It's a wrap...Frome Festival 2022 now golden memories...

Our revels now are ended. Frome Festival, the week when every public space offers performance nightly while homes & gardens across the town open daily to share artistic & horticultural splendours, is over for another year. Festival Director Martin Dimery has steered the show splendidly for his final time, and can step down with due dramatic pride in this year's showcase of the range and quality of events.  

And as Martin is also responsible for this festival's theatrical highlight - he wrote the book & lyrics and directed the production -  we'll start with The Haunting of Richard the Third. With music by Martin and David Hynds, Kairos Theatre Company performed this stunning drama, emotionally gripping and crammed with jeopardy and joy, on ECOS amphitheatre. It's the eve of the Battle of Bosworth Field, and Richard, last Plantagenet king of England & last English monarch to be killed in battle, is recalling his increasingly indefensible rise to power. We see his glory days, and his fall, overwhelmed by the Yorkist army of Henry Tudor, whose dynasty ruled England for the next hundred years. It's now 20 years since Richard’s body, in an unmarked tomb, was found in a car-park in Leicester. Steve Middle was superb as the degenerating king, and Sarah Wingrove genuinely moving as his queen, with all the cast of supporters & foes, nobles & peasants - and ghosts too, combining to create three hours of riveting entertainment. 

With several theatrical productions, and only one week of festival, choice was difficult: my next pick was the black comedy Silence by Moira Buffini at the Assembly Rooms, a Dark Ages drama billed as Monty Pythonesque. Written in 1999 and well received at the time (it won an award for best English language play by a woman) this production by Frome Drama definitely had its moments and was well acted and often funny but perhaps Black Adder and social media have raised the bar for dark age satire as there wasn't much edge or bite, and the thought-provoking aspect seemed lacking. 

Even the Museum became a performance space this year, as Rosie Eliot of Nevertheless Productions together with Debbie Clayton created a clever, funny, and informative drama around some of the characters in the current 'Celebrated Women of Frome' exhibition there. The Auditions imagines six of Frome's most colourful historic characters chatting as they wait for their moment to impress the judges of Britain's Got Talent: here Christina Rossetti worries that In the Bleak Midwinter will be dismissed as too gloomy while Emma Sheppard is keen to further her philanthropic work with a rendition of Bring Me Sunshine - an apt choice as her 1859 pamphlet urging workhouse reform was titled 'Sunshine in the Workhouse'.

Segueing from conversational speech to narrative, the dark horse of the festival was a one-off extravaganza at the Assembly rooms on Monday: The Magic of the Universe from the Pagan Gospel Groove Machine, led by Ed Green, promised 'an interactive immersive experience with audience participation, harmony singing, music and dancers, told with love, hope, spirituality and connection'. Think '70s 'happening' idealism, with shared intention like an '80s 'encounter group'. It was moving simply listening to the music and watching the backdrop film of galactic activity, but the hall was too full of seating for the audience to actively join the dancers - a really lovely immersive experience though.

As you'd expect, bands were playing in most of the pubs around town - Frome's popular Unit 4 had a 'Soundcheck' show on VRA, viewable here - and there was also excellent live music at nearby Marston Park Glampsite, a pleasant 40 minutes walk away, down lanes and across fields, which offered free access during festival week to locals - fabulous to lounge by the lake at sunset, listening to high quality live jazz from the Damian Cook Trio, with Bryan Posslethwaite on piano & Henrik Jenson on bass.

These were my evening highlights, but throughout the daytime there was an amazing array of art on view in venues right across the town - and beyond, too. Among my favourites were Cameron Scott's relief wood carvings, and the superb paintings of Miguel Ornia-Blanco and Dan Morley in their Silk Mill Studios, but there was much more that was hugely impressive too.

The final weekend brought another Frome Festival extravaganza/happening - the Open Gardens, when 42 private gardens in and around Frome reveal their locations and invite visitors to call in and admire them - the map plus details is a well-invested fiver, as wandering these gardens and talking to their friendly tenders is worth five times that. Lavender thick with bees, forests of hollyhocks, lily-ponds, trees, curios, and cups of tea all feature in these drop-in visits, with garden-lovers comparing notes and sharing recommendations. 

