Skyros equinox.
Cast off old ties that bound me
I will live anew.
Last week's 'Writers' Lab' group produced fantastic prose and poetry, covering the full range from moving to hilarious, culminating in a fabulous evening of personal readings on their penultimate night. (Thanks, Beth, for the haiku.) And thank you all for the immense pleasure of watching nine fascinatingly diverse personalities, all strongly individual, combine with mutual respect and good humour.
My Skyros session is right at the end of the season this year, and I've found some things unfamiliar though some things unchanged: Juicy Bar still plays seventies songs while we spread ourselves in the afternoon sun and Aegean waves gasp their huge yoga-breaths along a beach of soft sand the colour of thick honey. Bougainvillea and jasmine still garnish whitewashed alleyways, feral cats still pause to pose. Old ladies in black, apparently all cloned from the same ubiquitous postcards, still greet us with Yasous as we clamber the cobbled paths that cats-cradle the huge rock of Skyros. And it's still summer here, though the locals predict winds of change. Watching the sun rise beyond Brooke Square and set below Atsitsa bay, it's still easy to feel that perhaps this is all you know, and all you need to know...

I'd have gone to more Poetry Can Festival events - I intended to, as line-ups looked great - but stuff kept getting in the way: theatre shows, Play-Me-I'm-Yours pianos in random places, or simply sunshine on the docks... here on Arnolfini corner, the usual backdrop of colourful graffiti, boats, tourists & locals, below me the big, soft, chrome-coloured, sundribbled spread of Bristol's river with its flotsam of swans & debris and a stream of silver sunstars strobing the water like firework fallout. Drums from the Organic Food Fest on the far side, chora playing behind me. Seagulls circling.

But I made it to Muscle at Bristol Old Vic on Saturday.
Pornography last week may not have been very pornographic, but Muscle was certainly muscular – or at least, testosteronic. The setting is a gym where three men strain their physiques and their psyches in a bizarre emotional triangle: Terry loves Dan, who Steve hates because he’s shagging the woman Steve loves, but who does Dan love? The three men arrive as stereotypes and strip gradually in a strangely touching clumsy dance of mingled bravado and vulnerability. There’s no dramatic resolution, only a slow-burning, sometimes shocking, journey of self-exposure and self-realisation. Best bits were the fantasy monologues direct to audience; weak link was the miming of gym equipment, but that small distraction aside Sion Pritchard, Paul Mundell and Stewart Wright were impressive in their roles. Written by Tom Wainwright, this production emerged from the BOV/ Theatre West initiative to support new writing.

Personal passions in public places. That's the idea behind Speeches, a project devised by Lone Twin who "create community-based performances for specific sites and locations."
So of course I wanted to see what they were up to in Bath's Kennington Meadows - and if we can do it in Frome. The answers, in order, are: Enabling local people to soapbox their enthusiasms & expertise, and, Yes. Only I think in Frome we'd be more quirky, less formulaic.
Emily and I went along on Sunday and agreed foodie Cally was our fave. We ended our day out at the Odeon with phishfood icecream and 500 Days of Summer. “Boy meets Girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn't.” Genre parodies, giggles & sniffles, what's not to enjoy...

And now I'm doing what I'm sure isn't blogger etiquette - adding to a posting because I realise there's a couple more things I should've mentioned before bragging about swanning off to Greece. Collider at the Ustinov for one – part of their support programme for local writers – a rehearsed reading of a play still in development. Collider, in particle physics, refers to “two beams of particles accelerated and directed against each other, so that they collide while flying in opposite directions.” With the same force, perhaps, as a fervent evangelical pastor confronting an equally passionate atheist intent on refuting Creation? Shaun McCarthy’s new play isn’t afraid to push contrastive paradigms to almost parodic extremes: the pastor is a secret jew and his wife an ex-burlesque dancer, and one of the scientists is a vaudeville artist manqué (‘the unbelievable in search of the unimaginable’ he says, of both pursuits). The play does need more fine tuning, particularly around the character of the project leader, but complex issues of physics and ethics are entertainingly packaged to create a show that’s not just about conflict but is also often funny, sexy, and surprising.
And huge appreciation to Brian Madigan who brought his 'raw acoustic songs, passion, wit, wisdom' to Frome Poetry Cafe and to the poets too. We were in unwitting competition with the Catherine Hill Bikers Wobble, and if small is beautiful, we were exquisite...

I'm off to Skyros island, twinned with Paradise, on Friday, so here's wishing you all a splendid equinox & misty mellow autumnal fruitfulness.

