Beltane, bluebells, bits of history, and a band gig!

Remember the days when a sunny weekend meant bands playing outside pubs? Frome's Paul Kirtley and his amorphous group The Tribe never forgot, and the easing of lockdown rules plus Beltane weekend's sunshine saw a multi-talented assortment of musical friends outside the Prestleigh Inn playing for 3 hours on Sunday afternoon. Huge performance skills with an impressive array of instruments were delivered with table service and social spacing - big credit to the team, and a happy step forward for us all. Here's sound-man Steve, with David on guitar & mandolin, Monty on cajon, Carl on harp, Paul singing and strumming, Danny on bass, Ray on slide guitar, other guitars, and vocals: Jim Cook joined us with his magic double saxophone act, and Keith Horler provided the guest spot. A small event for us, a giant leap for hope for performances of all kinds returning.  

Still on the subject of music, Pete Burns (not that one, the folk musician) has completed his collection of 41 songs created for lock-down listening.  Pete came to Frome in the final year of the Grain Bar Roots Sessions, and shared a thought-provoking song about his hometown, Belfast: The Riches of America.  And here's the fabulous Swervy World buskers, on tour from Ipswich, enhancing Frome precinct on Saturday as the market bustled with shoppers in the chilly sunshine, buying everything from cakes and cheeses to garden gear and glittery gaudies. 

Poetry events organisers, unlike bands, having discovered the wider audience possibilities online are maintaining their profile online with Zoom performance sessions. The popular Poets Prattlers & Pandemonialists hosted their monthly Yes We Can't session on Sunday evening, with a cracking posse of open-mic voices and Frome's own Liv Torc as main guest - she is, of course, also Womad's Hip-Yak Liv, BBC's environmentalist Liv, HAIFLU's Liv, and even Fyffes-bananas' Liv, but Frome maintains its prime claim and - just to remind you - Liv will be guesting at the Festival Poetry Cafe on July 6th, on ECOS.

Moving Voices at the Art House in Southampton has also maintained their regular open mic session on zoom: held on the last Friday of each month, this session was a smaller group but the poetic voices were strong and the feelings shared went deep. B Harwood Parsons collated an enjoyable event with contributors from as far afield as The Withdrawn in New York, and a music spot from Winchester's local hero Stevie Simkin from the Railway Inn roots session.

Still with words, but the on-the-page kind,  Hunting Raven Books had another stunningly successful pop-up book-shop at the Silk Mill on Saturday, offering reductions on a big range of titles. So popular was this that the queue snaked all around the yard and into Saxonvale.  I've posted this pic from manager Tina Gaysford-Waller's page, just to show how superbly socially-distanced we all are: how strange these images and priorities will seem in years to come. We hope...

The Wylie Valley Art Trail is another happy example of first steps back into real space: the nearest hosting venue to Frome is St Algars Yard at West Woodlands, where seven artists are showing paintings, prints, ceramics, glassware, and metalwork during the first week of May. I'd intended to include a report in this bulletin, but had to postpone my planned Bank Holiday Monday visit due to winds of a ferocity that even King Lear howling on the heath might think were overdoing it a bit.  So here's a picture from the online catalogue to be going on with: a ceramic piece created by Hiro Takahashi who takes her inspiration from the wild animals and the ruins in the woods. 

And as May's arrival alternates blustering winds with sunshine, this image is from my best walk of last week: wandering through a trillion bluebells in Black Dog Woods (allegedly so called after a highwayman was hanged here leaving his dog continuing to roam), as pools of sunlight on the silver birches transformed the woodland into a set for A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Final funky footnote: my walk around Mells to reconnect with the grave of Siegfried Sassoon and the round barrow burial ground nearby, skirting the estate stolen by the Horners during Henry VIII's dissolution days, took me past the gateway to Mells Park House where the documents which released Nelson Mandela were signed in 1990, with apartheid laws amended and the ban on the ANC lifted. The original Mells Park House had burned down by then: the 1925 replacement looks a more like a private boarding school, but views aren't accessible from the public road anyway so here's a picture of the gatehouse. Walking in Mells is a potent reminder that we live, always, in historic times.

