Between the in-field and the out

Between the in-field and the out

Whispers in the Grass 

July 2019

 

Back at the start of the summer, a group of us had a lovely day in the fields and garden at the Dove Valley Centre. Out of that Whispers in the Grass workshop have come various poems and pieces of writing (follow this link to see more of them). We also poured ideas and images into a communal pot - or maybe a pond - or maybe we seeded our own flowerbed or left the fields of our imaginations free to grow what they would…..we fed thoughts into a collective piece about visiting the valley….

On the long hill out of Longnor,
The narrow walled fields are interrupted,
The boundary between the gritstone and the lime,
Between the valley and the hill,
Between the in-field and the out.

A steep climb, then,
Changing worlds,
From the hilltop,
Dropping down,
A steep fall,
A winding road,
Bumpy.

Buildings ahead, a relief.
Old,
Stone steps lead up to a window,
A house holding its own stories and a view across the dale.
A garden,
A man with a coffee cup and a welcoming dog
Wild flowers, bushes, a veg patch, roses, foxgloves
Wine for my soul and a blue spire of a flower,
Tall as a foxglove, that has not told me its name,
A gateway invites,
And a topiary hen guards the way.

I know this place.
    I don’t.
Will it welcome me?
    Will I feel safe?
Will I be noticed?
    Observed?
Judged?

No time for hesitation,
The dale draws us deeper,
The road dropping again,
Hedges reaching high,
Curving round,
Leaving us by the barns.

 

Huge trees open gorgeous leaves,
Beautiful flowers catch the light,
A smiling peace, a chance to rest,
I shouldn’t worry, but I do,
Trying to let go and let this tranquility touch me.
Echoes of memories, camping and camping stoves, beans in a pan by a tent.
Naming the hills: High Weeldon, Park House and Chrome,
The villages, Pilsbury, Sheen, Hartington.
Down the dale are Wetton, Alstonefield,
I have been here before.
I remember the peace.
It returns to me and offers itself for the first time to others.
Just pause.

When the world calls me back,
That peace will go with me,
    And the calm,
I may take a painting or a poem.
    There will be friends and photographs.
Memories.

Whispers was a joint event where Creeping Toad worked with old friends from Borderland Voices  and the team from Buxton Museum and Art Gallery. The event was part of Buxton's Festival Fringe

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery was 125 over this last year and to mark that anniversary, the BM125 project brought together experienced with new and emerging artists with 12 months of artistic initiatives. all sort sof things are still unfolding from animated scimitar-toother cats, to dances celebrating ancient axes and musical crystals. Visit the Museum wordpress site to explore some of our birthday adventures!

Photo credits: images 2 and 3: c/o Richard Egan and Borderland Voices
all others, G MacLellan

Words for a summer's warmth

Summer's warmth

words to hold a meadow

Whispers in the Grass, part 3

The summer rolls on, mixing rain with sudden warmth and hot days. The chances to simply sit and enjoy the season feel unpredictable. Grab them when you can!  Maybe we all need “emergency picnic” supplies sat in a box by the door so that on a sudden whim we can drop everything and dash off to stop….

 And when you are out there, take some inspiration from our Whispers in the Grass poets and scribble thoughts and feelings onto a postcard

Two “Fib” poems follow. These collect words and images along the Fibonacci sequence*. For poems, we look for lines with growing numbers of syllables: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 and so on….read them out loud

Grass,

Grass,


SInging,


Whispering,

Whispering meadow,

Grasses, insects, birds, butterflies,

Sweet vernal, meadow foxtail, Yorkshire fog, quaking, rye

Hay bales safely in the barn, stacked away from winter harm, sun compressed to cattle barm

(Andy Collins)

Driving down to Under Whitle

(Sheena Barnes)

Slither,

Crunch,

Eyes right,

A gorgeous

Muddle of roses,

Hollyhocks, daisies, peonies

And honeysuckle, clematis, fennel and roses

Further down the fruit appears, raspberries and pears, peas and redcurrants summer jewels

Or perhaps, you would prefer a cinquain? Again counting syllables: this time, looking for lines with 2, 4, 6, 8 and a final 2 syllables….