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"If I'd read the write-up I don't think I'd have come," said the lady in powder blue & pearls in the queue for the loo after the matinee performance of Pornography at the Theatre Royal, "-it was all over the place. Was he a bomber?"
He was indeed, and the pornography lurks in the 2005 attack on London rather than in the snapshot glimpses of people whose lives this touched. Writer Simon Stephens says that in the end the play is not about terrorism but about human beings, and can be performed in any order. There's a haunting quality of compassion in the portrayal of each of the 8 characters: the difference between these ordinarily transgressional lives and the vengeful terrorist is only a matter of degree.
I loved it for the actors' spare & elegant interpretation and for the writing, which had that moving, tough, blend of colloquial and lyrical achieved in the best of Jack Allsopp's lyrics (listen to Blood on the new album All Night Cinema to see what I mean: an urban opera in two verses). Billy Seymour and Sheila Reid stood out in an outstanding cast; Sean Holmes directed.

Frome's Merlin Theatre hosted the Made in Somerset conference of theatre practitioners, organised jointly by Theatrework, Salisbury Arts Centre, and Take Art. Delegates get a mini-programme to wear like the Glastonbury gig-guide, except with cow pictures instead of psychedelia, and lots of tastes from the extensive tapas of local-based work in progress and tour-ready shows. An inspirational, informative, and exhausting 3 days of showcases, talks, and discussions interrupted with breaks for excellent food & intensive conversations on the sunny lawns beside the Ecos amphitheatre, entertained by Frome Street Bandits.
It felt an amazing privilege to spend a day watching such a wide range of dance, drama, and community theatre - that's not an icecream van by the way, it's Fuse's I Scream van - and great that young people from the college came along to participate.
Several positive outcomes from the symposium too: Emma Stenning, new executive director, affirmed Bristol Old Vic commitment to support artists across the southwest, not just within the city. And Rob Jones, Policy & Development Manager for Arts and Creative Industries, refuted the tag of artistic backwater: "Somerset is one of the most culturally diverse places I've ever seen." Good news, then... especially for those of us who didn't know that post existed.

I'll leave you with a miscellany of recent news items you may have missed, piquantly peppered with my own personal prejudice perspective.
• Outrage over the raffle prize of a lamb from a school farm, in joint form, from the mother whose daughter sobs nightly because ‘an animal she bonded with is going to be slaughtered.’ Well call me Cruella de Ville, but surely the school’s intention was not to find her a fluffy sibling substitute but to show her where food comes from and introduce her to the realities of traditional rural life? Still, one more vegetarian is no bad thing…
• Shadow Cabinet Minister Alan Duncan has been sacked for saying he feels like he’s been ‘on rations’ since the new rules on expenses. Am I the only one who feels this is a little unfair? He was merely whingeing - I want the bastards stopped from ripping us off, I don’t particularly want them to like it.
• ‘Lunacy’ says art critic Brian Sewell of Bristol Council's decision to let citizens vote before scrubbing out graffiti, after over 300,000 voted with their feet for Banky’s exhibition. “It will result in a proliferation of random decoration” he predicts. Imagine it- an enjoyably decorated environment, a sense of personal choice for the hoi polloi... dangerous stuff. “A world gone crazy.”
• Tough words too from Joanna Lumley, who says aging actors should accept media preference for young faces. “I think we’ve got to be a bit sensible’ says Joanna, a bit sensibly. “None of these things going to change, so get over it.” Journalists leapt to compare her comments to the complaints of ageism by Anne Robinson, who has just unveiled a new face of which journalist Liz Hunt said “I’m all for growing old disgracefully, but you should be able to move your face enough to laugh about it.” Tee hee. I’m with lovely Rose Flint, who has decided the time has come to forget about her inner child and nourish the inner chrone.

frogs jumping like ping! springs...
springs ping! like jumping frogs...

Palindromic poems in dangling mobiles, poems on posters, on screens, on boards, on badges, on jigsaws.... the Arnolfini top gallery has been transformed into a word playground by the Why we Love Poetry exhibition, an all-age interactive experience open until 13th September.
I first met Liz Brownlea, one of the team who created this amazing poem creche, some years ago so it was good to catch up, and to indulge in some lachrymose musing on the magnetic board: love empty as snow after winter rain.

Arnolfini is hosting a range of other events for the Bristol Poetry Festival including readings and slams. I've been a fan of Byron Vincent since we shared a stage in Poole for a Bla-di-Bla poetry performance, so I went along to Brimstone: five poets billed as 'funny, astute... vivid and youthful ... shiny and exciting.' But there's something enervating about the studio theatre as a venue for poetry, and while it's good to hear new work, I missed the anarchic energy I was expecting - though Anna Freeman's spot was excellent.