Habits of art & writing, to warm a freezing week

It's almost the law, or a by-law at least, for a writer to be a fan of Alan Bennett but having never really appreciated the 'darling of middle England'  I hadn't planned to invest in Original Theatre Company's screening of The Habit of Art, but as the freezing fog continued and news shifted from dismal to dystopian, with live theatre  off the menu for the foreseeable future, the option became more appealing. 

So I'm happy to report it's immensely enjoyable, whether or not you know much about WH Auden or Benjamin Britten, whose relationship is the central strand of a play that's witty, moving, and very funny. The dramatic structure of a-play-within-a-play allows for a double helping of personalities, with sharp contrasts in tone & mood - and also ensures the audience can enjoy quite a few full-stage views rather than just close-ups.  Two of the 'cast' are played by temporary stand-ins - leaving scope for comic cameos worthy of Shakespeare's mechanicals  - everyone dislikes their role and has their own ideas about how to play it, while the writer is furious at the producers' cuts. Yet through all this, the habit of art is maintained, and the habit of the habit of loving too.

In a strong cast, Matthew Kelly and David Yelland were convincing and moving as the actors playing the poet and the musician, both lives dominated by the illegality until 1967 of homosexuality. The mood of the story ranges from emotionally charged encounters and arguments - between actors, the characters they play, and the playwright) - to comedic moments as stand-ins act as items of furniture with all the panache of Shakespeare's mechanicals.  Available here till 28 February, recommended.

Aloneness is a Many-Headed Bird is the intriguing title of a collection of poems by Rosie Jackson and Dawn Gorman, who wrote in collaboration to create "a conversation in poetry between two women about things that matter in a deranged and damaged world."  Hedgehog Press has published this, and the two poets hosted the book's zoom launch on Thursday. Elegantly introduced and perfectly pitched by the hosts, this event gave a taste of the collection by reading ten poems and discussing the shared experience of collaboration. Originally combining to explore 'what it felt like to be an older woman', the poets had found that, as with a play, 'other characters had wandered in.'  The poems dig deep: darkness, bloodlines, death,- and love.  'We are capable of more love than we know' Dawn found.  Also fascinating was the story of their quest for a cover illustration, revealed by cover artist Gina Litherland, who joined the launch from her home in Chicago. Copies available from Rosie or Dawn.

No music to report this week - a sad omission so here's the Unravelling Wilburys' fabulous version of the Dylan song If Not For You - it's on dropbox so I hope the link works for you.  

And if you haven't already included this site on your search for uplifting posts on facebook, do follow Chris Packham's Self-Isolating Bird Club which daily provides images of wildlife - mostly avian - to bring a smile to your morning scrolling - owls, kingfishers, finches, tits,  robins... this one's actually mine, spotted in Rodden Meadow.

Also a facebook-accessible resource to hopefully raise a wry smile in these grim days, Steve Pottinger's political-satiric dialogues are now published online. 

And Liv Torc has put out another callout for Haiflu in response to this latest quasi-lockdown, so do share your thoughts & feelings, in 17 syllables, on her page here.  (If you forget the 5-7-5 format, it's like this: Catkin colonies / along the road to Nunney / chubby with new hope.)

Ending, courtesy of the Fortnightly Review - always an excellent miscellany of poetry and fiction - with a poem by Johanna Higgins called Ghost but could might well be called Now.

It's the breathing out that kills
The drawing in throughout
The love that spills.
The reddened love
That
Turns and tears
At flesh, at
Some adhesion,
Where the blood meets
Ghost and reason.

 

Drama's back! Controversy, murder, mirth... and more.

The dramatic event of this week was for me was review tickets for a theatre show again, after nine months' abstinence. Theatre Royal Bath had proudly announced its 'Welcome Back' season after the first lockdown, only to be closed down again before the second of their trilogy could make the stage. Oleanna is the now showing and -fingers crossed- will continue until 6th January at the Ustinov studio, with exemplary safety & sanitation provisions. First produced in 1992, David Mamet’s controversial play is about a dedicated professor whose attempt to inspire confidence in a panicky student is maliciously reinterpreted by a posse of ferocious neo-fascist feminists - or possibly a play about a complacent professor whose attempt to dominate a vulnerable student is thwarted by female solidarity... 