And finally... this week's artsy account of life in Frome life will conclude as mine did, on a writerly note: Frome Writers Collective gathered on the ECOS site to read flash fiction to each other - thanks Dawn Denton for this pic of me, with organisers Gill Harry & Brenda Bannister -

- and to discover the results of this year's short story competition, judged by  journalist and novelist, Keith Stuart ... and the winner was: Nikki Coplestone! And my festival, having begun by sipping champagne with Roger McGough, ended with the monthly 'Proof Pudding' book-club meeting at River House, where we share our reviews of titles sent to Hunting Raven Books for manager Tina Gaysford-Waller's consideration - mine this time was STALKING THE ATOMIC CITY by Markiyan Kamysh, a shocking yet lyrical account of the perilous life of an illegal returner to Chernobyl. 

 

Here comes another year, just like the other year...

Bruce Munro's distinctive 'Field of Light' art installation has come to Frome! Well, to Marston Park, actually, the popular glamping site just a 30 minutes walk from Frome, past the threatened southern fields which - if we can't hold back development plans - will all become Frome anyway soon. Anyway, at present there's no residential light contamination around the beautiful big lake, one side of which is adorned for what seemed like (but probably isn't) about a mile of luminous spider-web adorned with thousands of bubbles, flowing in colour from blue to green to pink, purple, and gold. It was a mild night, and the free invitation to locals included a complementary drink (my pick was a negroni, for a touch of scarlet beside the lake) - a sensational enhancement of that tricky last day of the old year.

This 'tricky bit' has been more tricky than usual this year, with parties cancelled and continuing anxiety over every aspect of the news, now the dreaded 'big C' no longer means an overly-commercial event but an international plague. For me the unexpected option of a Boxing Day walk brilliantly illuminated this tween-time week, literally in fact as sunshine reddened the beech-leaf carpet of Roddenbury Hillfort, turning the hilltop into a stage-show of dramatic shadows. I've posted before about this amazing place, just on the edge of Longleat forest, where the contours of Iron Age settlement fortifications are still decipherable as you walk through the lofty trees, without foliage transformed into splendid columns. (Regular readers may notice this data also appears in last week's post: that's because it was a Sunday walk & therefore on the posting-cusp, plus this edition is a bit thin on items, what with the 'tween' lull & covid cancellations.)*

New Year's Eve brought a lovely non-crammed party with friends, chats & fizz - thanks Tracey for the selfie, with hostess Rosie Eliot. Social media has been awash with shared good wishes and positive images, and our Town Council site has posted - here - a wonderful round-up of last year in snaps of successful projects, celebrations, and policies in action.

Rodden Nature Reserve, on the Eastern edge of Frome, is an amazing wetland space which isn't always open to visitors, as the many wild species, some quite rare, need privacy in their breeding seasons. It needs stout boots, but lingering there always brings rewards of birdsong & tranquility, and photographs. My visit this Sunday gave more: a close encounter with an otter! About ten feet in front of me, standing in shallow water, staring at me. I stood still, not daring to raise my camera, and after a few seconds he darted through the rushes to deeper water, the ripples to showing he was swiftly away. A memorable start to 2022.

Also a good omen, a live music gig: Pete Gage, Frome's favourite keyboard/vocal star, was featured guest at the Southgate Inn in Devizes when John Amor's R&B trio (Innes Sibun, Jerry Soffe, and Tom Gilkes) played on Sunday afternoon. In the depth of winter, an afternoon gig feels very much like a late night session, and this one had all the energy of a party-night - with Ruzz Guitar joining in with a rocking number.

The more persistent of my readers will recall that the first blog of each new year generally begins with Brendan Kennelly's wonderful poem Begin Again, but for this year's reflection here is some poignant simplicity from Ezra Pound:

    '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.'

*You might also notice the font on this post is bigger than usual:comments on this, as in better/worse, will be appreciated - you can do this by clicking the 'comments' link at the end of the blog.

