Community poetry & partying, with bonus paintings

Liv Torc's 'haiflu ever after' show came to the Merlin in Frome this week, magically converting this often-overlarge venue into both a cinema and a small, intimate, club with a lively atmosphere. That's what Liv can do; she is a word-witch and, with added live music from her partner Richard Monks, this experimental session of projected memories plus performance plus audience participation showed yet again that she is a simply brilliant entertainer. As well as reminding us of her 'haiflu' project, which monitored our communities' pulse of emotion as the plague progressed, Liv tracked her personal extreme health crisis, and even managed to create a massive community haiflu-stream of responses from the audience during the interval. 

Still with words: Episode 40 of Frome Writers Collective on radio is now available online, with my short talk about writing short stories 4 minutes into this link, followed by a cheeky review of Déjà Lu by Suzy Howlett @14.30 minutes.  I also had the delightful experience of reading one of my favourite of these tales, Deceiving Mr Pemberley, to the friendly & welcoming Active & In Touch group at the Cornerhouse on Tuesday morning - a delightfully attentive audience and good company too. 

Music now, and  Guggleton Farm - or The Gugg as it's more usually known, is a new venue to me, discovered just in time before the winter closure of this wonderful arts venue in Stalbridge, Dorset. Thursday evening's live music in the open-air barn provided a smorgasbord of delights, from young local acts like Oscar & Georgie (pictured R) to Frome headliners Unit 4 (above),  a newly-formed Frome band already gathering fans excited by their uncompromising funky style.

On a sadder note, this is the week we said a final farewell to one of Frome's major musical talents: PeeWee Ellis, legendary saxophonist and all-round charming man, left us forever.  This example of his style, brilliance and charm is from 2018 and was recorded Ronnie Scott's. 

Friday evening saw the preview of Whittox Gallery's new exhibition Into the Colour, a shared showing of paintings by Jenny Morse & Susanna Lisle which will be on view until the end of October.  'Joyful' and 'playful' are terms which have been applied to these vibrantly coloured abstract images, and they certainly lift the spirits on a dull autumn day.  Jenny has used screen printing to create the colours she saw in a trip to Brazil and Susanna's paintings are inspired by gardens and by Islamic pattern. Results, for both artists, are strikingly gorgeous. 

This has been national Great Big Green Week, and Frome embraced the concept bigly with a splendid programme of events including walks, talks, films, activities and meetings - I managed to join the Frome Heritage Tree Walk led by Julian Hight - not, as avid readers of this blog may recall, my first excursion on this route: it is endlessly fascinating to remember this is the last remnant of Selwood forest, which was never a dense thicket but a meadow initially grazed by sheep then farmed for teasels for the wool trade, and the oldest trees here will have witnessed those times.  

Saturday evening's highlight in this menu of Green events was a live follow-up to the amazing We Feed the World art exhibition which featured in the summer festival: We Feed... Frome was created in Station Approach by stalls from local eco producers with music from fabulous Rosco Shakes.  The combination of balmy evening, amazing food, and a popular local band ensured a fantastic street party.  

Drama, poetry, conflict, and sedges

Creatives have been hard hit by this second lockdown, especially theatres. Here in the south-west, Theatre Royal Bath had no sooner re-emerged on the strength of handouts from the Culture Recovery Fund than their 'Welcome Back' season was paralysed again, but Bristol Old Vic enterprisingly added a live-streamlining aspect to their new productions. Hedda, created via the 'permeable membrane' (their term) of their Theatre School.  Chekhov's dramatic principle asserts that if a gun is shown in the first act then it must be fired before the end of the play and Hedda has two, which, combined with her self-destructive boredom, ensures no surprise in the finale here, even if you're not familiar with Ibsen's play. 

The filming angles were great, with plenty of full-stage views rather than soap-opera-style  close-ups, although for some technical reason there were also plenty of blurred moments while my system played catchup. Lucy Kirkwood's adaptation transfers the story to contemporary Notting Hill so some changes are essential (though possibly not Hedda eating the lost book) and the trainee actors did justice to the vying, lying, academics - Hedda's husband George and Michael Drake as handsome ex-lover Toby were particularly strong, and so too was Emma Hadley-Leonard as the woman who fascinated and enthralled everyone except herself.

A Friday night of verbal immersion now as four remarkable poets launched their new collections on Zoom: Frome's Claire Crowther and Bath's Carrie Etter were joined by Alan Baker and Vik Shirley in an extremely well-organised hour of fascinating readings. Alan, an editor & translator as well as poet, was launching his new pamphlet A Journal of Enlightened Panic, Vik's debut collection is entitled The Continued Closure of the Blue Door - samples of her work here - Claire's latest collection Solar Cruise has already been picked as Poetry Book Society recommendation. Claire is married to the renowned solar physicist Keith Barnham & these poems, all written on their sea trip to America, focus on meditations around his work - there's a sampler here and  some have been reprinted in the Fortnightly Review. 