Morning in Dove Valley

(Sheena Barnes)

Mist, haze,

Shifting, drifting,

At times the sun glints, peeps

Through with the blessing of light, warmth

And hope

Whispers in the Grass was a free, public event as part of the Buxton Fringe Festival, supported by Buxton Museum and Art Gallery as part of its BM125 series of events, celebrating the museum’s 125th birthday, and by Borderland Voices (BV) from Leek

And we talked, scribbled, thought, laughed, ate cake and talked some more

A lot of our BV visitors are experienced poets and needed very little to set their thoughts to paper but for others we suggested structures, starting points, inviting people to simply sit and have a go.

Other Whispers poems can be found here and here

*No, I’m not going to launch into an exposition about how the Fib sequence can be found in everything from mystery novels to architecture, to the spiral of a Nautilus’ shell and a sunflower’s seeds*…you can go and find that our for yourselves

*I will say, however, that the series starts with a 0. Difficult to write an empty line at the start of a poem. I like to think of it as a breath that opens the poems, a moment of silence before the words begin

And many thanks, as ever, to our Whispers poets. If anyone feels inspired to create their own poems and wants to share them, I won't promise to publish everything but will read and hope to publish them here. The best email is the Telling Toads one: toadwords@btinternet.com. 
Photo credits: 1,2,3 and 5 are all c G MacLellan 
Photo 4 c/o Borderland Voices and Richard Egan

Dove Valley morning

 

Echoing the sky

Echoing the sky

words from Whispers in the Grass

an event report

our venue

A couple of weeks ago, a group of cheerfully creative folks gathered in the fields and garden of te Dove Valley Centre in the Staffordshire Moorlands. In the hills around are wild moors, bleak rocky landscapes and the deep mysterious cleft of Lud’s Church. Here in the Upper Dove Valley, however, we settle into a world of the green, the growing and the buzzing and fluttering….This was a day for words, and wandering, and wondering, for drawing, scribbling, sketching and eating picnics and the partaking of cake. It was a day to simply enjoy being there, being here, at the Dove Valley Centre in the Upper Dove Valley

These hills,
Buttress the sky,
Green mounds echo the sky
Draw rain into this deep valley
Its thirst
by Mary King

Whispers in the Grass was a free, public event as part of the Buxton Fringe Festival, supported by Buxton Museum and Art Gallery as part of its BM125 series of events, celebrating the museum’s 125th birthday, and by Borderland Voices (BV) from Leek

And we talked, scribbled, thought, laughed, ate cake and talked some more

A lot of our BV visitors are experienced poets and needed very little to set their thoughts to paper but for others we suggested structures, starting points, inviting people to simply sit and have a go.


A walk into sunshine
A walk into grass
Insects hiding
Milk churns peeping
Flowers creeping
Memories to take home
by Pauline


POET C*
Whispers in the grass
Little rustles through small stems
Wind flowing freely

Performance begun
Wind playing its instruments
Grass whispers softly

poets and artists at work!

PAULINE’S TAKE ON POETRY
I am just a simple soul,
I don’t go in for complicated rigmarole.
To me a poem is something that rhymes
Although it doesn’t have to
At other times
It may just be beautiful, descriptive and uplifting.
A basic education allows for a shifting and drifting into, out of the box,
Unusual thinking, original, maybe crass
Sometimes its better than nice, precise
Taking more informed advice
I enjoy lots of things
Nature especially - yes and whispering grass.
It sounds poetic
And if it’s easy to verse
I will enjoy the experience of thinking it, crafting it, writing it, creating it,
That may not warrant a degree but it’s a first

With thanks to all our Whispering poets!
All photos c/o Borderland Voices and Richard Egan

* sorry! I didn't get a note of your names!

Voices from a field

our solar system

 Rock-weigher, field-ruler

words from the Whispers 

"Whispers in the Grass"

9th July 2019

We started on a day that promised brightness and threatened rain, cooler than some this summerthe high dales of the Staffordshire Moorlands. This was a day for words, and wandering, and wondering, for drawing, scribbling, sketching and eating picnics and the partaking of cake. It was a day to simply enjoy being there, being here, in Dove Valley Centre in the Upper Dove ValleyWe started on a day that promised brightness and threatened rain, cooler than some this summer in  at the Dove Valley Centre in the Upper Dove Valley

Whispers in the Grass was a free, public event as part of the Buxton Fringe Festival, supported by Buxton Museum and Art Gallery as part of its BM125 series of events, celebrating the museum’s 125th birthday, and by Borderland Voices (BV) from Leek

And we talked, scribbled, thought, laughed, ate cake and talked some more

A lot of our BV visitors are experienced poets and needed very little to set their thoughts to paper but for others we suggested structures, starting points, inviting people to simply sit and have a go.