From pre-Raphaelite Soho to modern Tottenham, via apocolyptic & other tales

Holburne Museum in Bath currently has a 'special exhibition' of Rossetti's Portraits, and they really are something special. Dante Gabriel Rossetti has been my favourite of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood ever since 2009 when Aiden Turner took that role in the brilliant TV series Desperate Romantics - see right -  but the gentle, generous sketches of his friends which are among the portraits displayed  actually suggest a far more sensitive personality than the BBC's portrayal. Certainly he had a passion for red-heads, and after the laudanum-overdose death of Elizabeth Siddal ("accidentally and casually and by misfortune" the official verdict decided) he become infatuated with Jane Morris, pictured above.  In modern eyes these paintings may not look unconventional, but they flouted the Royal Academy's norms as established by Sir Joshua Reynolds, in their vibrance, detail, and subject matter. 

The museum gardens seem mainly under reconstruction or self-rewilding, though lovely, with bedraggled blooms and spiky stems tumbling around in every bed. It was still raining when I left, but Bath buildings look wonderful in the rain, their blonde stone enriched by the saturation and a velvet white sky beyond.

Staying with imagery: Frome Wessex Camera Club offered an excellent show of individual work inspired by the pandemic in Corsley Reading Room - sadly only for four days so this will end on 25th.  With 21 screens plus projected imagery,  Closing Down and Opening Up covered a range of responses from personal stories of hospitalisation with - luckily - happy endings, to a focus on new skills or personal memories, with photographers on hand to discuss their work.  Free, fascinating, and with tea & cake, this was a brilliant way to spend a wet Sunday afternoon.  Here (above) is Julian Sandoe's graphic saga of a son in intensive care plus a first grandchild, and my snap of Mick Yates, who superbly curated the whole exhibition. 

(late addenda - can't resist adding Mick's reciprocal snap, which also shows the exhibition stands much better than mine:

On the music scene, autumn has begun with a flurry of gig cancellations, as cautiously-emerging bands have had to recognise what our alleged leader currently doesn't: that the 'new normal' will always trump careful planning. So it was great to catch the fabulous Hot Club de Frome playing hi-energy jazzy blues at Lotte's Bar on Wednesday night.

In a different genre, Frome musician John Law, nationally esteemed for his 'kaleidoscopic fusion of jazz, rock, electronica and classical,' performed his new composition CONGREGATION at the Wiltshire Music Centre, offering a sumptuous taster here. The full session is still available on livestream here.

As prohibitions on social gatherings seem set to continue into another season of discontent, one  unexpected bonus has been an extension of communication skills among the determined: Frome Writers Collective's Gill Harry, who initially took our meetings zooming online, this week successfully created a hybrid session from the meetings room at The Crown, with sound for readers provided by Lisa Kenright & Mike 'Herb' Herbert. The evening's theme of 'Spooky Stories' inspired ten readings and a range of tales from shivery to satirical: I particularly liked Brenda Bannister's quirky take on the Little Shop of Horrors theme. 

Story-telling on a grander scale from The Art House in Southampton where The Travelling Talesman is also maintaining an online option, this time with a topical little saga titled The End Of The World As We Know It. This extensive Apocolyptic tour begins in Mesopotamia (latterly know as Iraq), source of the first written tales of constructed history which, like all legends, concern man's struggle against malevolent deities.  In a narrative featuring eye-popping atrocities, this extensive saga of the gods' war on humanity travelled through varying mythologies through wars, floods and plagues from Valhalla to Fukushima and beyond.  Most interesting of all was the after-show question session, which inspired this monologue from the Hampshire griot: "There are no 'things', everything in the world is make out of vibrations tiny flashes of energy...but Time is the fundamental frequency of the universe - the reason we can't see this is that we're all on that wave ...dark time and dark energy are such big frequencies we just can't see them."  What happens at the end of the world? he was asked. "Every note eventually dies away. Entropy carries us to a constant state, until we achieve the death of the universe. Only then is the end of all life as we know it."  

And it's not yet too wet, or cold, for walking the lanes: hips and berries are doing their jazzy thing all around the hedgerows, and a sunset walk to Marston Park offered the usual superb lake views.

