Frome's Glit-lit culture: silver crows, glittery art, & more

A blog about creativity in Frome ought, arguably, to mention writing more often than this one does, as there's a lot of it going on. There's the famous Write Place at Black Swan, for a start, to which members travel long distances, there's Hunting Raven Books positively pulsing with words and word-y promotions - there are scads of writing groups (I belong to two myself) and Frome Writers' Collective has over a hundred members... but literary activity unlike art and music doesn't generally lend itself to imagery & appraisal. So it's great to lead this week with a writerly event - a party organised by FWC to celebrate the success of Silver Crow, a unique concept to ensure self-published writers achieve a quality product. The organising team behind Frome's writers' collective is awesomely well organised and this party was another big success for Gill Harry and her team.   Detective fiction writer Nikki Copleston was the first to take flight with The Shame of Innocence, and since then nine more author's titles, ranging from memoirs to children's stories, have followed. It feels appropriate that Silver Crow's third birthday also launches Nikki's second novel: The Price of Silence, from which Nikki read us a tantalising extract.
Tina Gaisford-Waller, dynamic & delightful manager of Hunting Raven Books, (who feathered her speech with crow puns far more effectively than I have) spoke enthusiastically about how mutual support between local writers and bookshops can play a big role in maintaining a healthy community. Frome Festival Director Martin Dimery was encouraging too, commending local organisers for providing more literary events in our programme each year than some specifically-Literary Festivals, always with a mix of both local and invited guests.  And I was privileged & delighted to add my two-penn'orth with a short reading from Frome Unzipped and a crone poem... (yes it was Bungee Jumping Crumblies, p 47 of Burning Eye's Best Spoken Word Poetry Book in the World., - and thanks Mac for the snap of me.) 

'They come not in single spies but in battalions' said Claudius, and although he was complaining about annoyances like murder & madness it's often apt for nicer things like clashing gigs & gatherings, parties, and event openings. Luckily Frome's artistic quarter is compact enough to dash from one dazzling launch to another, as on Friday when WHY Gallery was raising a glass with master-engraver Chris Pig while Black Swan Long Gallery celebrated 'Pictures and Dioramas' of Corinna Sargood. (As a scavenger of unfamiliar words I seized on 'diorama' like an edible fungus found in the woods, and found it means a painting viewed through a peephole - feel free to look smug if you knew that already.)  The exhibits are totally extraordinary, day-glo brilliant, painted or tightly-stitched, legends from epic fantasies - you get the feeling if William Blake could embroider and had access to glittery threads, he would have created these scenes and creatures. There's also a hand-bound copy of Angela Carter's The Tiger's Bride, with Corinna's lino cut illustrations. This is a really extraordinary exhibition, almost scary in its brilliance - a huge credit to Corinna's generosity in sharing work of so much importance with her local town gallery, and to Mel Day for imaginative curating.

Time for music, with the brilliant Swampgrass back by popular demand at the Grain Bar Roots Session, beating up the blues with verve and style. Singer/songwriter Nick Tann, flying solo for this visit, gave strong support. There were some real highlights too at Three Swans' monthly acoustic session run by Paul Kirtley -including a beautiful, eerie, version of Nirvana's In the Pines from Mountainspeaksfire, and on Friday talented singer-songwriter Jane Langley launched her new band MellowTones at the Cornerhouse.




If you haven't yet seen Sorry we missed you you've probably recognised the connection with our online-buying culture, and with Ken Loach directing this will be an I Daniel Blake style exposé, scrupulously researched, using non-actors in every role - honest, moving and uncomfortable. The 'white-man-van' gig economy survives in this Nottingham example on a fake premise of self-employment which means in reality if you miss a day you not only lose your day's pay, you pay the wage of your replacement - however painful the family or personal circumstances that took you away. Tight script, good photography, and some lovely family moments ensure this is a really good movie as well as call for change in our focus as a society.  I saw this film on Saturday in the bar of Ken's own football club - Bath City FT - with the local Labour party providing supportive leaflets, but it was interesting to hear Ken's opinion in the Q&A afterwards that the over-riding issue in our upcoming election, and priority for any future government, is the planetary crisis of climate change.

Ending this post with two personal highlights: first is having lunch with the wonderful 'Mama Upendo', aka Sara Hillman, whose African Kitchen stall is a regular feature at Frome's Independent Markets: Sarah in the pic. has just found herself in my unzipping history of Frome and its people, and this copy will be going to her orphanage in Kenya.
And my other special event is a sunny afternoon walking Roddenberry Hill Fort (technically Wiltshire but it's an easy walk from my side of town) - one of those magical places with its own kind of silence, and an atmosphere that seems to span centuries.

Of launches, sanctions, and masculinity

It's been a great week for book launches. In Frome, over a hundred people arrived at Merlin theatre hungry to hear poet and author Rosie Jackson reading from her newly published memoir The Glass Mother, with quite a few also hungry for the exquisite platters of tapas (thanks Jo Harrington) in the night-clubby ambience onstage. As 'Spoken Word coordinator' for the theatre I'd been involved in this event for a while, and as Rosie had shared her developing story at our writing group, I knew this was going to be a memorable evening, and it certainly was.
Rosie suggested at the start of her reading that memoir is a form more akin to poetry than to history, and her extracts all showed that quality of lyrical precision, as well as unflinching integrity to the poignant theme at the heart of her story.
Also there to celebrate their completed books were seven of her writing group, Des Harris, Dennis Costler, Maggie Pierce, Gillie Richardson, Steve Small, Tim Cutting, and Karine Butchart, who all read a short extract from their own memoirs. A fabulous evening and an unforgettable night ~ huge appreciation to the writers and thanks to the theatre crew for their superb support. As a happy footnote, Rosie's publisher Robin Jones reports after-show sales surpassing all his previous Unthank Books launches.