Haiku, by Mary King (BV)
1. Pink petals,
Drifting to earth,
Childhood gone.

2. Solid five bar gate,
Courage will open it up,
A haze of flowers.


Have a go yourself?
A quick haiku activity: go outside and sit down on the ground if you can. There, a) look at the sky above, b) touch the ground below, c) reflect on how these sensations make you feel. Turn those three thoughts into 3 lines. You mght use the syllable convention ( 5 syllables, 7 then 5 again) but you don’t have to! Go for short, clear images and hold onto room to breathe….(Looking up, reaching down are a good pair of sensations, you coud use others!)

Or maybe you fancy wrapping your vocabulary around a Kenning or two: sometimes riddles, sometimes praise-poems, sometimes just word-ripples of humour and imagery….These stem from Anglo-saxon tales and explore a person, object or even an idea through slightly sidelong descriptions

KENNINGS (answers at the foot of the page)
Rock-weigher,
Field-ruler,
Bone-layer,
Stone-shepherd

Vole-taker,
Cry-maker,
Dawn-waker,
Sky-straker

Soil-turner
Slow-learner,
Harvest-earner,
Each spring, returner
There are more to follow but I hope these leaves from our word-tree have entertained and that you will join us for some more whispers from the grass soon!


Thanks to all our visitors on the Whispers in the Grass day and thank you for your generosity in letting us post your words in blogs like this!

Kenning answers: Drystone waller, Buzzard, Plough

Whispers in the grass: event

Whispers in the grass

 

a day of words and art

Dove Valley Centre

Tuesday 9th July

11.00 - 15.00

write a poem, draw a picture, shape a story from a twig, 

a feather and a leaf….bring a picnic and relax

A breeze blows through the hay, a bumblebee buzzes, sun warms the old meadows of the Dove Valley and we all settle into an ease of stories and poems. Join the Creeping Toad and Borderland Voices team for a day of inspiration from the fields and wide skies of the valley

This event is planned as a day for casual creativity. Our artists will support you with ideas and materials and you can do as much or as little as you like. You can just take some time to simply enjoy the beauty of the Upper Dove Valley, chat to new friends or old mates and (maybe? hopefully!) watch the ravens tumbling in the sky over Pilsbury castle

Whispers is a free event: no booking or tickets are needed, just drop by and join in. If you would like to check anything out, contact Gordon on creepingtoad@btinternet.com 

Dove Valley Centre: follow the link for directions to the Centre. When you arrive at Under Whitle, you can drive down the track to the Centre (right at the end of the track) but you are recommended to park at the top of the hill and walk, saunter or wander down the hill to the Centre and enjoy the views as you drop into the deep valley

Buxton Festival Fringe

This gentle event is outside Buxton so give yourself a day off from Festival stuff and come out into the Moorlands.

A BM125 event for Buxton Museum and Art Gallery in partnership with Borderland Voices

a Mermaid season

A season of Mermaids

half.fish in Buxton

30th May - 1st June

our Museum Mermaid inspires all sorts of responses

It might have begun with a “make your own mermaid or sea monster" workshop last Thursday afternoon

~ or before that in a conversation between Rob Young and myself about how many mermaidy things we were thinking about for a day of activity

~ or before that with Rob writing a mermaid story

~ or before that with a trip to Blake Mere one snowy December afternoon

~ or before that with Rob meeting our museum mermaid for the first time

Or before that with someone gifting a slightly life-worn and stare-weary sideshow mermaid to Buxton Museum and Art Gallery

Or longer ago and further away in time, this mermaid tide began when people met the spirits of water in rivers, on sea-washed rocks, by kelp beds and in our wild upland pools

But half.fish itself got going with a splash of puppets in the Museum last Thursday

Then on Friday there were mermaids on rocks to be made in a “Hand-made Mermaids” workshop in the Green Man Gallery