This post was originally planned to conclude with the poem Begin, in homage to Irish poet Brendan Kennelly who died on Sunday, but because those inspiring words have been shared here previously (and because you can read it here - or hear the poet read it here ) instead here's the poem which last week won its teenage author, Giovanni Rose, the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, beating over 6,000 young poets from all over the world - and showing why we need poets. 

Welcome to Tottenham

Where we wake up to the smell of 'Chick king',

mixed with the odour of the corpse from the night before.

Where we cover our blood stained streets with dried up gum,

Where kids have holes in their last pairs of shoes,

Where daddy left mummy and mummy’s left poor.

Welcome to Tottenham.

Where if you look like me then it’s harder for you,

Where everybody’s equal unless they’re darker than you.

Where the police see colour before they see the crime,

Where children get stopped and searched and aren’t allowed to ask why.

Welcome to Tottenham.  

Where the drugs addicts sit at the back of the 149. 

Where education and sports are the only ways to shine.

Where we ride around on stolen scooters,

Where we can’t afford tuition so the streets are our tutors.

Welcome to Tottenham.

I love but I hate my home,

I still listen to the voicemails of my dead peers in my phone,

I live in a nightmare. I had to learn how to dream,

Welcome to Tottenham.

The devil’s playground.

We fight over streets we don’t own,

Knife crimes on the rise because the beef can’t be left alone.

Why does no one understand that we just want our youth clubs back,

Why do they claim they’re not racist but label the violence here black?

Welcome to Tottenham.

 

The week when freedom arrived and nobody noticed

Starting, unusually, with a weather report: over 30°C all week until the dramatic storm in the early hours of Saturday morning. As I was born in a German air-raid over London, this seemed a very appropriate start for my birthday, although sadly other celebrations were either rained-off or plagued-off.  But the long hot days were perfect for walking along the river path, and the glorious evenings lovely for a sunset trip to Marston Park.

Friday's trip was a jaunt to Hauser & Wirth, where Green councillor and environmental activist Theo Simon was giving a short talk in the cloisters to chime with the impressive exhibition of works by Spanish pacifist & artist Eduardo Chillida. Theo's personal eco-activism started in '92, inspired by Swampy and the Twyford Down M3 protest: his tales of past action were entertaining but he reminded us that the situation now requires urgent mass direct action.  Theo's also the  songwriter/singer leader of Seize the Day and brought his djembe so his talk was top n tailed with a song. And then to the galleries and the magnificent garden! 

Returning again to the topic of my birthday, celebrations while small were perfectly spaced:  a trip to the cocktail bar with Eleanor Talbot, whose weekly online programme Variations on a Theme is always smorgasbord of tasty talk & tracks, and a garden get-together with two close friends. Sadly my family's visit had to be cancelled - a scenario that many in similar situations will recognise. 

An upbeat note to end this week: Frome's popular new Mayor Andy Wrintmore, featured weekly in the Frome Times, was interviewed by Kerrang under the banner “They kicked party politics out of town”: Spending the day with the punk rock mayor of Frome.

It's a good read, and a particular pleasure for Andy who for years avidly followed Kerrang - "The world's greatest metal / punk / hardcore / rock music publication." Andy's Giant Pod has a new edition too, and his latest Mayoral column in Frome Times (p.25) reflects powerfully on the serious loss to the town centre of the Co-op - and of course Andy is interviewed as a musician in Frome Unzipped - from Prehistory to Post-Punk (pages 186-188) which has it's own page here, with regular updates.

Frome Festival, where rain never stops play

Despite the loss of indoor venues, the 2021 Frome Festival succeeded in providing an opulence of visuals, sounds, and activities in an incredible diversity of events - in fact it's incredible that the last ten days of brilliant entertainment right across town have been almost entirely outdoors. 

 This 10-day fiesta, which began last Friday, has been crammed with activities and performances - let's start with The Opening although it wasn't actually till Wednesday: a three-night music event on a pop-up stage in the Silk Mill yard, organised by Dave Smith whose sensational drumming was a festival highlight in itself.  All three sessions were brilliant: pictured (above) are Mohammed Errebbaa & Driss Yamdah on the second night - which also gave us sensational sisters Currer Bell - and Frome's Pete Gage on keyboard, one of five fabulous acts on the final night.

