Words in bombazine and crepe

 

Words in bombazine and crepe...

Words on the Street

final collections

In bombazine and crepe,

Public attention she’d crave

So magazines she courted

And with photographers flirted….

(Vol 1, p11)

We asked the questions 

 

What words might tell 

The tale of a town?

What rhymes might wreck reputations

And wake a tourist’s frown?

 

 

We scattered images over tabletops: 100 years of Spring Gardens’ shops, café, hotels and more.

We scribbled, talked, laughed, composed more carefully and generally dived into the richness of a single street. That in itself is intriguing: following the changing patterns of shopfronts, street furniture and the buildings themselves. And the wonders of shop window displays from the Ladybird Book fortnight (1960s) to knitting displays, sweet shop temptations….

 

As workshop artists we loved it all and were delighted when our visitors responded with as much enthusiasm. Enthusiasm that went in direction we wouldn’t have expected – words from the pigeons who’ve seen it all, thoughts about geese passing high overhead, a reflective monologue over a flat white, Greek Mythology (go on, find the Medusa story in Volume 3 and then go and find Medusa’s daughter among the carved faces on our buildings)…

As we reach the end of the Words on the Street project from the Buxton Our Street initiative, we'd like to share the richness (and craziness) of the work that we've received. We ended up with so much material that we can’t just post it here but you can download the work through the link, here:

Words on the Street poems and stories

There are three files. They are not particularly big files or really that long, just hugely varied!

You will find:

• Volume 1: contributions we received by email and our own practice pieces, sued to give participants ideas
• Volume 2: work from our friends at Borderland Voices: the BV regular writing group took Buxton’s Spring Gardens and the thought of a town’s “High Street” as a theme for their writing for a couple of sessions.
• Volume 3: Buxton Community School: here is an explosion of poems and stories from year 7 students at Buxton Community School.

Through the Words on the Street project we have been hugely helped by Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Borderland Voices, and Buxton Crescent Heritage Trust. Our thanks go to these friends and to all the authors, poets, storytellers and troublemakers who have contributed to the project!
 

SPRING GARDENS

Should we plant

Pear trees and pink

Roses

In tubs and beds

Neatly along the

Gardens?

 

Gathering apples and 

Red, ripe raspberries might

Delight

Everyone, inviting them to

Nibble greedily

(Vol 1, p11)

 

Geese, coffee and lumps of rock

 

water and stone lie behind everything in Buxton

Geese, coffee and lumps of rock....

As part of the Word on the Street project for Buxton Our Street, we’re collecting contributions from local residents, visitors and passing pigeons (that will make sense in a later post!). For more information, visit this post, or just contact the coordinator, Gordon, a line to creepingtoad@btinternet.com

 

Here are a few words to walk you along our streets

 

Rock solid on Spring Gardens 

David Carlisle

 

gritstone, as yet untamed

Little noticed, running along the central spine of Spring Gardens are the rows of gritstone, the one-time product of the Council’s Street Improvement Scheme, or so the brass plaque says.  

 

They weave gently, these modern standing stones, echoing the rise and fall of the High Peak’s hills and valleys, themselves carved by ice and water.

 

Walk along with your shopping head fixed into place and you’ll never see them.  Stop and listen to the wind and you’ll hear it whisper through these musical gritstone teeth.  Once you do that, you’ll appreciate their curving lines, their sheer mass inspiring respect for heavy work done by nature in shaping the landscape and the lives of all living within it.

 

Gritstone sentinels of Spring Gardens, Architects have crafted with you, Builders have captured you and Shoppers have been oblivious to you.  Yet, you point the way. 

 

Blocky and leaning in honourable respect, they softly nod at the past and smile encouragingly towards a better future for Spring Gardens, our future.

 

And if David’s words have wandered us along Spring Gardens 

counting rocks, maybe we pause…

 

Flat White Encounter

Maggie Pollard

 

My friend beamed with excitement

that I should meet his online lover.

Up from the South.

I made allowances for that.

 

I joined them in Café Nero.

My friend stood up to greet me.

I thought the boyfriend would.

He didn’t.

 

Instead, he stirred his coffee,

an empty gaze reflecting back himself.

Bound to be nervous, I thought.

He wasn’t.

 

‘I thought it was a Spa,’ he snapped.

We chorused ‘Yes it is! It is!’

‘It’s not like Bath,’ he said.

It’s Buxton.

 

His disappointment filtered down

‘And why is this called Spring Gardens?

There isn’t one that I can see.’ 

He had a point.

 

My friend fussed with his serviette.

I stirred my untouched love heart with intent.

My friend had so hoped I’d be impressed.

I wasn’t.

in earlier days, this might have been a moment in the Hardwick Hotel

And after that perhaps we need to step out of town for an afternoon wander?

 

Geese over Monksdale

Jonathan Davey

 

We are welcome on the tableland.

Greasy limestone slabs

Helping us over the lumpy walls

leading down to the dale hidden in that featureless crust.

 

Slipping over the sodden steep field,

in the far distant background we hear

sounds reminding us of the shouts and cries

of a far-off childhood playground

 

Silence for a few seconds,

then the two- tone sounds blow in again on the east wind.

Some kind of clamorous conversation,

“Can you hear something? What is it?”

 

Louder and closer, the laughing sound.

We look above the rounded silhouette of hill,

the sun intimating its presence 

behind the layers of mist upon mist.

 

Look, there they are,

raggedly undulating line of working wanderers,

drawn across from the North Sea marshland

to the food of Morecambe Bay and Ribble

 

Not harsh, not sweet, but exultant celebration.

To these ears joining in the movement,

a wild conversation for us.

On that Tuesday in Derbyshire.

 

No matter to you Pink Foot whether you are seen or not

but it matters to me.

You don’t know me

but in my own way, I know you.

 

 

There will be more!

We have an event coming up on Sunday 19th February at the Pump Room in Buxton (details will be posted very soon! Posted on facebook just now, details, will appear in blog shortly) where anyone’s everyone, old friends new friends passing strangers might all drop in and put pen to paper - or just read quietly, read aloud, laugh or weep as the words call to them!