Interview with a mermaid

Have you ever met a professional mermaid? Have you wondered about this as a career? If you can hold your breath enough, if you can swim with a wriggle and a flick and if the sea fills you with a passion for its life and wonders, maybe you could consider it. Anita Jasso works betimes as a mermaid and challenges perceptions and stereotypes and invites us as watchers, listeners, thinkers, to consider how these modern mermaids might contribute to the current awareness of the fragility of oceanic ecosystems. Can a mermaid become a conservation tool? Can she, he, or it, by the stories they embody challenge us to respond, to remember the wonder the seas bring both ecologically and culturally, and how important they are at so many levels of our being. Mermaid tails are also very heavy

Mermaid CSI

Anita Hollinshead then took us into a world of detection and strange dissection, x-rays and manipulations…I missed the crucial bit of this talk about the composition of our Buxton mermaid and my head is still full of a recitation that was growing, complete with MacBeth’s Weird Sisters skipping round the Green Man Gallery

Monkey bone and salmon skin,

A child’s hair and slender shafts

Of wood and nails,

And glue and paint,

Shell eyes and someone’s teeth,

And a liberal dose of varnish….

Our mermaid tide was still running, as Rob took over with Mermaid: the Movie: a 1 hour masterclass in film-writing that resulted in exciting “treatments” involving penguins and knitting needles, personal challenges and changing hopes and despair.

Maybe one of the participants would like to add a comment about their ideas!

By the evening, the tide was fully in the we settled down on the beaches of our imagination to listen as the magnificent young actor Sarah Day read Rob’s story D E E P. Reaching from Blake Mere’s dark waters to a young man’s dark thoughts, running like our tide in and out of excitement and anger and laughter, D E E P gave us all images to turn over and think about. Rob’s work and the development of D E E P can be followed if you start here

who waits in the deeps of Blake Mere?

By Saturday, the tide was turning and a final “Mermaid Museum” workshop on Saturday afternoon in the museum was quieter and gentler, a wash of people and smiles and ideas on wet sand in the sunshine…..inspired by Anita’s CSI Mermaid, we had visitors designing mermaid fossils and thinking about those grim sideshow worlds with our own mermaid Aquaria (Merquaria?). Ours proved to be a bit more cheerful than a “pay a ha’penny and gawp at the freak” sideshow booth and echoed more the other Anita’s work around celebrating and protecting the seaworlds

quiet company

By the evening, the mermaid tide had definitely ebbed and I settled down to leave the jetsam of workshop resources in my car to have a chat with my own December Diamond mermaid and not think about anything else for a bit!

A good idea. A good event. A good tide to look for next spring with maybe different mermaids swimming through it but a wave of the same flavour……

 

With many thanks to all our visitors at half.fish and especially to our workshop and leaders and speakers, to the Green Man Gallery and Buxton Museum and Art Gallery for their enthusiasm and support

And thanks to the artists who donated their merwork to give us a series of big mermaid pictures to display

Jo Thilwind (look at Dreamspaceart on Facebook)

Ruth Evans

Maria Strutz

half.fish was organised by Rob Young and Gordon MacLellan (Creeping Toad!) as part of the BM125 project celebrating 125 years of Buxton Museum and Art Gallery. Visit the Museum page to find out more about this project and other work the Museum is doing 

mermaid tide

a Mermaid tide is running

half.fish

In the Water

Sea Dancer

A swirl, a splash, the flap of a broad tail on the water or the silence where someone has vanished….we don’t see much of merfolk unless they want to be seen

A handsome pony stands on the bank of a highland stream, gleaming black and friendly, climb on my back, I like the company, I am safe, an easy gallop over the moors…Kelpies are notoriously tricksy shapechanging water folk

Rather wizened now, older than any of her visitors, her strange and marvellous features not quite as strange and marvellous as they once were but the Museum mermaid still has the power to fascinate and people come and stare. It doesn’t cost a penny any more to come and admire and the Boyd-Dawkins Room at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery is very different from the sideshow, freakshow tents were she started her career in show business, but the Museum Mermaid still draws her visitors…..