Jonathan Slinger as the maverick professor is superb, totally credible whether prickling with frustration on the phone or calmly confident of his offbeat educative skills. As the ambivalent student, Rosie Sheehy has a baffled belligerence that might well  appeal as a challenge to a dedicated teacher. Directed by Lucy Bailey, with a set by Alex Eales which ironically evokes Educating Rita in its scholarly intimacy even as this becomes increasingly at variance with the action.  Oleanna was iniitally seen as an important breakthrough in acknowledging an elephant in the room of sexism: thirty years on there seem to be other questions: The tutor advocates challenging the system, but is avid for personal advancement within the status quo. He may not a sexual predator, but he's certainly a hypocrite. images Nobby Clark

And now to Frome's Merlin Theatre for a dramatic contrast: As part of the Signal Fires project to revive small theatre companies in these difficult times,  New Old Friends touring company 'producing engaging, accessible, shows that make people laugh' brought their current show Crimes Against Christmas to the amphitheatre stage on Thursday, and a resilient cast of three persisted in entertaining their entranced audience huddled- in a socially distanced manner - on the stones with mulled wine, by recounting a complex Agatha-Christie stylee saga, in complexity and unlikeliness of a multiple murders to coincide with the story of the twelve days of Christmas. As with all such sagas, it's the deftness, and deliberate undeftness, of the multi-tasking characters that provides the entertainment. 

And finally in this disparate trio, Wardrobe Theatre hosted 'the world's first interactive pantomime (possibly)' when Streaming Beauty zoomed out on Saturday night. As with all pantos, even the most salacious, the focus was flamboyant entertainment and the storyline was of scant interest. Technically, this was ambitious and amazingly successful, with Tinkerbell the technician creating subgroups in the audience to interact with the cast as Beauty struggled to sever her contract with evil Hymen Bowel. A cameo appearance by Blaise Castle to encourage us to co-create a dreamcatcher to break the spell gives some idea of the inventive absurdity. Zoomers from Bristol who know each other, and probably know the cast too, will have enjoyed it most but it's great to see innovative approaches to interactive drama in these drab days.

Also in a seasonally festive vein,  Black Swan Arts held a pop-up market of  collectables and giftables in the courtyard, cafe and Round Tower.  The 'Small and Affordable' display of delights included jewellery, ceramics, woodwork items, prints and original artworks, and more, including salted caramel brownies in the cafe.  Here's artist David Davis with one of his stunning local views.  

Still local-ish, Heart of the Tribe has an exhibition in Glastonbury, enterprisingly creating an online gallery tour, showing until January.

Ending with poetry, and a short video of six poets responding to a sculpture in Mid Wales Arts Centre. Steve Pottinger and Emma Purshouse were among this group and, as both poets have performed in Frome to great acclaim, even though they're based in the Black Country this film earns its link. Here's a couple of screen-saved snaps to show the quality of the film: this kind of project might appeal to local poets too - Millennium Green, maybe? 

 

The here-we-go-again edition.

Let's start with an image that shows how we're all feeling, as modelled by Hunting Raven Books marvellous manager Tina Gaisford-Waller at the end of a long day coping with phone & email orders. The legend on her jumper, you may notice, reads OPTIMIST. With a massive stack of quirky wrapping and sturdy paper bags at the ready, we're hoping this brilliant bookshop does really well in the season ahead. And if you want to shop for other stuff to support Frome's creatives, join Friendshop, here - loads of unique art & wearable posted by craftsfolk - and authors - of Frome.

Still with words, Frome Writers Collective monthly social on Thursday had a spooky theme, perhaps apt in a week when 'shape-shifting creep' was trending on twitter, with short stories shared at the zoom meeting. 

And individuals are offering virtual gigs again in response to the renewed lockdown - and no apologies for my sample choice of  Steve Pottinger and Luke Wright as both these brilliant poets have visited Frome to perform in the Poetry Cafe. Steve this week was hosting a set in Dubai, although his presentation and material stay firmly in the Black Country.  His poems are inspired by actual people and historical events, but also wildly imaginative as he word-shifts from the ordinary to the fantastic, always with a strong sense of the human struggle right across the range of his work.  