My antidote to non-arrival of Indian summer: Indian blossom steam room at Longleat's AQVA SANA, during a long & luxurious 'pamper day' which has no literary connection except that I went with Alison Clink and we did talk a bit about writing... when not blissed out on heated seats breathing sensuous steam...

Another antidote is revisiting wonderful summer writing experiences like Finca el Cerrillo- there's a feast of words & pictures here on the Writing Magazine website - and receiving by email the "recipes for Cortijo Romero" written by participants on a hot starry night in Andalucia. Lovely to read these little sparks from an unforgettably special week - and the note from one contributor: "amazing how these recipes seem to able to capture the whole mood, and essence, of the place in such a way that I'm finding I can tap back into it whenever I read them!" Now, these voices are what I call shiny and exciting.
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San Franciscan poet Sharon Olds has brought out a new collection, her ninth, entitled One Secret Thing, from which she read to a packed congregation in the Church of St Michael in Bath last Friday. She is renowned for refusing an invitation to dine at the White House because of her fury at American warmongering, and for writing about her bum as 'cellulite fruit and nuts... exhausted, tragic.' Her passion to chronicle the ordinary sensual stuff of life and to oppose national conflict are both abiding themes in her poetry. "I don't know why children aren't as good a subject as war" she says, commenting on content-based rejections from literary magazines. "There is a real need for poems," she says simply. "We, the citizens of the earth, need to write poems."

The Poetry Society thinks that too, and to celebrate its one hundredth birthday there's been a series of events around the country, including a Cascade of Words and Music at Prior Park on Sunday.
Warmly compered by organiser Nikki Bennett despite the chill, it was privilege to celebrate alongside wonderful voices like Rose Flint, David Johnson, Kevan Manwaring, and others - including my writer friend Hazel, back south for the weekend.

I'd like to end with a word for ITV's dramatisation of Wuthering Heights... two words actually: rain, and death. Neither of them my favourite things, though I'd watch Andrew Lincoln in any weather. Lots of flashing eyes and floating hair, galloping horses and ghostly intruders, though actual narrative is terse as text. Apparently writer Peter Bowker deleted characters and invented scenes for this psychotic love story but is there any other way to bring a novel to television?

Sensational is the simplest way to describe my week at Cortijo Romero in Southern Spain leading the 'self expression through creative writing' group . A synaesthesia of senses, in fact: silken pool water, velvet hills, and rustling palms. This area, in foothills of the Sierra Nevada, was tamed and irrigated by the Moors but given its tri-zonal climate by nature: flora is extraordinary and clear skies reveal breathtaking layers of stars. Our days quickly develop a delicious pattern: early morning yoga, then after a brief meeting the mornings are dedicated to word-work and word-play, with afternoons free to sunbathe around the pool. After supper, which like all meals is delicious & al fresco, there's optional activities like chanting, dancing, spanish song, or further immersion in conversation, or submersion in the pool...
Here's my 'recipe for Cortijo Romero':
Take white walls and terracotta tiles, and meld into habitation, flattening the roof so it forms a terrace under the stars. Decorate the traditional way with archways, courtyards, and a cat. Soak in sunshine for a long time while the pool is prepared. This must be surrounded by palm trees and blossom – hibiscus is ideal. Turn out under a firm blue sky onto a setting with views of mountains and acres of ancient tranquillity. Fill your finished cortijo with people who love it, with good food, with learning and laughter. Glaze with delight and sprinkle lightly with the scent of jasmine. Your guests will come back for another helping again and again.
Personal highlights, in a week that was up there with the eagles of the Sierra Nevada, were the strenuous clamber upriver to swim under the ice-melt waterfall, and the gentler cascade of wonderful words from my very wonderful group in the last-night cabaret.

So I wasn't looking forward to ten hours in Malaga on the final day, but actually it was brilliant - thanks, Louise, my intrepid and ever-delighted companion, for an unforgettable day of exploration and fiesta, finding ourselves suddenly in the heart of a very Spanish celebration. A great way to leave and take home the musical vibrance of Andalucia.



England was kind to my reluctant return, having the grace to offer sunshine today. I'm hoping it hangs around till next Sunday, for the 'Cascade of Words and Music' in Bath's Prior Park.

Not so much a blog entry, more of a twitter really: arriving in Spain to discover Cortijo Romero has extensive gardens with a pool and palm trees, ripe grapes around the archways, an elegant & cool study where the writing group will meet, fabulous food and steady sunshine, but no internet connection. So there will now be a short intermission.