Water People enchant us: with their beauty or their power or their seductiveness or their danger or their grace and generosity - or with all of those at the same time. here in Buxton we are blessed with local stories of mermaids and water people (Blake Mere, Kinder Downfall, Redesmere) and with our own Arnemecta, the Goddess of the Waters

Kelpie

In celebration of the Museum mermaid, of the water people tales of the Peaks, of the water people stories from across our islands and of the spirit of water in general, we are organising a small festival.

half.fish
30th May - 1 st June
All events are free - for some of them booking is needed as spaces are limited
For all events, children 7 years old and leass need to bring a grown-up with them (in case we have some hungry water creatures to feed)

The Land and the Sea

THURSDAY 30TH MAY
1. Mermaids and monsters
Make a mermaid, a sea serpent, a fluttering sea horse or some wild and wonderful creatures no one has ever met before. Quick puppets of shimmering, sliding sea creatures with Gordon from Creeping Toad

Venue: Buxton Museum and Art Gallery* (venue details at foot of post)
Times: 2 - 4pm
Materials provided
No booking needed just drop by and join in - allow 30 minutes for the activity


FRIDAY 31ST MAY
2. Hand-made mermaids
Inspired by ‘The Buxton Mermaid’, recreate your own idea of this mythical creature, using a variety of art materials, then place her in your very own sea. A drop-in workshop with Artist and Educator Anna Spratt.
Venue: Green Man Gallery*
Times: 10.30 - 11.30am
Materials provided
No booking needed just drop by and join in

Feral mermaid

3. Interview with a Mermaid
Anita Jasso is a ‘professional’ mermaid, with a breath-hold of 5 minutes, who can free-dive to 40m. You may have seen her on the ITV drama, Butterfly. With mermaid clubs springing up all over the country, there has never been a better time to discuss this cultural phenomenon.
Venue: Green Man Gallery
Times: 12 noon - 1pm
No booking needed just arrive and listen with a smile

4. Mermaid CSI
How was she made? Where did the bits come from? Why did they make her? Solving the mystery of the mermaid! Listen to Conservator Anita Hollinshead reveal her research, after studying ‘The Buxton Mermaid’ for her MA in the Conservation of Historic Objects at the University of Lincoln.
Venue: Green Man Gallery
Times: 1.30 - 2.30pm
No booking needed just arrive and listen with a smile or maybe your best detetcive notebook….

5. Mermaid: the Movie
Former BAFTA Screenplay Judge, Rob Young, will give a one-hour crash course in how to write a movie. It’s Film School in an hour! A warm, witty and welcoming workshop in the craft of storytelling. Free, but booking essential.
Venue: Green Man Gallery
Times: 3 - 4pm
Places limited: booking through eventbrite

6. D E E P
The world premiere of a short story by award-winning writer Rob Young, inspired by The Buxton Mermaid and the ‘haunted’ pool at Blake Mere. D E E P tells the story of Jan, a Buxton boy who discovers that there’s something strange in the water. A darkly-comic urban fairy-tail for Young Adults (older adults welcome too). Performed by Buxton actress, Sarah Day.
Venue: Green Man Gallery
Times: 6 - 7pm
Places limited: booking through eventbrite

SATURDAY 1st JUNE
7. A Mermaid Museum
A Mermaid Museum: alternative mermaids, fierce mermaids, shark spirits and exhibitions: help us remember the origins of the Museum Mermaid by making our own Mermaid Museum
Venue: Buxton Museum and Art Gallery* (venue details at foot of post)
Times: 2 - 4pm
Materials provided
No booking needed just drop by and join in - allow 30 minutes for the activity

* Venues
Buxton Museum and Art Gallery
Terrace Rd
Buxton
SK17 6DA
01629 533540

Green Man Gallery
Hardwick Square South
Buxton
SK17 6PY

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery is 125 this year and to mark that anniversary, the BM125 project will bring together experienced with new and emerging artists with 12 months of artistic initiatives

 

Whale Rider

Illustrations on this blog are extracts from bigger pictures by some of our Water people artists!

• In the Water and The Land and the Sea are by Ruth Evans
• Sea dancer is by Jo Thilwind - visit her work at Dreamspaceart on Facebook
• Kelpie is by Gordon MacLellan (me!)
• Feral Mermaid, photograph by Rob Young
• Whale Rider is by Maria Strutz