It was really exciting today to see the Caravanserai project in this week’s edition of the West Briton, which features a double-page article about the events at Treloan over the summer, and talks about the different artists in residence. Click here to read the article, and have a look through the photos in the top right hand corner for a photo of me reading at the first Fireside event!
Having taken Adrian Henri’s poem Scotland as a starting point for one of the workshop exercises, I decided it was only fair to have a go myself at writing something using this as inspiration. The first attempt produced another list poem, taking rain as the central theme; given its prominence during my residency, this is hardly surprising! I read this draft out at the end of the workshop exercise, and had hoped to be able to read a finished, edited version by the time the final Fireside event came around. In the event, I found myself working on other pieces of writing, and put this to one side for a time. Here is the first draft:
Rain/so loud the drumming on the roof has turned to thunder.
Rain/bringing wet grass clippings on our shoes.
Rain/not stopping the ice cream man from coming
Rain/almost blocking out the tune.
Rain/and I can’t imagine a time without it
Rain/but we still have to walk the dog
Rain/seeping through my waterproof jacket
Rain/that sticks the sand against my foot
Rain/wetter than the sea when I am swimming
Rain/steaming from the tarmac in the sun.
Rain/I thought you said it wouldn’t
Rain/I told you I missed the weather this afternoon.
Rain/well if it stays like this we can’t drive home tomorrow
Rain/I wish would never go.
In the past few days I have revisited the poem, prompted I think by another spell of poor weather. Below is the much rewritten and edited final version. I hope it’s interesting to see the progress and changes between the two.
Rain
The drumming on the roof is thunder rumble
the tornado only miles off now, eyes
closed the caravan is our air raid bunker fallout shelter
refuge at the end of the garden from summer holiday homework.
Now we are shipwrecked, desert stranded, starving
noses pressed against the glass racing rain drops
from top to bottom, our only hope the jangle
of the ice cream van, willing that it stops one last time.
The rain has seeped through my hand-me-down
waterproof jacket pocket, with its shredded hankies,
coins sticky with sugar, shards of shell and crab pincers,
thirteen scrunched up mint Cornetto wrappers.
As part of Alyson’s week as writer in residence, Caravanserai held another Fireside event last night. Since the first event during my week in residence, these weekly events have been growing, with more and more people contributing each time. I love the way this project is inspiring people to try new things and learn new skills – I like to think of it as a kind of ‘word flu’ epidemic spreading through the village…
I took my fortune teller poem with me to read, and I also read Caravanserai again. I’m starting to enjoy sharing my writing with people; something I never thought I’d say after my first terrif-ied/-ying attempts! Alyson contributed a poem I particularly liked, about ‘the ghost ship in the bay’, that she’d started during her residency. I’m so glad someone’s put something in words about these skeletons of ships that have been sitting off the village all through the summer. It was also very inspiring to hear work that’s fresh off the page and to get a feel for someone else’s writing process. We were very lucky to be joined by Cornwall based poets Caroline Carver and Penelope Shuttle and to hear Penelope read from their work.
Annie, Alyson and I got together this afternoon and began work on making the poetry line into a windbreak, to be used at future fireside evenings and gatherings in the project field. Debs was keen for this to happen; really good to see positive lasting impact of residency. Annie and I also put some sails up in the project field – under canvas yet again.
I also had a chance to chat to Debs about the project; it was great to hear that some of her campers are still writing postcards to Portscatho, and I had the chance to go through and re-read the postcards that had already been ‘sent’ back to the village.
Today was also a chance to talk over the project and my residency with Annie and Mac, and to show them a new poem I’d been working on that had sprung out of the residency. Mac’s produced a collection of sound clips of conversations, bird song, recordings of readings, tent noises, the sound of rain which he’s hoping to use in a ‘sound tent’ installation on the campsite, and he let us listen to this over lunch. Hearing all this together in one space really brought it home how much Caravanserai has achieved in such a short space of time.
I spent some time today up at Treloan going through the postcards that had been sent back to Portscatho during my residency. Debs has decided to keep the box up for now, so that people can continue to contribute their thoughts over the rest of the summer, which is great news.
In the four days of my residency about a dozen postcards were posted, all completely different in their style, content and decoration. Several were accounts of holidays, or memories of past trips to Portscatho. Two others used the word Portscatho to make acronyms or alliterative phrases; two were poems about their experiences on holiday. It was really nice to see how people had reacted to postcards with words printed on the other side. For example, an extract from Gerard Woodward’s August about the strangeness of tents and the weather was followed on the other side by a description of one family’s holiday in the rain. It might be nice to think about making a book or an album of some kind from the postcards sent in, and still to be received. Perhaps some kind of creative visitors’ book?
