Brookfield students shine at the Poetry Promenade

I'm very pleased to be able to publish two new poems by Brookfield Community School students Madeline Wort and Emily Wagstaffe here on the blog. Madeline and Emily (pictured with me on the left) took part in some workshops I ran for Cape Farewell at Brookfield earlier this year, thinking about climate change issues and the natural world. Last Friday, they joined me in St Thomas' Cafe for the start of the Chatsworth Road Poetry Promenade and read their poems out. I hope you enjoy them as much as everyone in the cafe did!

Untitled

by Emily Wagstaffe:

Listen to the tree’s story

As the wind whispers to the leaves

And the bark taps back to the woodpecker.

The branches criss cross and argue

About who goes where

As the leaves express themselves

In their colours

The roots search under the soil

For their voices

Then it falls silent

When it blends in to the

Black night

Twit two

by Madeline Wort:

You’re happy

I’m sad

You make me frown

All you ever do

Is put me down

You’re nasty

You’re cruel

You make me look like a fool

You think it makes you look cool

So why is your final aim

To make me cry

At night I stare at the sky

Wondering why.

The Chatsworth Challenge: 10 cafes, 1 road, countless poems

Reading at Blu. Photo by John Pratt

Last weekend saw the end of Chesterfield's vibrant Chatsworth Road Festival and on Friday I took part in a one-off challenge: could I read poems in every café down Chatsworth Road from town to Brampton Manor? It was a bit like doing the Brampton Mile without beer.

We started early in the morning at St Thomas' Church café and ended up back there at 3pm, high on caffeine and short on voice. The journey in between included readings at Café Aroma, Blu, Maison Mes Amis, Meringue, Koo, Nonnas, Brampton Manor and, most dauntingly, Morrisons supermarket café. I admired the food Chesterfield's cafés have on offer (from authentic Italian dishes at Café Aroma to skyscraper cakes at Meringue), drank too many coffees and met some lovely people, many of whom weren't expecting a sonnet to go with their morning cuppa. Everyone stopped what they were doing and had the courtesy and patience to listen.

Special mention is reserved for Northern Tea Merchants, our second calling point on the journey. I've been visiting the place since I was a teenager and used to go in there with my dad, breathing in the rich scent of the ground beans, wondering about the journey the coffee had been on. We were made incredibly welcome there and I had a small surprise for them too - a short poem written specially for Northern Tea Merchants. This is about visiting the shop with my good friend Richard when we were younger and being surprised by something he bought.


Northern Tea Merchants

Me and Rich, hunting
the perfumed shelves
for things to fix the day.

He chose a tea flower -
jasmine, unremarkable,
a sphere bunched in his hand

but back at the flat
with our warm talk
and warm water

it softened, became
an open palm.
Even when the cups

were drained
we knew we wouldn’t
throw the dregs away.


Thank you to Shirley Niblock, Howard Borrell, Ali Betteridge and all the staff and customers in the cafes we visited - it was a great day out.

National Poetry Day and beyond

National Poetry Day is always a special opportunity for everyone with an interest in the spoken and written word to join forces and celebrate what poems can do. This year it fell on October 2nd and I was lucky enough to be part of not just a day but a whole week of festivities. On Tuesday September 30th, I was in London, judging the Forward Prize for Poetry and it was a wonderful moment seeing winners Kei Miller and Liz Berry collect their prizes on stage at The South Bank. You can find out more about some of these events on this Guardian Books podcast. For National Poetry Day, Forward Arts were encouraging people to 'think of a poem', so myself and fellow judges Vahni Capildeo and Cerys Matthews joined the cause as you can see in this picture....

Back in Derbyshire on Thursday, participants at two library events (in Swadlincote and Shirebrook) were keen to remember poems they'd learned by heart and one woman at Swadlincote had even brought a supply of her own verses. I had an interesting morning and afternoon reading my own poems and talking about how I became a writer.And there was cake! The morning trip to Swadlincote library was my first ever trip to that corner of the county, but everyone made me feel so welcome I'm sure I'll be back.

This week, I was in Chesterfield signing books at Waterstones: when I was a teenager writing poems, I could never have dreamed I'd even have a book on the shelves at Waterstones, let alone be signing copies of it one day. Thanks to all the staff there for making me feel so welcome. In the afternoon, I worked with Moorside Writers and others in Chesterfield library in a creative writing workshop based around objects people had brought with them - every one had an interesting story behind it.

The celebrations aren't quite over yet - this Friday (10th October) I'll be reading poems at different cafes along Chatsworth Road in Chesterfield, part of the Chatsworth Road Festival. I'll be taking my verses for a walk round Brampton between 9.30 am and 3pm, so if you're at a cafe en route you'll have a chance to hear some live literature while you enjoy your tea. Please come and say hello!

Celebrating Shirebrook

The former Shirebrook Colliery,
a focus of the new film.

Yesterday saw a very special event at Shirebrook Academy as the sports hall played host to the Hallé Orchestra who raised the roof with a concert of classical pieces and music from films. They were joined by students from the Academy and the Miner's Welfare Brass Band to launch a new documentary, 'Shirebrook: A Living Heritage', made by Martyn Harris with an original score by Beatrice Schirmer. I've been working with students at Shirebrook Academy over the past couple of months, encouraging them to write poems about Shirebrook's past and future. The film featured a piece of my own, written specially for it, which you can read below. Congratulations to everyone who made yesterday such a wonderful event!

Shining Stream

At Shirebrook, dig
until your spade hits
long forgotten seams of coal,
all Lipton’s vanished architecture,
places where the headstocks used to stand.

Then deeper,
til you touch down
on the slats of a ghost loom,
or strike against the railway tracks
of 1895, worn smooth by back-and-forth.

