stories the bones told me

Tales of the Wonders

a world of cave bears and shadows

booklet £5.00 (includes UK P&P)

from creepingtoad@btinternet.com

During 2017, I was one of a team of artists working on an Arts Council England funded project at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery. “Collection of the Artists” invited us to respond to the museum’s collection creatively, exploring different themes through the artefacts in the museum and the local landscapes they came from

COTA has drawn to a close now and the finished works can be seen in the museum or accessed through its digital platforms (see list below).  I joined the COTA team as a storyteller and poet and had cheerful times talking to visitors, working with schools and other groups and simply sitting with bits of the Collection or wandering across hills and hiding in holes to listen to the stories the bones were telling me….

The resulting work from me can be seen in the Museum, accessed through the digital platforms (see the Wonders of the Peak app) or you can get your own copy of the collection either direct from me or from the Museum
As a taster, here is one of the pomes from Tales, for the stories you need to get the whole booklet!

Revealing

Time gently and untidily shelves

The memory of

Barrows and tunnels,

Treasures and tollroads,

Until all that is left

Are the bones and bits,

We sift from the debris of centuries

And the ghosts of facts,

And the stories we tell .

“Tales of the Wonders” is a 24 page A5 booklet including a selection of stories and poems inspired mostly by the prehistoric sections of the collection. My theme was “home”, wondering how people made new connections to places as wandering mesolithic peoples settled into our Peak District landscape as farmers and hunters, leaving marks on the landscape that we can still find and visit today. How did the Peaks become “home”?

Here is a story of the fox cubs who first found closed-in Fox Hole Cave as a sanctuary. Here is the last day of the people of Fin Cop and a Neolithic lullaby from Liff’s Low. There are poems from the waters of the Buxton and the old woman wandering the Gardens here who has been prehistoric healer, Roman goddess and Edwardian well-woman. Here are cave bears and compasses and walking away from the wandering herds….

Doxey Pool and storyteller, photo by Adrian Lambert

The COTA team

• Potter Caroline Chouler bound bone from Fin Cop into bowls 
• Richard and Amanda from Kidology, played the dreams of cave lions and landscapes and captured the precision of crystals
• Textile artist Seiko Kineshito has hung the colours and textures of the peaks in a cabinet
• Metalworker Simon Watson shaped ideas into bronze
• I was there as a storyteller and poet
• and photographer Adrian Lambert had the challenge of catching us doing all of the above!