I was lucky enough to be able to spend a morning with Alyson today; valuable writing time she gave up in order to talk to me about her experiences as writer in residence. We chatted about the Caravanserai residency, as well as other projects and residencies she’s worked on in the past. It was fascinating to hear Alyson’s views about previous residencies, and to find out more about how she approached each project. We decided to do some writing together, so we spent half an hour or so writing ‘Consequences’ style, making some kind of poem, each writing a line using the last word left by each other. Lots of fun and surprisingly good results…
You can read more about Alyson’s week in residence and read one of her poems here, in an article I wrote for our local magazine. Roseland Magazine article
This poem came about during my four days as writer in residence in July. I was reading a book in the project van about Romany gypsies and I came across the word ‘dukkerer’, which is the Romany word for a fortune teller. I found myself working on a poem thinking about fortunes and the paths we take in life, and these two characters appeared, who are both dissatisfied with life but too steeped in family tradition to change. So this is the story of the fortune teller and the vicar.
The Fortune Teller and the Vicar
He sat, he watched, at The Wagon
and Horses, he held his half pint,
ironed shirt, brass cufflinks, clean hair,
every Sunday of the Town Fayre
after church he reappeared and
sat, his chair diametrically opposed
to hers across the bar where she
twiddled her thumbs, whiled away her
rum and coke. Once, falteringly
he waved, then suddenly afraid,
looked away, curled his fingers into
a fist, hurriedly cleared his throat.
Folk like her should not drink in pubs
built on glebe ground, corrupt the clients
with sorcerous forecasts, false hopes,
and yet her plentiful hips, her
eyes, the curve of her wrist belied
her godless ways, made him forget
the canonical life he led.
She was not his type, too flighty
for his tidy mind and long held
habits, never a man for change,
he stayed in the same house, same job,
Reverend James, as his father was,
but he yearned for something better,
he’d leave the clergy, together
they’d flee back to the camp where he’d
care for nobody but her, be
visiting chaplain at the fair
for weddings, funerals and births.
She was so tired of greasy palms
nicotine yellowed, cracked, calloused
thumbs grown thicker, fingerprints worn,
so bored of expectant faces,
brazen, faithless patrons licking
pink candy floss from bitten nails.
She gazed into the corner where
she saw her ideal man, bills paid
on time, tax worked out, pension plan
clean shaven, porcelain white skin,
no promise on his ring finger,
he’d love, honour, cherish ever
after, house her, keep her, feed her.
She thought about a change every
now and then, she’d followed the steps
her mother trod, never her own trade,
old van, with her name in bright lights,
Rose Lovell, ‘dukkerer of dreams’
‘pedlar of fate’, but now she was
weary of clients dissatisfied
with her predictions, every year
more depleted by the cost of
keeping up her appearances,
bejewelled, begrudged, hair custom dyed,
costume grown tight, nail polish chipped,
and so she sat, drank, guiltily
entertained thoughts of washing her
hands of it all, life with the priest
would be so comfortable, no
constant moving, uprooting, but
he was the kind of man of whom
her parents would not have approved -
she came here now for them; to drink
where they could not do in their day.
Down at the Wagon, after church,
every Sunday of the Town Fayre
in June you see the vicar’s son
fighting his conscience at the bar,
while the fortune teller keeps her faith,
protects her family’s pride and name,
and every year they meet again,
views unchanged, to sit and let time
pass by and their traditions keep.
I managed to find out a lot this week about the Shetland Arts writers residency. I was particularly keen to research this residency as it seemed to share several features with the situation at Treloan. Susanna Jones, who was writer in residence in Shetland for a month in 2006, very kindly emailed offering to answer my questions, so I’m really looking forward to hearing about her experience of the residency. I also heard back from Donald Anderson, Literature Development Officer at Shetland Arts, and spoke to him on the phone about how the writing residency has developed and changed in the last few years. It was very interesting to find out about the long-term effects of the residencies, and the positive impact they have had on the local community in Shetland. You can read more about Susanna’s experiences as writer in residence here.
I spent this afternoon decorating the project field with Annie in preparation for tonight’s ‘Feast’; a banquet of local food in the project field to celebrate the wild food walks taking place today and the success of the Caravanserai project so far. We had a fantastic evening, and it was really interesting to talk to Rose Barnecut who joined us from Creative Unit and FEAST, about the project and its impact. Rose was particularly interested in the project’s role as a bridge between the residential and tourist communities present in Portscatho, and I told her about how much I had gained from taking part in a residency at Treloan. As the sun set, visiting artist Hannah Cox lit her fire sculpture, spelling out the word feast. The sculpture was beautiful, illuminated all the more by the full moon rising above it. Have a look at Hannah’s photos from the evening here.
I was delighted to hear back from Janie Hampton today, who’s very kindly offered to help with my research into writing residencies, as part of my project. Janie is a novelist and biographer, and was writer in residence at the Marsh Harrier pub in Cowley Oxford for three months as part of the Arts Council funded Year of the Artist in 2001. You can read more about her residency here, in an article she wrote for The Independent.