Now to Bath, where Carrie Etter, originally from Normal, Illinois now lives. Carrie and Frome's Claire Crowther are both powerful & compelling poets who are currently launching new chapbooks with Shearsman, and as they're also friends this was clearly a brilliant opportunity for a shared launch at Toppings, with a soiree at Circo afterwards. The diversity in subject and form in these two books made for fascinating readings: Carrie explores climate change in words scattered across the pages of Scar, vividly evoking the blizzards, tornadoes, floods, droughts & heatwaves that Illinois is suffering, while in Bare George Claire reports with esoteric precision on the history of coinage from her observations at the Royal Mint. Both extraordinary books that yield more meaning with every re-reading.

Claire's 'bare George' is the dragon-slayer, symbol of mastery and male dominance which segues usefully into my next report: Grayson Perry opened his Typical Man in a Dress tour in Bristol, entertaining a full house at Colston Hall with his thoughts on masculinity. As you'd expect, these were colourful and comical as well as thought-provoking, and after the interval some thoughts thus provoked were tweeted onto the back-screen. (I liked 'masculinity is having to fetch the interval drinks because the wife can't be arsed to get out of her seat.') Masculinity, according to Grayson Perry's six-point man-ifesto is: not innate but learned, it's power & dominance, it's performance, it's redundant, it's sexy, and it's a treatable mental health condition. Backdrop projections accompany the banter ~ a picture of Bear Grylls crouching in undergrowth, for example, to illustrate his point that skills a man needs have changed and nowadays it's more likely to be how to find a decent school in your area. His conclusion is that macho men are now skeuomorphs, a wonderful word derived from architecture meaning 'an object that used to be functional and is now merely decorative'.  Like those awesome tapestries, insightful detail creates an overall picture of our society, and his appraisal is compassionate as well as clever.

Also in Bristol: Watershed was showing I, Daniel Blake all week and I went to an afternoon screening. Director Ken Loach deserves every accolade for this searing case-study story of the iniquities of 'austerity' which professionals and users confirm as entirely accurate although Work & Pensions Secretary Damian Green, who hadn't seen the film, disagreed. It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and has six nominations in the British Independent Film Awards, including best film and best director. Hang on there Ken, we need you.

On a lively firework night, bonfires were burning too in Silk Mill's yard as a Cider Festival raging within ~ not my personal tipple, but great to hear Al O'Kane and Andy Hill playing there, especially Al's wonderful Winter Blues: it's that time of year again... what will winter bring for us all. Indeed.
And there's always excellent live music at the monthly Frome Independent market, on the busking stage and in pubs and streets as well ~ here's The Wochynskis punking it up with London's Calling in Cheap Street.

And finally: here's the impossibly beautiful view at Stourhead on Monday at the start of a week that began with mild days and gorgeous autumn tones, and ended with a deep litter of fallen leaves as November winds bite..

Forgetting & Remembering: 'My Father' at the Ustinov, Ken Loach at the Westway

Banksy said art should 'comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable' and Picasso wanted his paintings to 'bristle with razorblades' so maybe it's a credit to The Father, considering how closely my own father resembled Kenneth Cranham, that I found it hard to enjoy Florian Zeller's Molière-award-winning play now in a new translation at Bath's Ustinov. Lyn Gardner gave the production 5 stars: for me, there was no insightful imagination in this account of an old man with Alzheimer's. The basic premise of unreliable memories and perceptions is easily grasped but, while distressing for his Cordelia-loyal daughter, the misconceptions of André's confusion make for reiterative and sombre viewing.  A concertinaed timescale allows Lia Williams as his daughter little character development, though  Colin Tierney gives a fine performance as her exasperated husband. (image Simon Annand) Full marks too for the surreally diminishing set  ~ Miriam Buether ~ and lighting design by Guy Hoare.  I see from the programme that Christopher Hampton, translator, finds this work "very cleansing before you turn your attention to something else. It has a refreshing effect on other work." I hope viewing will prove similarly inspiring. Anyway, don't let me put you off: a visit to the Ustinov is always a valuable experience.

Frome's Westway Cinema, independent in style as well as status, was totally sold-out on Friday for the showing of Ken Loach's documentary Spirit of '45 followed by talk and Q&A with the director himself. The film is not polemical or sentimental, though it's hard not to rage and weep: Ken simply uses pre-and post-war footage from national and regional archives interspersed with interviews with octogenarians who remember the conditions of life for the working class and the joy when a Labour government began to construct a socialist society to care for them 'from the cradle to the grave.'
We had won the war together; together we could win the peace. The central idea was common ownership, where production and services were to benefit all. The few should not get rich to the detriment of everyone else. It was a noble idea, popular and acclaimed by the majority. It was the Spirit of 1945. Maybe it is time to remember it today.

An unforgettable event and a credit to the spirit of Frome 2014 that there's so much interest in those times and desire to fix what's gone wrong since. Several of the questioners had specific hopes and solutions but there's an inherent problem in the vision of those halcyon days: The 'five giant evils' standing in the way of social progress were identified as want, ignorance, squalor, disease, and idleness. They should have added, banks. As Ken Loach said, in answer to a questioner, "Voting on its own is not enough. You are right. The banks are the central factor. To take effective political control we have to take control of the banks."  Frome already has its own 'flat-pack' democracy, how great if we could step up the localism even more radically.