Around 150 people, some resolutely picnicking beneath umbrellas, sat stoically for nearly three hours through monsoon conditions in Frome’s Ecos Amphitheatre to watch Illyria recreate the heroic exploits of D’Artagnan and his Three Musketeers, a folies-de-Bergerac frolic of intrigue, amour, frenetic swordplay and improbable moustaches. Six actors and a flurry of costume changes combined to create a plethora of friends, foes, landlords, servants, nuns and horses. Sex was skimpy and the plot too complex for most of the young in the audience but nobody seemed to mind as fun was fast, and furious fighting frequent: with swords, knives, saucepans, fists, pistols, poison, axes, and a chicken, imaginatively choreographed and involving everyone - wicked Lady de Winter (Annie Lees Jones) was deservedly cheered for her courageous cat-fight to the death. The four men all acquitted themselves superbly, with William Finkenrath particularly striking as Duke of Buckingham who must be secret twin to Blackadder's Lord Flashheart.

Two shows in swift succession in Bath, and both find me paddling against the current of decided opinion: at the Ustinov there's the world premiere of Another Door Closed, a new play by Peter Gill. Applause was enthusiastic but it left me cold, literally, as air-conditioning was set on let-the-fuckers-freeze. Imagine an early draft of a Pinter play - before he decided that less is more effective to create the essence of relationships- cut into strips and restuck randomly, Dada-style, recited by two portly elderly ladies and that louche black-marketeer from Dad's Army.
I'll think up something else to say for publication, of course, but it won't be 'theatrical gem'.

Rik Mayall is unwell so press night for Balmoral at Bath Theatre Royal was cancelled, though we're allowed to view and review at our own expense - a cunning but unsuccessful plan to deter local reports that the play is now an unsalvageable flop. I thought the performance lost nothing from stand-in Steve McNeil's underplaying of the potential mania of his role, but I'm probably alone in that view. Michael Frayn's fantasy is based on the appealing conceit that the 1917 revolution was not in Russia but in England, resulting in redeployment of Balmoral as a writers' retreat. Not just any old writers, but Godfrey Winn, Hugh Walpole, Warwick Deeping and Enid Blyton - who is an erotic poet until the farcical and whisky-fuelled events of the play inspire her to create the Secret Seven and become a children's author. Lots of opportunities, among the silliness and corpses in the cabin trunk, for droll comments on literature, class, and cultural stereotypes - though you'd have to be as old as the Secret Seven are now to recognise most of the references. Apart from the drunk belligerent Scot, of course. He's not going anywhere.

In the queue for the queue for Banksy on Sunday, buskers & an icecream van combined with brilliant sun and the cameraderie of the sidelined to create a carnival atmosphere. Cheers and party poppers as we secondary queuers reached the point of the hand-stamp which allowed us to join the legitimate queuers. We became entitled to privileges: the BANKSY versus BRISTOL MUSEUM flyer, giving precious little away about the location of tour highlights like the Easyjet version of the Flight to Egypt but providing a useful summary: A unique collaboration between the city's foremost cultural institution and one of the region's most overrated artists. No lectures, no illegality, just delightful wordplay and wonderfully inventive images. Then back at the dockside for chilled wine, and at sunset watching scores of balloons float slowly across the city skyscape.
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Unexpectedly at short notice, the chance of a weekend in Dublin, staying with my friend Jenny Sweeney, author of Encounter Ireland. Jenny and I were college flatmates, so catching up is easy as falling off a bicycle. She takes me walking on the heathery hills of Howth, teaches me the knack of the Irish Times crossword; we search for cowries beside the taffeta sea of Dublin Bay, and for late orchids in the dunes of Dollymount, and the decades melt away.

And any visitor to the city has to see what's on at the Gate: “Everything gels perfectly” enthused the online write-up of the Noel Coward revival Present Laughter, so I had hopes of entertainment with an edge, and was half lucky. This production was indulgent on the eye in terms of set and costume, but a little too easy on the intellect by underplaying the psychological connections between this extensive cast. The result was slick wit but no emotional credibility, erotic energy, or real humanity. Stephen Brennan as Garry Essendine, the aging matinee idol, held the entire confection together compellingly, aided by Fiona Bell as his spiky secretary, and the laughter was indeed present. But the promised gel was missing in this series of tableau sequences, some of them voluptuous, some satiric, but never cohering enough for me to care by the end who went to bed with whom - or what happened to the hedonistic hero or anyone else in his ouroborotic coterie.
“All you ever do is pose in dressing-gowns,” Garry is challenged by Roland Maule (John Kavanagh, mangling the irony with buffoonery in this wasted role) “- you could be making people feel and think.” But why bother, when as the reviews all note: “The audience loved it!”

