Autumn equinox. These are important days, astrologically, my friend Helen, who is a hearth-witch, told me when we met for our writing date: Halloween is the Celtic New Year: Samhein, Feast of the Dead, the time when Cailleach the Crone rules the earth. A full moon, too - owl moon, also called Hunter's moon or blood moon. Helen and I drank Emerald Sun tea and wrote from random fridge-magnate words and this is what happened for me:
Full moon, owl moon, Samhein moon:
Three reasons to celebrate the crone within –
No, to release the crone, to let her get on with her own
celebrations. What will she do?
She will dance, for sure. Will she dance wildly,
like the Bacchae? Will she drink deep, and laugh
too loud? Probably. Will she breathe deep and cry
for long gone loves, sigh silently those names
she once called out aloud? Why not.
This is her time of power and devastation.
Her wail is a wind to lift desert sand,
she shuffles ghosts like languid cards,
switches off the stars on a whim. She strides
regretless through forests of flux and lust,
paddles muddy water, finds surreal symmetry.
And is it easy? Yes, for a crone.
Look and learn, falterer, look and learn.

No-one knew what to expect from Poetry and Folk Retro Night at the Garden Cafe, but this random mix of guitarists and wordsmiths turned out to be a cracking evening.
My Irish/Californian friend Mo Robinson is over visiting our shared family, and as he set me up with a few gigs in San Francisco while I was staying with him in April, I thought it would be fun if the Poetry Cafe reciprocated with a 'happening'.
Mo gave us 3 spots, mingling his own powerful narrative ballads with political satire from Tom Russell, and 15 open-mic performers ensured a stonking eclectic medley of music and words. Several contributors seized the retro theme: Roger Wiltshire's witty rant inspired responses from both Lucy and Neil Howlett. Andy (Leonardo's Bicycle) Morten dropped by; Dianne Penny performed a moving personal tribute to Sharon Olds, and it was great to see how well the high-energy of music mixed with reflective poetry. Definitely a formula to repeat.

Does Metaphor Make You Better? was the somewhat ponderous tag that peeled away to reveal an inspirational talk by Victoria Field and Rose Flint at Frome Library this week.
Writing therapy, unlike art therapy, has no long-standing psychoanalytic pedigree, but research increasingly shows the healing power of creative writing for both acute and chronic disease and depression.
"I don’t work with the reasons" Rose says, "we’re not defined by our illnesses, our wellness is our best reality. I work from the place of wellness.” Victoria talked of our shared instinct to self-medicate through poems: "We're not concerned with literary merit but the sheer pleasure of putting words together." As well as being foremost practitioners in this work, Rose and Victoria are both amazing poets and the event ended with readings from their own 'therapeutic' poems, some dark but all glowing with compassion for the human experience.

My musical taste has ever been what can most charitably labelled 'eclectic' (Deep Purple to Dirty Vegas via Tom Waits & Arctic Monkeys) but I found a whole new genre to enjoy after a splendidly theatrical session at a Cotswold's jazz pub with Nick Gill's Oxford Classic Jazz Band swinging through songs of the last century.
Big sound for a quartet (percussion sax and tuba as well as piano & vocals) and amazing range of mood: glitz and glamour, urban blues, and sweet melodic moments on that stardusted lazy river of the days gone by... Fabulous.

I'll end a random week with fireworks over Frome again, this time inspired by a request to the One Show from Mandie Stone. The answer was Yes. "If it's good enough for Jenson Button, it's good enough for us, end of story." pronounced Christine Bleakley from the show's helicopter cockpit. Cue Pee Wee Ellis leading the parade through town - cue youth band, operatic society, firefighters and twirling majorettes - cue town cryer, and the ancient town of Frome is officially twinned with BBC One Show. And thanks Mandie, for including as one of your 20 reasons for the twinning ceremony:
The polished One Show performance is up on a pedestal; Frome’s own poet Crysse Morrison performed poetry on the plinth at Trafalgar Square. Mandie sponsored my outfit from her shop Love Arts, an Aladdin's cave of retro delights, so it was great to see her in the studio giggling and threatening to wet herself as the story unfurled.

