Bowzer's Brilliant!

The opening of Bolsover's refurbished library was celebrated in style this week with the premiere of a specially commissioned poem 'A Gem of a Place' (all 320 lines of it!) performed to great acclaim by Pam Mosley, Michelle Simpson, Dale Shaw, Steve Sowerby and Stewart Wood from Bolsover Drama Group. Thanks to them, to the library staff and everyone who contributed to the poem.

Hopefully the text and a recording will be available in the next few months. Please contact me if you'd like a copy.
No photo of the library on-line so here's a Bolsover sunrise taken by Anna Wakeford.

Spinning Down the Derwent ..

.. is a community film project about the Derwent Valley Mills (a World Heritage Site) and the extraordinary history of the Lombe brothers, Richard Arkwright and Jedidiah Strutt - 18th Century entrepreneurs and catalysts of the Industrial Revolution. The group has been running writing workshops to develop the script for a drama-documentary and last week we worked together on 'Pulling the Threads of a Story Together'. Thanks to all the talented folk who came to the workshop at the old Chapel in Milford. I've now had a crash-course in this unique aspect of Derbyshire history, and am completely gripped by the subject matter. There's probably a good few poems in there.

Photo: Cromford Mill