Still shuffling personal highlights, shifting to Tuesday now for the  Poetry Cafe on ECOS amphitheatre where rain threatened all evening but only delivered briefly once, and 45 people spaced themselves on the stones to listen to twenty original poems performed on the open-mic by their writers, with mega-popular Liv Torc as guest.  Liv is always brilliant and the quality of the open-mic readers is amazing: check out for instance this stunning poem from Karl Bevis about the silencing of theatre I am not viable.  I have absolutely loved the privilege of running this Poetry Cafe from its inception twenty years ago: I'm stepping down now but I'm sure spoken word/slam/standup/ performance poetry will continue in Frome, whatever name it goes by. Thanks Annabelle for the picture, taken from the far end of the amphitheatre.

Town walks are always popular in the festival, and this year they were more popular than ever, with themes ranging from biodiversity in the churchyards to Frome's history in terms of Slavery, Sedition, and Sin -  this one was led by historian David Lassman and me - here's the final stop with David expounding routines at the old workhouse in the second of our 2 sold-out trips. Eleanor Talbot's  latest Variations on a Theme programmes includes a focus on our talks - you can hear a bit of the interview at 19.40 minutes in, with the rest at 40.10. Episode 91 continues the festival tale, with more reviews and comedy clips.

Frome's quirky comedy duo Rare Species also offered a historical walk, though somewhat less reliable in factual data: here they re-enact the opening of Jenson Button bridge while actually on the footbridge.  

The Hidden Gardens trail, outdoor entertainment of the horticultural kind, is always popular - this year over 800 maps of private gardens open at the weekend were bought by avid visitors. This is an absolutely lovely part of the festival, as Frome shares its passion for nature so generously, with 32 gardens to visit - I only managed ten but they were all magnificent in various ways. Here's one of several with a sumptuous lily pond, this one attended by glittering damsel flies.

Another popular aspect of individuals' involvement is the Open Art Trail, offering festival-goers an opportunity to see the work and studios of our many local artists - fifty of them in fact, in 21 venues including outlying villages. Again, it's impossible to pick a 'best' from this amazing diversity of talent: here's St Mary's Church on Innox hill converted temporarily into a festival gallery!

St John's Church in the town centre always puts on a flower show for festival: the theme this year was 'Reconnection', expressed in displays created by members of the Frome Floral Art Society. Arrangements combined props to represent positive themes: the journey back to the outside world was expressed in various ways, one unprepossessingly adding a union jack, but this is a nicer one.

Also art, of a curious kind, was the Secret Staircase which provided private access to a location revealed after booking, and fifteen minutes of strange & strangely calming music composed by Helen Ottoway & played by Nick Sorensen. There were several of these mysterious locations around town and mine transpired as the 3 floor stairwell in the Silk Mill studios, originally nonexistent but ingeniously added by current owners Kate & Damon Moore by cutting a hole through all the floors and literally building it step by step. Just another of the curious tales of Frome's secret history. 

The final Sunday gave a chance to see a few more gardens, and art venues, and to pop into the Picnic in the Meadow where Rodden meadow was offering stalls and family entertainment - here's popular local band The Hoodoos harmonising, conveniently close to the Active & In Touch tea'ncake stall...

Ending this festival edition with a return to Marston Park for the finale, as the rain fell steadily on the lake and even the ducks scuttled into our covered stage area, and Bonne Nouvelle played two sets of their delicious mellow, nouvelle-vague style, covers. A superbly quirky finale to a fantastic week of Frome Festival.

And if one image could sum up my festival, it would be this snap by Rosie Eliot, of us happily ignoring the weather, and the state our country's in - just enjoying music and reconnecting our friendships.

And it's festival lift-off! Music, art & drama everywhere!