And deeper,
down to clay tiles
left from Roman settlements,
the gaps where footprints first
learned how to shape themselves.

Keep on
until you’re stopped
by water, meet a Shining Stream:
the future passing underneath us,
running clear and quiet and bright.

A Derbyshire Cyclist's Song

We've all gone cycling crazy this weekend, and in honour of the Grand Depart passing very briefly through Derbyshire, here's a commissioned poem I wrote in the voice of a slightly worn-out Derbyshire cyclist. Happy biking, everyone!

A Derbyshire Cyclist’s Song

Cycling up our county’s tilted hills,

I slow the pedals, hover bird-like

until the forge of my own heartbeat stills.

I think of Tebbit’s famous “on yer bike”.

Did he mean movement equals fight?

I don’t know how to name this work,

these moments of uncomplicated flight:

pitted against limestone, the path going beserk,

running away from gravity.

Perhaps he meant keep on and lose yourself.

If you find meaning in activity

you’ve found the spoke of life itself…

Who cares. This is my slow labour of like.

I can’t stop now. I get back on my bike.

Someone who stops and says hello

On Friday, Alfreton Library hosted a fantastic Wellbeing day which was open to all but was attended by a lot of people who use the Home Library service and struggle to leave their houses much of the time. At Alfreton, they could try free aromatherapy hand massage, take part in a craft workshop and get information and support about everything from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder to Books on Prescription. As the latter implies, the focus of the day was on how reading and writing can improve mental and physical health, so I went along to run a poetry workshop and book cafe in the library too.

A Brocken Spectre at Litton, Christmas 2013

The theme of my workshop was things that make you happy, so I shared some objects and memories that always make me smile (from a wooden carving of a sailor that belonged to my granddad to a pebble from the beach in Suffolk) and read out a poem of mine called 'Brocken Spectre' which describes some features of Derbyshire landscape that always lift my spirits. That led to a discussion of the time I saw a Brocken Spectre with my dad on Boxing Day this year, and prompted one woman to remember a day many years ago when she walked the edge of a rainbow in Scotland, above Pitlochry.

Memories bubbled to the surface fast, with people talking about holidays they'd been on, food they'd eaten and walks they'd take with their dogs. But I was overwhelmed by how many times everyone mentioned the Home Library service as something that made them happy, giving them contact with the outside world when they otherwise might feel quite isolated and cut off. "A book can take you out of yourself," said one member of the group, "even if it isn't a happy story, it makes you think differently about things." Soon, we were busy celebrating the small, everyday things that make life better. Someone who stops and says hello to you in the park. Someone who asks you how you are and listens while you answer, whether you're being honest or just putting on a brave face and saying "I'm fine".

We wrote a group poem (with different people coming up with different lines) but I hope it reflects some of the many things - large and small - that make these particular readers happy. We called it 'in and out' because everyone was particularly happy that they'd been able to get out for the day, so they wanted to mention that.

In and Out
a group poem written at Alfreton Library on June 13^th, 2014

The memory of holding my first grandchild
with the chubby thighs and endless smile.
The time I walked the edge of a rainbow
with the Scottish hills spread out below.
A salad I ate on honeymoon in France,
or going up north for a Motown dance.

The birds outside and what they tell…

But it’s the little things I love as well –

breathing, the fact that you’re taking in life,

how pets take away your troubles and strife,

how a book can take you somewhere else,

the whole world held in a single shelf.
Or just someone who stops and says hello,

the way Spring makes the landscape glow.

The colours of Spring are loud and proud
and today we can all get in and out!

A dirty picture in a golden frame

You think you know a place until you talk to people who know it better. Last Tuesday, I was lucky enough to work with Anne Grange and patients at Newholme Hospital in Bakewell, gathering some of their reminiscences about favourite places. I started the sessions by reading some of my own poems about Derbyshire landscapes and then everyone shared memories of their own favourite spots around the county - I found out about Cromford bear pit, dancing bears at Belper, the curious shop at Castleton and heard more ghost stories than I could shiver at. It might only have been 2 o'clock in the afternoon, but it was still

Cromford bear pit

chilling to listen to people recounting tales of the Grey Lady at the old hospital.

The session also introduced me to a saying about Sheffield that I'd never heard before - apparently the industrial city used to be known as 'a dirty picture in a golden frame', steelworks and factories held in the palm of the Peak District. That saying formed the basis of a group poem which I'm sharing with you here with kind permission from Anne.

Anne will be working with everyone at Newholme Hospital to produce an anthology of poems later this year. It was a real privilege to share an afternoon with them.

A Dirty Picture in a Golden Frame

Summer holidays spent in Hathersage

Our milkman uncle used to take us around the village

Clopping in his cart – it was busy, even then,

With day-trippers from Sheffield – lots of cyclists.

Sheffield was a “dirty picture in a golden frame”

Now the forges and drop hammers are still

There are fish in the Don again at Attercliffe

And the “Dee Dars” have clean air to breathe

Now cyclists and walkers travel the old railways

Cinder paths from Monsal Head to Cromford

HS2 will speed through Belper; the greenery a blur

No time for Awkwright’s Mills; the Derwent’s flow

Lumsdale’s waterfall, tranquil ponds and woodlands

A space to stop and think: that it all started here

Spinning cotton, grinding corn, the wheels kept turning

Back-breaking work in the mills, now ivy-covered ruins.

“Yorkshire Born, Derbyshire Bred

Strong int’ arm, Wick in head”

It didn’t mean weak – but quick and strong

We needed to keep those mills and grindstones turning.

But now they’ve stopped and nature’s returned

And trees grow where the factories once stood.

Poetry inspired by Helen Mort’s visit to Newholme Hospital on 29/04/14

Stanton Day hospital

Theme:  “My favourite places”