Stop Press News Frome writer Rosie Finnegan has heard from Bristol-based Writers' Block that her Sarah Siddons monologue has been accepted for production next Spring. Rosie says she was inspired by the '7 Ages of Shoes' monologue writing workshop and "You can quote me saying a big than you to you and Niamh!" which is jolly nice of her. She also says she's over the moon about it. So you should be, Rosie, it's a brilliant outcome for your first dramatic monologue.
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Words@ Frome Festival goes into recess for the rest of the summer once the bunting is down for another year. Mega congratulations to all involved in the hugely successful literary events - you can see the reviews, compiled by Wendy, on the festival website. The debrief meeting is traditionally a bit of a knees-up too and this year Alison, who hosted, created a unique Plinth Cake: that's me on the top, complete with icing-sugar mic. Ahhh...

Somerset lacks focus in terms of cities, learning institutions, and cultural centres. Discuss.
The theatre practitioners' meeting at The Academy Theatre in Shepton Mallet did just that, with varied opinions as to whether decentralisation is a weakness or a strength. Either way Take Art, who convened the meeting, is doing a grand job to thread our isolated pearls onto some sort of circlet of reciprocal awareness. Coffee, cakes, and networking opportunities supplemented the discussion, concluding with a flurry of post-it notes & hopes for continued contact.

Writer/performer Rob Benson brought Borderline, billed as 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for the ecstasy generation', to Bristol, giving Alma Tavern audiences a chance to see why this one-man show collected rave reviews at the Edinburgh festival.
His character is a Stone Roses fan who pops pills like Pringles ("once you start, you can't stop") until he lands in Mental Health Ward 206, off his head now on medicinal instead of recreational stuff. It's not just drugs to blame, he says. He's borderline schizophrenic, borderline victim, borderline recovered. Maybe his life will always ricochet in and out of paranoia, even though he longs for the normality of 'Ikea and Dixons' - and love.
Black comedy, physicality, raw emotionalism, and Streets-style poetry, all disturbingly enhanced by the extreme lighting design of director Jennifer Lunn, took this piece beyond era case-study to essential integrity. Next stop New York, but Rob will be back in the spring with a new play developed for the Ustinov's 'Script Factory'.
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Back on planet normal, and the final event for the Words@ Frome Festival team: prize-giving night for Writers in Residence, at the Garden Cafe. "An amazing achievement", judge Lindsay Clarke says of these stories scribbled in cafes and shops and bravely read aloud by their writers for his verdict: Gordon Graft and Tim O'Connor commended for two highly entertaining stories, and Tracy Wall taking top prize for her millinery- inspired poem.
Lindsay is 'not one of nature's judges' he says, but he's unfailingly eloquent on the subject of writing. Among his salient gems: "A good sentence is a breath taking shape, so it can’t carry too much in the way of excess baggage." "Qualifiers are not intensifiers, they weaken. Find the verb that dramatises."

What is the collective name for drama enthusiasts & practitioners? An OST-group would be Tuesday's answer. Open Space Technology, if you're not familiar with the concept (I wasn't), was devised in the 1980s which accounts for the slightly last-century jargon of ("We did vision that work but it's hard to progress in this funding landscape though we're making bridges") and Theatre Bristol's To You To Me session attracted over 100 writers, performers, directors, and fans to Bristol Old Vic to contemplate the creative future. OST has few rules and they all have a cosily indulgent flavour - the 'Law of Mobility' encourages participants to buzz off when bored - which was further enhanced by bowls of cherries and maltesers, and a scrummy greek supper after the debates were all done. A relaxed non-cliquey atmosphere is a great way to network, and Niamh and came back enthused, informed, and entertained, and very pleased to have found this bridge into the Theatre Bristol landscape.

Miracle Theatre is touring their adaptation of Tartuffe, Molière's once-scandalous parody of the hypocrisy of the Church and gullibility of the bourgeoisie, in an open-air season. They arrived in Frome on Thursday and were instantly diverted by torrential showers to the Merlin stage. Bill Scott’s version of the text plumps for one-liner wit rather than scrupulous translation or conventional rhyming couplet, and the overall effect of marionette-show–cum–farce is clearly designed for the picnic season theatre-goer, but it’s a wonderful high-energy romp nonetheless, with Ben Dyson as villain-hero Tartuffe effortlessly stealing every scene. For this preposterous drollery Molière was apparently dubbed 'a demon dressed in flesh' but it's still the most performed play in the French language, and has that strange vicar-in-the-wardrobe kind of innocence of a bygone era.
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