Frome Festival has begun its ten-day tour of the heart&minds of Frome, spreading dramatically and musically from the Merlin theatre to Marston Park where the lakeside band-stage is proving sensationally popular.  Talented singer/songwriter Leander Morales opened their festival bookings with a great set presented on Folk'n Funk Friday, and Saturday gave us a superb double bill: Al O'Kane with Andy Hill (above - you can hear them on 'Soundcheck' here) followed by Back of the Bus: covers that sizzle, from (to quote)"a 7-piece punk pop band, fronted by four female vocalists and backed up with a throbbing badass rhythm section, covering punk and pop classics with their own memorable twist." And their copy doesn't lie: a dynamic set that gave gothic drama to White Wedding as the sky darkened over the moonlit water. 

We Feed the World is an amazing photographic exhibition at The Station, the new complex opposite Frome's train station, with an overflow at the beautiful gallery in Whittox Lane. Both these venues are filled with photographs of small-scale farmers and fishers around the world, whose practices contribute to protecting, restoring, and rewilding as well as reviving and promoting traditional practices. Beside the striking photographs, explanatory wall posters clarify the grim facts about the way industrial practices degrade the soil and create wastelands for future generations. You can read more in the Frome Times - and definitely visit the venues. Here's Zuzana Pastorkova in Slovakia, posing for photographer Tina Hillier, who cultivates herbs, fruit trees, and 40 different kinds of vegetables on a small-holding that was her grandmother's, and claims her success is 'about being in tune with nature'. 

The Frome Festival Art Trail will feature in next week's bulletin, but here's an exhibition which is touring Somerset : Inch by IN:CH aims to bring art out of galleries and into public spaces. Frome Museum basement doesn't really fall into that category but it's interesting to get to see that area, especially filled with suitcases of curious work. I especially liked Fiona Campbell's decrepitised umbrellas as 'hope of a tree' and the glimmering lights in Philippa Edwards case, representing the bioluminescence of nature.

The big exhibition at Rook Lane is a tour through the 20 years of the life of Frome Festival. Succinctly and elegantly curated by Sue Bucklow, who must have had a dumper-truckful of events and memories to wade through, this shows the story-arc of the festival that came to grow from a dream in the mind of Martin Bax to one of the most highly rated festivals in the country, known for its enterprising diversity and egalitarian events. I was on the smug side of pleased to find that several events which were important to me personally have found their way onto the display screens. Especially pleasing is this reminder of the 2015 contribution from Nevertheless Productions: Midsummer Dusk was a site-specific theatre piece performed at the Dissenters Cemetery and probably my favourite production ever. (If this chimes fondly for you, too, you can check it out in this blog: type the title in the little box offered top left and you will be transported to13 July 2015 and offered images & a full review.)  

God of Carnage, Yasmina Reza's 2008 popular play about squabbling parents, translated from the french by Christopher Hampton, was the festival choice of Frome Drama, who managed to stay within regulations at the Assembly Rooms by limiting audience seating. The storyline - two parental couples meeting to agree how to ameliorate their offspring's quarrel and instead become fractious themselves - should be easy to make hilarious but actually the steep escalation of cultural & financial oneupmanship makes it hard to avoid over-egging, but the team did well, achieving a lot of laughs throughout. I particularly liked the brief boxing-ring fantasy that preceded the demure actual meeting of the two couples. 

And in other dramatic altercations: Flash-mob opera invaded the precinct on market day to the delight of a gathering crowd who heard a medley of arias wrought into amorous and acrimonious encounters by four incredibly talented performers. My comprehension of the lyrics was limited to andiamo so there's little else I can tell you, but it was magnificent - big thanks to the Cooper Hall foundation.

Finally, in this back-to-front, slightly late, report: last week also saw the launch of a new book from  Corinna Sargood, artist extraordinaire and Angela Carter's favourite illustrator: The Village in the Valley arrived at an elegant soiree in the garden of Rook Lane chapel on Wednesday. Corinna and her partner Richard have visited this Mexican village every year, since they discovered it over 20 years ago; her lino-cuts inspired by that first visit illustrate the second Virago Book of Fairy Tales, and now the village has its own story, along with other travels. It's published by Prospect Books, an elite London establishment which clearly has no notion of Frome culture as her publisher Catheryn brought only 2 boxes of books for this launch and was surprised that all copies were bought before many of the guests had even arrived. But the night was balmy and the bar was open, so we partied on.