won't let me show two images together any other way... tips gratefully accepted)

And Alexandra's tree painting segues nicely to these two new works from Frome artist Clive Walley. Rewinding to last October, the Somerset Open Studios had included Clive's atmospheric paintings which evoked for me the arborial foliage along the path beside the river walk. I sent him a copy of my photo, and Clive has now created two versions of this view, intriguingly seen behind an imagined netting between the viewer and the foliage, which not only adds slim lights to the shadows but also evokes an emotional connection with feelings about stolen land, as evoked in books like Trespass, and Who Owns England? Here's Clive with both these beautiful, powerful, paintings. 

 

Poetry now, with poet & writer Julie Mullen who runs The Word Cafe on radio from Totnes and invited me to participate on Thursday. Among the excellent poets, main guest George Szirtes read from his new collection with Bloodaxe, Fresh Out of the Sky ,and talked about his work. My contribution (at 1:08) was a phone chat with Julie in anticipation of What's It Like For You? soon to be published by Caldew Press. This is a collaboration with poet Hazel Stewart which we developed on Zoom during lockdown, recreating our performance personae as Live & Lippy. You can hear the title piece of this collection near the end of this recording of the show - with apologies to Hazel for my terrible Scots accent when reading her lines. And big thanks to Julie!

Back in Frome, Monday's poetry workshop at Black Swan Arts, ably led by Wendy Perry, had a theme to suit the date, with valentine emblems as triggers for writing and some favourite love poems shared. You can see some of the outcomes on the Words at the Black Swan facebook page here. 

Still with words, as three Zoom options clashed this week & after a difficult choice, my pick was an online seminar on Witchcraft, Magic, and Society in C19th  Somerset by Professor Owen Davies, from the Regional History Centre &  Bristol M Shed.  Rural Somerset was apparently obsessed by fears of bad magic in times when farming was the main wealth: failures in dairy produce were attributed to spells, and people travelled miles to use the mysterious services of the 'cunning folk' to identify culprits. Here's Billy Brewer, 'Wizard of the West', the most renowned of such witch-detectors. According to Prof Davies most supposed 'curses' were just consequences of bad luck or malice; the 1736 Act repealed laws against witchcraft while ironically imposing imprisonment on the 'magical' folk who claimed to counter their power. A fascinating talk, perhaps with antecedents to the current 'blame' culture in the UK... who knows.

And with stormy winds unabated, here's hoping you stay safe!

The cafe edition - short, but with an otter.

The  Barrel House Ballroom in Totnes has been home to the Word Cafe created & run by Julie Mullen since 2019, and on Thursday Julie introduced a 30-minute film of poetry and music from local poets and performers which hopefully will stay on YouTube because it's delightful. Beautifully filmed in a variety of enticing local locations (cinematography by Chris Plant) this features poetry and music by local creatives, including Matt Harvey, with an acrostic about Totnes to compensate for his recent move to Dartington, and Brian Patten, still ruggedly scouse. Brian Patten was one of my poetry heroes - the title my published collection Crumbs from a Spinning World is derived from one of his poems - and his book launches unmissable, a fact I confided to him after his eighth, Storm Damage, and received the sighed reply 'Yes, we're all getting old.'  That was back in 1995. Here he is now, and here too is Susie David reciting her poem The Sea Calls.

Back in Frome, Black Swan Arts is preparing to reopen its gallery and the cafe reopened on Friday as the River House Cafe relocated - lock, stock, and staff - from its popular but cramped location on the bridge to the spacier premises - with courtyard seating too - of the Black Swan building. It's another upward step for this 17th Century alehouse, nearly demolished in 1974 until rescued & reopened in 1986 as an arts centre. Here's me looking very happy to join the queue on the official opening day. Thanks Emma Warren for the snap! 

Also in Frome: Our last couple of weeks' sunshine has coaxed the swirling mudscape beside the river bank to regain its role as a path, thus widening the range of rambles available in town and beyond. Frome's online Wildlife Watch group, a treasure trove of birds, butterflies, and recently beavers,  been getting excited about otters, and I was lucky enough to spot this sleek-headed little guy in the exquisite garden of Marston Mill on the Mells River after a writing group meeting. 

Drama has been coming at us from all sorts of places since our theatres, initially muted apart from pleas for donations, have regrouped and come back with online options and now National Theatre has premiered their Romeo and Juliet on the telly - Sky Arts on Sunday night. Directed by Simon Godwin and commendably contracted to 90 minutes, this pandemic production of Shakespeare's violent love story becomes a timeless tale of families and passions. Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley are the lovers, but it's Tamsin Greig as Juliet's powerful mother who stands out in a production that changes relationships and scythes speeches but creates the constraints of family dynamics and social controls in a fantastic, and memorable, way. Look out for repeats.

This blog, or rather this blogger, is determined to chicane through our present Troubles, as the Irish so eloquently delineate stuff too big to name, without discussing either of them, nor the western religious calendar,  so this spring holiday bulletin will conclude with a 'poem for today' as chosen by Poem for the Day (1) ed. Wendy Cope which is by Maya Angelou: Still I Rise was written 1978 and is shockingly still relevant, read it and weep. More cheerful is the other choice for today, from Poem for the Day (2) ed. Andrew Motion, which is Adrian Mitchell's ditty to Celia: 

When I am sad and weary
When I think all hope has gone
When I walk along High Holborn
I think of you with nothing on

They later married & lived happily ever after, which shows there's more than one way to look at Easter.