And after the flamboyant & entertaining metatheatricalism of 6 Characters, another play challenging audience expectations: Tim Crouch's Author at the Royal Court. Only four characters here, though, unless you count the audience: we all became, reluctantly or not, participants in this tale of a tale recounted from among our midst. "Society is defined by its edges, not its centre" says Tim, playing a playwright called Tim Crouch who has written and produced a play that required the cast to research gross and brutal acts. The two 'cast' members confirm this, and their testimony shows the damaging consequences. For the author, degradation was even more extreme; in his impassive, endearing, voice Tim graphically describes participating in shocking obscenity. The actors were chillingly good, and the questions at the heart of the piece are powerful. But I wouldn't sit through it again.

Back home, the autumnal mood is celebratory: Apple Day ends with fireworks for Jenson Button's Formula1 win in Brazil. And four Frome writers collect certificates and prizes from the Mere Literary Festival Poetry Competition - local section, true, but over 120 entries nonetheless. Indranee took first, I was third, and Janet and Phyllis scooped merit awards.
Louis de Bernieres was senior judge.

And finally... Enraptured as I am with lovely Johnny Lee Miller, Emma's sprightly Knightley in the BBC serialisation, I didn't realise he was Trainspotting's heroic Sick Boy... Go, girl...mega mega lust for life rules.

Paradise by local writer Nell Leyshon developed from her work with Vita Nova: a Bournemouth-based theatre group of recovering addicts. The Salt factory (tagline "stark visual landscapes and restless text") production features charismatic Lee Hart and Celia Meiras as ex-junkies falling backwards through their story to refind their love. Jay Kerry's lighting is stunning and the minimalist set, Nell says, was designed around the dimensions of the tour van.

Lots of personal stories at the Merlin too, in a full-house foyer performance of STAGE WRITE last night.
This was the culmination of the 7 Ages of Shoes creative workshops aimed primarily to encourage those who've never written monologues for performance before, and was hailed a fantastic success.
Accolades buzzed round the bar like bees round buddleia, and verbal bouquets were still ringing around the group this morning. Many congratulations and thanks to everyone who stepped out of their comfort zone to share such a wide range of wonderful stories: our writers Anna Britten, Alison Clink, Jo Day, Rosemary Dun, Rosie Finnegan, Jeremy Gibson, Gordon Graft, Peter Macfadyen, Angela Moss, Magnus Nelson, Howard Vause; thanks to our actors Jo Hole and Annabelle Macfadyen, and to Howard for the visuals. The project - my co-organiser Niamh and I are both determined - will continue...


And One-and-Other has finally ended, with the descent on Wednesday of the final human artefact, leaving the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square empty again.
But was it art? Anthony Gormley reckons so: "It's asking how art can be experienced.. if there isn't a bit of contention it isn't worth doing." It was fun, anyway, as I reminisced on a radio look-back at the one hundred days of plinthing. Had my experience led to anything? the interviewer wanted to know. Hard to quantify how standing 28 feet above London for an hour shapes a life - but one direct outcome is another outing for The Frock when I'm the curtain-raiser act for Innua Ellams when he brings his award-winning poetry play The 14th Tale to the Merlin next month...
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This is the only image
I could find on the Bristol Old Vic website for the utterly amazing new touring production of Six Characters in Search of an Author, sort-of by Pirandello, and maybe it's fitting that it's nothing to do with any of the onstage stories dovetailing thematically and interweaving emotionally: it's a section of audience looking variably enraptured and bemused.

