Collection of the Artists
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| writing starts with walking, and experiencing |
When I start a project like this, it usually begins in a
babble of words. It often doesn’t matter what direction I am meant to be going in, my self just fills
up with any old thing. Bits, phrases, odd rhymes, sudden weathers of feelings,
images to try to gather into words. It’s interesting and rewarding and exciting
as it starts to give me unexpected shapes. A commission might be asking for “a
story about a tree” and my sensible head goes sensibly off on a path through
the woods, skipping slightly, perhaps swinging Little Red’s basket while
wearing Dorothy’s shiny red shoes. But the rest of me will have sidetracked
completely and be sitting under the trollbridge sharing marshmallows* with a troll family and knitting socks for sheep. And
that random departure is almost always the response that gives the best results
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| anything can set the fires of ideas |
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| Beeston Tor |
So now I’m in the random stage. My note book is filling with
conversations with ravens about the warmth of Liff’s Low. I’m watching clouds
turn over the emptiness of Fin Cop. A whole tribe of Boggarts arrived in the
margin of notes about caves and stalactites. And St Bertram is simply being
irritating.
“Collection of the Artists” is another project under the
encompassing umbrella of Buxton Museum and Art Gallery’s
Collection in theLandscapes project. While the wider project is supporting the redesign of the
Wonders of the Peaks gallery, the digitising of the collection and my own work
with events – taking the collection into the landscape, CotA is probably
quieter. There are 6 of us, working with an Arts Council England grant to
explore and respond to the dynamic of the Museum’s collection and the landscape
it was largely drawn from as artists.
The team include
Potter: Caroline Chouler
Richard and Amanda from
Kidology, bringing visual art and
music to the work
Textile artist Seiko Kineshito
And metalworker Simon Watson will be shaping ideas into bronze
O, and me: storyteller and poet
(more links will follow!)
Richard and Amanda are CITL long term artists-in-residence
and are already producing work related to the
collection
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| we have already done events on curiosities |
Over the next few weeks, ideas will develop: together and as
individual artists and as things evolve, I’ll post them here – at least from my
work
It’s exciting stuff. I know what I think may come out of
this, but who knows…
1. O, Bertram,
Christian hero,
Or abandoned Pagan saint,
I will give you
The apple in my bag,
The chocolate in my pocket,
A poem from my wordstore,
If you will bring me safe
from this place.
Up here.
It goes up here.
There’s a rope to hold onto.
Try coming down backwards.
It’s easier backwards.
You do need to let go
And then there is St B
Don’t misunderstand me, I like the chap – bit of a fool,
maybe. He did, after all, leave his new wife in labour in a wolf-wood to go off
hoping to find a helpful midwife? He really couldn’t have helped himself? Of
course not. Then we wouldn’t have had the tragedy, the despair, the
renunciation of worldly things, life in a cave, death, sanctification,
pilgrims, hidden bones and a shrine that is one of the very few left in an
Anglican Church in England. Or so I am told…..There are other St B’s but ours
lived (eventually) at Beeston Tor and then his bones were enshrined at the
little church at Ilam and that is his only shrine, anywhere. Other St Bertrams
are apparently not him. He does have a statue at St Bartholomew’s in Longnor
just a few miles up the dale.
Find out more? St B turns up in lots of books, but you could try
Sacred Britain by Martin Palmer and Nigel Palmer (Piatkus, 1997, p149)
Walk more? Why not consider following the new
pilgrimage route from Ilam to Eyam?
2. Here?
Is this where your pilgrims
came?
Did they hold a rope too?
Was this path easier then?
A thousand years less
stone-cracking ice?
Hand over hand,
Take it slowly.
A long reach over nothing for a wary
foot.
The river waits.
Don’t think,
Just reach.
It’s easier backwards.
You do need to let go
It all gets a bit confusing and he’s not really within my
remit for CotA but this comes back to that random excitement. So, as ideas
develop, so will something inspired by St Bertram and a wonderfully craggy cliff
where people lived, worshipped, died and hid their treasures for thousands of
years….
3. Pause here,
A tormentil lawn in morning
warmth,
Warm enough to wake the ants
who live in the stone,
Rest and be still and listen,
To the whispers
On the wind, in the stone,
out of the shadows
He don’t heal.
He don’t cure.
He blesses babies.
Babbies is important since ‘e loss ‘is.
‘E telt me not to be so addlepated, such a fool ‘e
call’d me.
Ah.
There!
Down there,
Not up here.
Down there,
A stroll down the lane,
An easy wade through cold
water,
A splashing ford,
That side of
the hill, not
This side of
the tor,
Hand over hand,
It’s easier backwards.
O, Bertram,
I gave
The apple in my bag to the
birds,
The chocolate in my pocket to
my friends,
And a poem from my wordstore,
I whisper to the voices in
the darkness of the caves
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| we should have crossed the river |
(we still haven’t got to
Bertram’s cave)
(*
marshmallows? O, that is another story and watch for the book due out sometime
this year for that one)
Thanks to Sarah and Ronson for being photographed....the slightly agitated lines in the poem, however, are all mine!
