Sandiacre Now & Then

I'm just back from Sandiacre Library and another wonderful Wellbeing Day organised by Priscilla Baily and the Derbyshire team. I was late and in a flap after a lorry fire on the M1, but by the time I arrived, the library users were already sitting round a table with tea and biscuits, trading stories about Sandiacre industry and manufacturing - some people had even worked in the same places when they were younger.

I recently wrote a poem about things that are 'Made in Derbyshire' for a county-wide festival, so after sharing my short verses with the group, our conversation turned to products that used to be made in Sandiacre. From lace to furniture, everyone was proud of Sandiacre's industrial past and sad that so much manufacturing and craftsmanship has disappeared from this corner of Derbyshire. The conversation was a chance to celebrate that legacy but also to talk about the things that make Sandiacre a great place to be today: two members of the group had moved to the area from Kent and were quick to remark that 'everyone says hello to you and smiles at you up here.'

Here's the poem we wrote together, based on Margaret's memories of Lace Webb, Melvyn's countless jokes, Glen's time as a crane driver and much more besides:


Sandiacre Now and Then
a poem for Sandiacre Wellbeing Day

It’s a place where everyone talks to you,
where faces smile in the checkout queue.
I knew Sandiacre before the motorway,
though Lace Webb made seats for Ford in my day.
There used to be holes in the lace we made,
now there’s a hole where we lost the trade.
At Stanton they made “old men and pipes”
but we made everything: we were a hive.
I drove cranes at Taylor Brothers, cold as Siberia
but the things we crafted were all superior.
When I grew up, I knew everyone’s name
from Margaret Avenue down to Lock Lane.
Our roots are deep and intertwined.
This place has changed, but it’s yours and mine.

Poem by Margaret Gill, Julianne Gascoyne, Melvyn Kelly, Ken Roycroft, Pam Roycroft, Glen Hayes and Valerie Eyre, with a bit of help from Derbyshire Poet Laureate Helen Mort.

Make a Poetry Promise for 2015

Happy new year! After two blissful weeks of running over the Kinder plateau in snow, seeing friends and reading books, I'm dreading January with its flinty stare and diet of lettuce leaves. We all know it's the worst possible time of year to give up anything, but we feel like we should make some resolutions anyway. But help is at hand....this year, instead of quitting something for 2015, Poetry by Heart is encouraging us to take on a new challenge and learn a poem by heart or read a new poem every month throughout the year. I'm taking the challenge. Will you join me?

Poetry by Heart is an organisation that encourages students aged 14-18 to memorise poems and make them their own. They run a national competition every year (and I'm happy to be part of the judging panel for the Derbyshire & Notts round later this month). But learning poems by heart isn't just for school pupils - anyone can join in and make a 'poetry promise' for 2015.

The phrase 'learn by heart' comes from the ancient Greeks. They placed the seat of thought in the heart rather than the head. I think that's a rather beautiful mistake: after all, when you memorise words you love, you take them into your heart.

Throughout this year, I'll be attempting to memorise a poem every month and I'll share some videos of the poems on twitter (@HelenMort) and here on the blog. Why not join me in the poetry promise? If learning a new poem every month sounds like too much, you could promise to just read a poem a month instead or perhaps even write one. You can find out more about the poetry promise by contacting Poetry by Heart on twitter (@PoetryByHeart) or visiting their website here.

Now, where did I put my memory?

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.