Carrie's new collection is The Shooting Gallery published by Verve, extraordinary and sombre prose poems juxtaposing reflections on the WWII drawings by Czech artist Toyen with school shootings since the Columbine massacre in 1999.  These are also featured in the Fortnightly Review, but it was particularly powerful to see some of the drawings that inspired these pieces as Carrie read them with moving calm.

Frome Writers Collective's Writers on Radio session this week was on 'the art of revolting, and writing about it,' and opened with an interview with David Lassman discussing why Frome is famous for its riots - mostly legitimate protests, incidentally, as the food riots were inspired by the inflated price of bread, the 3-day riot at 1832 election was in response to blatant corruption, and the wool-workers attacks on new machinery were protests at the loss of essential income for the spinners. David doesn't emphasise rationals but he's really interesting on the facts. (Here's David in a clip from the Wessex Camera Club's coverage of our 'Rogues and rebels' walk in the last Frome Festival.) Among other intriguing features, Sian Williams recalled the 1980s Greenham Women's protest, and Suzy Howlett considered the etymology of 'riot' - the language of the unheard, as Martin Luther King so perceptively said. Good to hear Kaiser Chiefs' riot prediction again too.

Maybe because we all feel under partial house arrest, dissent seems to be in the air: Eleanor Talbot interviewed me this week about the thread of dissent that runs through my book Frome Unzipped, from Prehistory to Post-punk for her weekly show Variations on a Theme. Unlike David, who is reliably lucid,  my recall of dates is impeded by dyscalculia, unhelpful when discussing history... luckily Eleanor is a brilliant interviewer & editor. I'm on Episode 58, at 24mins-35.10, 46mins for 12 minutes, and again for 9 minutes at 1.09 - but you should listen to Eleanor's brilliant music choices too, like the sensational History Song from The Good the Bad & the Queen and (at 1.33) an amazing rap battle between Trump & Biden created from actual speeches by ERB (Nice Pete & Epic Lloyd). All seamlessly fused by Eleanor, here seen at the WHY gallery opening last year - another from-the-festival-album image.

Still with social conflict of a kind, the Workhouse Burial Ground walk mentioned in previous posting, one of Frome writer John Payne's projects, had a plug in The Guardian this week. This would have been one of the Frome Festival events, and John's pamphlet of poems The Few and the Many includes two tributes in remembrance.  And with live music on hold, we continue to  rely on Sky Arts, youtube, and downloading: this is Destination Unknown, by Pete Gage with Ruzz Evans on guitars and Mike Hoddinott on drums, from Pete's new downloadable album, with great advice in the title track: if you don't do it now then you never will. 

Ending this week's foray with an image from the extraordinary Oudolf Field at Bruton's Hauser & Wirth, where inspired planting has created a landscape for all seasons: the opulent colours of spring and summer morphing to a different glamour by late autumn, with starbursts of moon-pale grasses, russet stems of seed pods, and a few late, mulberry-dark, flowers.

Sounds, words, art - all you need to start the month.

Listen - A summer of sound is the concept of composer Helen Ottaway, fusing sensual appreciation to include not only music but sounds found in nature, in speech, and in our lives generally - the 'strange and lovely' sounds of the world around us. Black Swan Arts has embraced the idea and from July 20th till 1st September there will be a range of sound-related events to experience. Last Thursday was the launch of a crowdfunder to raise funds to commission more aural events to 'feed the voracious appetite of Frome's creative community', with Helen's sample soundtrack, taken from the streets of Sri Lanka, installed in the corridor. Here's Mel Day from the programming committee with Helen.
This initiative also includes Poetry in Motion - local walks with readings of poems related to the terrain, organised by John Payne and Martin Bax - and thus ties in nicely with the Frome Writers Collective current focus on poetry. The FWC regular programme on Frome FM Writers on Radio (broadcast May 3rd, online link here) featured interviews with three local writers with an interest in writing poetry: I was one, along with Robert Hull and Rosie Jackson, whose collaborative collection with Graham Burchell on the art of Stanley Spencer and his wife Hilda, Two Girls and a Beehive, will be published next April by Two Rivers Press. Suzy Howlett, here with co-presenter Lisa Kenright, spoke of the benefits of learning poems by heart in childhood which triggered all our favourites: personally I can't walk over any bridge in London without declaiming Wordsworth, and will chunter chunks of Keats, Coleridge and Wilfred Owen mercilessly at the least provocation. The programme was immaculately hosted by Sara Scholefield.