Spoken-word poet Luke Wright, too, has this ability to convey poetic experience as deeply personal yet also universal. Luke is is offering his poems every night throughout November at 8pm on his twitter feed, for free (though donations appreciated.) Luke doesn't seem to work from a set list, you get what he's in the mood for. On Thursday this seemed a little bit cynical & sad, but he finished the set with a really beautiful poem about his little boy in bed reading, existing in his solitude 'steady as a rock pool' .

Frome's fabulous Liv Torc was in the zoom room on Tuesday for Haiflu Ever After, talking candidly about her year of troubles & triumphs, about the international haiku-writing project she launched, and also about her serious illness (which led to 2 brilliant poems of cuckoo-nest flying craziness). Liv's audience rapport is as instinctive as her poetic talent and this hour was inspiring as well as entertaining: Liv wants more haiflu now, and hopes you'll post them publicly, and share them on social media... so look out for #haiflu2020art, and join in if you'd like to feature in her next film.

Visual art now : The Cam Valley Arts Trail went virtual for the first week of November with 32 artists presenting their paintings, prints, pottery and beads: Here's some of Frome's Andrew Eddleston's varied ceramic work - you can see more in his a Youtube movie here. Apologies for the belated notice - events across the Atlantic have been a bit distracting) 

Performance taking teetering steps back into the live world has, of course, been stopped in its tracks. Theatre Royal Bath's costly 'Welcome Back' season of three great classic dramas was halted after the first show (Pinter's Betrayal) and Bristol Old Vic is working out live-streaming from the stage for Hedda in order not to postpone their new collaboration with the BOV Theatre School. Future productions will also be semi-streamed, with a few seats available in the theatre. 

Music events, like drama, have been hard hit. Individual performers continue to use the easy-access site Open Micsolate - you'll find several Frome favourites there - or posting directly on their own pages, like Nick van Tinteren, awesome lead guitarist with popular Bristol band Cut Capers. This is the image used by Paul Kirtley on quite a few of his posts - this one is Go With the Flow, recorded with David Goodman, a great example of impro jamming. Al O'Kane's poignant new song Black Lullaby, written in response to the current situation, was released on Friday 13th, with  a short taster here and Sara Vian's offered a new song Trust the Sea 'to celebrate the result of the USA election.'  The Summer of Sound project is now archived on Frome.FM and my contribution, a revival of the Liquid Jam CD of Frome poets produced by Will Angeloro 20 years ago, is online here. This really is an excellent little radio station with a wide range of range of music, from eclectic mixes to fan specials like Foo Fighters Top Tracks, all available in their archives - lockdown is maybe a good time to browse.

Ending now with the Frome Walking Festival, also bludgeoned by new restrictions, but you can still enjoy these themed local walks by downloading the routes, each with maps and information, varying from a short, sombre town tour with a focus on WW1 to a strenuous 13 mile trek along the Saxon Kings Way - this one recommends a bus or train for the return! Big credit to the Walkers are Welcome team for keeping this project afloat.  I'll leave you, once again,  with a tree.

 

From azure & gold to mainly grey..

How dark and cluttered England alway seems after an absence: pale pleated sky hanging low over endlessly cluttered terrain on the drive home from Plymouth. In Spain masks are mandatory for all public places, and after a month with this sense of safety, the 14-day requirement to withdraw was actually a relief while readjusting to the on-off policy that England allows. But Frome is all about community so I've attempted a skim-catch-up on how the enterprising townsfolk have maintained their creativity... and of course, the answer is: impressively. 

Words first: here's a link to Andy Wrintmore's Giant Pod  interview with Chris Bucklow, artist and art historian in which, as Andy says, 'We go down a rabbit hole of Chris’s complex and captivating theories about how his subconscious communicates with him via dreams, how we can learn to derive or interpret lessons about ourselves and get a better read on where our heads might be at.' Eleanor Talbot too has created several Variations on a Theme - interviews with a difference. Her recent themes were healing, hair, and 'sexy connections'. 

Hunting Raven Bookshop is maintaining its reputation for innovative energy, with a socially-distanced book sale at the Silk Mill this weekend. with two more planned.  

Frome Writers Collective is maintaining active support for an increasing membership, with a virtual writing workshop, story contest, and monthly meetings continuing on Zoom, with historian Peter Clark giving a talk on his new book, Churchill's Britain.