So here's a picture of Luigi Pirandello, who didn't write this version, and the principal actor, who is better known as Wycliffe on the telly, all of which confusion seems totally appropriate for a performance that challenges both authorship & ownership, and our notions of entertainment & integrity. "The medium is the message", Marshall McLuhan pronounced back in 1964, long before intrusive docu-dramas were shaping lives and sensibilities; nowadays we're so used to the debates, both ethical and aesthetic, that this provocative interpretation of Six Characters by Headlong is simply electrifying. Is this the story of a film producer dedicated to finding the 'truth' beyond the tear-jerk euthanasia story of the death of a boy, or is it the less noble, more torrid, story of six non-existing characters who claim " we are more than real, we are immutable." Both stories climax with the death of a boy, but the abuses and tragedy of the drama involve beautiful and extraordinary theatrical qualities, creating another strand of paradox in this densely layered and marvellous production. It's still touring, reaching Cardiff in November - go if you can.
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Home again, to find Frome in turmoil. The annual carnival, ever a reliable source of Disgusted letters in the local paper whether rage is directed at majorette voyeurism or mega-abuse of finite energy by illuminated floats, has excelled itself this year: "Baghdad Beauties" comprised a bevy of blokes in burkhahs with barmy slogans like 'does my bomb look big in this?' Protests were profuse, police have visited the entry organiser, and Frome is now on amber alert as a terrorist target. You go away for two weeks...

And now I'm back, it's been a week of meetings and talks. Local author Jane Elmor was talking to the writers' circle at the library about the importance of the writing habit, Bristol Old Vic's dynamic new Literary Associate Sharon Clark was talking to Southwest Scriptwriters about the importance of the collaborative process; there's been meetings about STAGE WRITE at the Merlin next week and a Home in Frome meeting at Annabelle's. All very useful and productive, especially the ones with cake.

On Wednesday evening the Shakespeare Schools Festival came to the Merlin, with four local schools each presenting a compressed version of one of the bard's plays. Adjudicator Alex Webb rightly praised everyone concerned in the productions. Maybe because I'm a sucker for costume, even pink glitter pompoms, my favourite was Selwood Middle School's Dream: it was the closest to classic structure, yet these young actors managed to make an unfamiliar 400-year-old language intelligible, showing characterisation as well as plot, and to integrate contemporary energy too. The conflict between modernity & traditionalism seemed more difficult for the older students, but it was certainly enterprising to cast Macbeth's three 'secret, black, and midnight hags' as a posse apparently on a St Trinian's form outing.

Back on the subject of racial stereotypes, My Life With The Dogs at the Tobacco Factory featured a selection of Russian ruffians: corrupt cops, child molesters, everyone chronically drunk on vodka. But the story of street urchin Ivan Mishukov was stylish and very funny - and apparently true, though NIE's interpretation was more pantomime than poignancy - and you'd have to be very po-faced not to enjoy the antics and music.

Figures reveal (who compiles these figures, I wonder, and why?) that Dan Brown is the most frequently donated author to Oxfam shops. Titter ye not; think how many books were initially sold to achieve this statistic. Though if you do want a titter, try this site of Brownisms, which are kind-of Colmanballs without the rude bits: lines like "The kaleidoscope of power had been shaken, and Aringarosa was still reeling from the blow."

And finally: A children's picture book about two gay penguins and an orphan chick, And Tango Makes Three, has been banned in the USA. Over this side of the pond, the Conservatives are planning to repeal the Human Rights Act and give 'normal' people the right to know if their neighbours are 'criminals'... and police investigation of carnival silliness begins to seem a bit less funny.
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Week 2 on Skyros, writers writing everywhere... on the terrace, in cafes, on the beach... delightful group, wonderful words.
Big shift in energy from an influx of two dozen lively new participants and another course led by lovely life coach Suzy Greaves.
Balmy days & a fabulous final night cabaret ended the Skyros season for 2009 on a high.
And if you're ever stuck in Athens for five hours waiting for a flight you might like to know the Sofitel offers champagne buffet and spa treatments... coming home was never so good.

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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