From poetry to prose: really great to have my tale of Mrs Rosoman's Dilemma picked for  Story Friday, Clare Reddaway's popular short-prose reading event in Bath's delightful performance venue Burdalls Yard, an invitingly cavernous venue on this occasion authentically decked for the current theme of 'The Garden'- and with real cucumber sandwiches. Six of our submissions were lucky enough to join Clare in reading, and our horticultural imaginations varied from animals' nocturnal exploits to jam mining and Eve's take on what Eden was really like, with some thought-provoking as well as entertaining tales. There's a link here so you can listen to all or any of our tales!

And still with the words, Nevertheless Pub Theatre's festival production, Where the Fault Lies, is being steadily buffed up by our four dedicated actors. I dropped in on the rehearsal for Under the Duvet - a bit of a twisty mystery with a sinister streak - and found them suitably moody... If you're in the Frome area during festival week, do get a ticket & come along to The Cornerhouse on 10th July- with four talented and energetic actors, we're confident this will be a great show. There's a link here, so you can listen to any or all of the stories.

Time for music, and masses of it, to take all our minds off the fudges and follies that climaxed on May 2nd, though they weren't far from our minds when Seize the Day featured at a TUC organised event in Bath last Saturday. Theo Simon and Shannon Smy lead this inspirational protest band which has a big following for its rousing performances as well as political commitment.  The Bell Inn garden's 'back bar' provided a perfect venue for a great afternoon. Here's a quite old version of one of their anthems No-one's Slave and No-one's Master - it sounds as good, and as relevant, today.
Back in Frome, the May weekend had an even-more-fantastic-than-usual range (do I say this every week? It sometimes seems that way.., ) of brilliant bands: The Peaky Blinders Family Friendly Music Event at 23 Bath Street gave us a long afternoon of superb performers: Rodney Branigan set the bar high with Radiohead's Creep played on two guitars simultaneously, followed by the Screaming Harlots, then Frome's new hottest band the HooDoos - they give St James Infirmary Blues the resurrection treatment - and sultry Bonne Nouvelle - then another talented composite group, JAMD.

Here's the Hoodoos (with apologies to two more talented members missing from the shot), lovely Coralie from Bonne Nouvelle, and the party atmosphere that greeted JAMD.

Then a dance night at The Cornerhouse with high-energy ska/punk band the wonderful One Tones to end the day, so what more could anyone want from a bank holiday Saturday? 

There's Sunday too, of course, and as it's the first of the month the Frome Independent market took over the town with stalls and its usual Mayday theme of fresh floral headbands. I was outside Hunting Raven Books for most of this time, promoting Frome Unzipped, (thanks Tom for the snap)
but I did catch the HooDoos' excellent set on the busking stage - though sadly missing Straight Fits, an up-and-coming young band of whom you will hear more.

Impossible to leave May bank holiday weekend without referencing the art, which burst around the town like the wild garlic and cow-parsley that have been grabbing every pathside space:

 The Round Tower is hosting Black Swan Guild's stunning exhibition of paintings, pottery,  jewellery and other craft: I was particularly impressed with Dan Morley's delicate, exact, paintings in the series of ephemeral fragments in the Sonnets series, but there's much to admire - it's on till 25 May.

And for two days only, May 4&5, Frome Art Fair took over the Long Gallery, the Silk Mill, and Rook Lane too with an extraordinarily high standard display of work by the artists and craftsfolk of Frome. Here's just one of the many striking pieces of work in each venue, by from Melanie Deegan, at Rook Lane. 

Attentive readers may note a bit of a blip time-wise in the middle of this bulletin: this is because your usually-dedicated chronicler grabbed a four-day sabbatical and celebrated Beltane in Dublin - in Howth, to be precise, a peninsular at the north end of the city entirely surrounded by seagulls.
Here I was hosted by my university-days-flatmate Jenny Sweeney (author of Encounter Ireland) so we talked of Irish poets and legends and walked the promenade, beach, cliff-tops and in the old Deer Park where Gráinne Mhaol the Pirate Queen put the garlic curse on the inhospitable St Lawrence family for closing the gates against her so even now their land is thick as snow with garlic flowers, and the Earl now always has a place laid ready in case she calls again...
and if you're ever in Howth and feeling peckish, do drop into The Bloody Stream, a fabulous fish restaurant named after the environmental consequence of a 12th century battle below its walls. It's underneath the railway station: five-star food and a centre for Irish music too. So this multi-coloured bulletin concludes here with the green headlands thick-rimmed with the molten gold of the gorse all around the bay.