And - not from this patch, but poet Steve Pottinger is so well-liked in Frome that he's allowable - do check out Come to me now,, a reflection on nature and how life is always 'a moment you pluck between finger and thumb, a just-ripe moment...

Obedient self-isolation similarly precludes any report on this weekend's exhibition of visual artworks made by people in Frome during lockdown, Creation from Isolation, curated by the Edventure students, but there's a virtual tour here. North Somerset Arts group took a different online approach, with members' work posted in their Virtual Art Exhibition throughout the weekend. Masses of high quality work, in a wide range of media - here's a painting by Gail Mason, from 'imaginary 'Emotional Landscapes,' places that I would like to be, and memories of how it feels to be in nature.' - because I miss these colours. 

I narrowly missed the 6x6 exhibition at the WHY Gallery, selling cores of tiny masterpieces  donated in support of the charity counselling service that Jill Miller founded - particularly poignant in the month of the first anniversary of her death. 

The amazing Frome Street Bandits have responded to lockdown with a massively impressive display by the full clan of 'semi-autonomous anarchic syndicalist' instrumentalists in a piece they call Ca Fait Pas Mal (compilation credit Jez le Fevre). Premiered October 19th - a fullscreen must-watch, here.

Frome's individual musicians have been prolific in their online posts on facebook, both on their own pages and on the public group Open Micsolate (with an impressive 6,600 members, none of whom seem any more keen to retrain than Fatima...) - here's Guru in a Camper Van from Paul Kirtley and Shoreline by Jane Langley and friends, both original works. And there's a new album out any minute now from Phil Cooper: here's Over My Head, one of the tracks on These Revelation Games. 

And now as autumn arrives although the world still feels nowhere near normal, there are reasons to be cheerful: my pre-ordered copy of Staying Human from Bloodaxe Books (edited by Neil Astley) has arrived and hedges are spurting with vivid, glamorous, reassuringly ordinary, bunches of berries. 

  

 

Homecoming...

This post is a little late, as wifi was variable during the final days of our trip - a week stolen on impulse, changing our booking and extending our travel eastwards: Vélez-Rubio, for an overnight Aire stop in this little riverside town between two sierras with a restaurant playing Wham, then on to Vilajoyosa where I'd stayed with Jill Miller, feminist writer and Frome's inspirational charity innovator, who made this lovely beach resort her home for several years before her death last October.

Time for more crags and castles then as we moved slowly westwards: Jalance, with a hermitage and superb historic mosaic fountains -Albarracin, where our cliff-top Aire gave stunning views across the double-walled hill, - Medinaceli with its massive Roman arch.

By now we're moving consciously towards Santander, via the Rioja region: a mellow Sunday night in Labastida and then Lierganes our final stop before Santander and the ferry home. 

And after two and a half thousand miles of driving, stopping in quiet places with amazing buildings & fascinating histories, what's really seared on my mind is the space: the vast vivid sky, endlessly blue on most days - the massive sierras, the near-endless forests and rocks of our driving landscape - their subtle colour shifts through every tonal range: coppery-gold to russet, lime-green to forest, pale sapphire to cerulean...  England still feels strange: grey, and crowded. I guess I'll get used to it. 

Even now we're back there won't be any Frome-related live reports till the requisite 14 days is up, but it's good to see 'the arts' are holding their own... Frome's talented visual animator Patrick Dunn has created a short video for Steve Pottinger's poem inspired by that crass advert urging creatives to de-skill from their years of training, inspiration & commitment, and sit over a keyboard instead. - you can see this animated version of Fatima here. Sadly, I missed Liv Torc's 'Rainbow Fish Speakeasy' zoom event with Elvis Mcgonagall, one of the excellent promotions from Wordplay, but it's good to know creatives are finding routes within the confines: live music & meetings, and online readings & workshops. Also lightening the final days of official summer for me: an enthusiastic review of The Price of Bread from the editor of Plays International which included the suggestion that this 'fast-moving story that has balanced narration and history, the private and the public, with sensitivity. Reading it non-stop I became convinced that it is a potential Booker Prize candidate.'  

So there's always something nice about coming home, even when your fridge has died and everything's now in a puddle of water.  

Nights in and days out...

Once again this week's round-up opens with a gang of blokes in Elizabethan-style dressing-up-clothes, shouting and romping dramatically in the open-air: The Lord Chamberlain's Men have now released for free online viewing their 2019 version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, an incredible 425 years after this theatre troupe was first created.  It's really good.  There's huge potential for buffoonery in this play, and the three squabbling story strands - lovers, fairies, and buffoon 'mechanicals' - are separate enough for seven men to create each strand without confusion. They are excellent in all of them,  and bring big energy and laugh-aloud-in-the-livingroom humour to the mishaps in the forest as well as the legendary story of Pyramus and Thisbe.   My screenshots here show the spat in in the forest when the young lords - who've been relishing the cat-fight - leap in to drag Hermia off her rival,  and a moment from the mechanicals' tragic play-within-a-play. The soldier Pyramus, aka Bottom the Weaver, also played lovely Hermia in one of the best multi-tasking switches I've ever seen. Recommended viewing.

Thursday was a busy night, with a 2018 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Macbeth followed by Ibsen's A Dolls House adapted by Tanika Gupta, with additional dialogue, into an Anglo-Indian drama for Lyric Hammersmith. Perhaps this evening schedule was a little ambitious, especially after the hottest day of the year so far, and a smattering of fast-forward was involved but, in my defence, many in Shakespeare's day never saw his plays in their entirety, and apparently Chinese theatres used to double as tea-houses where people ordered refreshments and carried on chatting during the shows. A darkened room with serried rows of silent spectators is a comparatively recent development in the history of theatre, and perhaps on-line at-home viewing will find new audiences for live - ie filmed in one live take - performances as the rules of how to watch are inevitably relaxed - there's a great article here about how 'stupid' silent reverence is killing theatre for the future. Anyway, here's the wonderful Christopher Ecclestone hallucinating the friend he murdered while watched by his wife Niamh Cusack in a strong 2018 production directed by RSC which manages to make the witches really scary by presenting them as creepy children.
And here for contrast is Elliot Cowan with Anjana in Ibsen's exploration of gender politics transposed to 1879 Calcutta in a set that looks neither Russian nor Indian, just a place for dour argument and mind-games. Dark, but well-reviewed by critics as an expose of the consequences of English colonialism, racism and sexism

One final theatre recommendation, as you probably have your own choices by now: A Streetcar Named Desire on Friday as presented by the Young Vic for National Theatre, a superb production that also highlights the problem with my hope that home streaming may revive live drama - the difficulty of recording a night of intense interaction. Brilliantly acted with atmospheric set and dynamic direction, but the negative aspect of filmed productions was overwhelming: endlessly altering angles, close-ups and lens-elected choice of observation all worked against the theatrical experience, controlling the interaction that makes theatre live, fragmenting the experience and wasting a clever set by isolating areas of attention.  That’s just my take, many will disagree - you have till May 28 to decide.

In Poetry Corner: Liv Torc -whose amazing Haiflu Project is collecting responses to the coronavirus in haiku from around the world - this week created a Zoom version of her Rainbow Fish Speak-Easy, with some splendid contributions from the floor as well as guests including a set with piano accompaniment from Francesca Beard. And Steve Pottinger, who like Liv has been a popular guest at Frome's Poetry Cafe, had an online launch on his facebook page for his new poetry collection with the delightful title thirty-one small acts of love and resistance -'celebration and defiance in politically turbulent times' he claims, which sounds right for now, though are there ever others?
In other 'word' news: when not walking from my house in every direction on a daily basis while this glorious weather persists, my lockdown focus has been to complete a novel about Belfast at the start of the 1970s 'troubles', a time when I lived there. The characters are imagined, but the events aren't, as there's no shortage of historical accounts of this era of simmering conflict to supplement my memory. Anyway it should be out next month, published by Hobnob Press, with a powerful cover image created by Paul (Mutartis) Boswell. Sneak preview here...

Ending this week's rather late posting - I blame the distraction of tracking Dom Cummings as he darts like a Hermes parcel van around the country humming 'doo da dee, lockdown's not for me' to the tune of the conga song - with a couple of photos from my permitted-exercise explorations along the river Frome.