The Lookout Aldeburgh

It's always a highlight seeing the art and installation at The Lookout on the beach in Aldeburgh.

 You can see the spiral stairs leading up to the tower room at the top on the post 2nd November... where each year Caroline Wiseman puts on another work combining artist and poet.

This year the art is by Issam Kourbaj. The poetry by Ruth Padel.

The combined work is called ...

Dark Water, Burning World, 80 Moons and Counting.

To mark the sixth anniversary of the uprising in Syria, poet, classicist and Hellenophile Ruth Padel, joins artist Issam Kourbaj, to present an intervention that explores the millennia-long relations between the Near East and ancient Greece. At this event, Kourbaj will launch Dark Water, Burning World - a new artwork inspired by 5th century BC Syrian vessels on display in Gallery 21; and Padel will read a new poem Lesbos 2015 - influenced by her meetings on the island of Lesbos, both with the inhabitants and with some of the thousands of Syrians who have fled there.

So you reach the top and look in and are confronted by the boats full of burnt out matches and the clear Irish voice of Ruth Padel reading her poems influenced by her visits to Lesbos and the influx of so many broken lives.

The boats cover the floor of the upper room and fill the old wooden window frames. 

While we were there we noticed a family on the beach playing as families do...with dogs and children running and laughing...

...and in the icy cold waters of the North Sea a lone swimmer can just be made out fighting the waves.

Two worlds.

The Work can be viewed at The Fitzwilliam Gallery and The V and A as well.

A ,Bitter Week.

We spent four wonderful days on the east coast last week....Suffolk and Norfolk.

We were there to deliver stock to some galleries in Southwold and Snape Maltings. That's the ceramic stock made by the potter here at The Potters House Penketh.

But also to attend some of the organised workshops and readings at The Aldeburgh Poetry Festival.

A real feast of poetic words and thoughts.

Then to cap a great weekend we drove north to Norwich and UEA, to take the eldest grandgirl out for a meal....all students need treats from grandparents!

So late evening after saying our goodbyes we set off for the journey north.

My head was full of the new poetry and poets we had heard....and the news we listened to as we drove was full of the thoughts of the soon to be decided presidential race for The White House.

The euphoria of the four days slipped away little by little as reality arrived as if brought down from the cold north by the chill winds that blew.

The vacuum of this moment in history....will soon be filled with one or 'tother...and we ourselves will soon be either in or out apparently of whatever we have been part of!!

After Auden

And so the leaves fall

And in the chill wind fall fast.

For on the long ride back north

Winter arrived in bitterness.

A Poem for Thursday

We spent some time in Aldeburgh last week.

 This is by the Aldeburgh Beach Lookout Tower which often has Art Exhibitions in it.

 You can see lots more on their Face Book site.

The potter is not known for doing nothing...but this pic caught him in pensive mood!

Homeness

Homeness is his nose, his ears, his brow.

The sweater he wears, the shoes he buys

From the cheap shoe shop across the road.

Homeness is the breakfast that he makes

And the silence as we read the daily news,

His the sports report, mine the gossip page.

Homeness is the familiar sag in the bed

Where my body fits snugly and

The duvet falls effortlessly around me

While sleep creeps up on me easy.

Homeness is knowing where everything is

Stored in the kitchen cupboards when

I want to make a pot of coffee or

Break a square off a hidden bar of chocolate.

Homeness is the spicey smell of rosemary

And sage In the stoney paths as I meander

Through summer's scented herb garden.

Homeness is me waiting for the swallows

To return and in the homecoming then

                                 To know everything will be alright.

Somerset Levels Commission.

This commission came from an Irish friend, for some relatives living in Somerset and loving the levels.

 The potter is more used to his land and seascape pots based mainly on Southwold and Aldeburgh..so this was a new venture and much perusal of google pics and pinterest boards were looked at, before he sketched his ideas in a book and started the heavy job of raising a large ceramic pot. It is big...not quite a metre high but not far off! 

There were certain requirements made for the decor on the exterior...hares, heron, water and reeds...and the potter added his usual wonderfully modelled bridges, fences and landscape. The glazes are chosen to enhance the fired clay and the final glaze firing reveals whether or not it has been a success.

Well this is the second one...not that the first wasn't good it was, but experience tells you that often the next one manages to capture the essence of a piece. Soon it will be on it's way to The Levels...then we shall see if it has done it's job. 

A Poem for Thursday..."Just Desserts"

The prompt on Thursday morning was...."Desserts"...but with out fail everyone of us thought of "Just desserts". So the stories were rich with comeuppances!!
I decided to go for lists. We had been encouraged at the last workshop at Aldeburgh to think along this line...so this is what arrived.

...it applies to whatever you do....

We made our now annual expedition to The Aldeburgh Poetry Festival this weekend just gone. It's held mainly in the village of Snape at The Snape Maltings...very apt for the potter and wife!
Our association with this part of Suffolk goes back to the years of the teenage children. But the festival..only the last three years. The potter has some ceramics in the Gallery there and also in The Buckenham Gallery in Southwold ...so there's a double reason to take the six hour trip from here in the north west to East Anglia. And a further reason as the oldest grandgirl is now at UEA  in her second year and getting more political by the moment!!
But the festival was just great this year. I love the different approaches. The "academic"...the "comedic"...the "ex-punk"...the "rock-star"...the "rap poet"....and the madness of the open-mike late night session!!
Each year I've made the effort to get to as many sessions as I have energy....and these poets are a sample of those I heard speak this time.
Attila The Stockbroker, Gerry Loose, Kei Miller, Helen Mort, Jeremy Reed, Valerie Rouzeau, Pedro Serrano, Susan Wicks, Jane Duran, Peter Sansom and Jeni Smith.
From the workshops to the Q&A sessions the talks and the readings, it's a feast of words and emotions.
  Now I will have to have a go at putting it all into practice....
I plucked up enough courage to have a go at the open mike session in The Plough and Sail at Snape on the Saturday evening.....this was my contribution!

...hands shaking by the time I had finished!!...

A Poem for Thursday...in time for St. Patrick's Day

We attended The Aldeburgh Poetry Festival again last November. I went to one of the workshops at The Red House...where Benjamin Brittan had lived.
Do you ever feel out of your depth in these situations?
We were given a sheaf of poetry chosen from other languages.
I chose one in gaelic by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill..."Ceist na Teangan"
Now I hadn't ever learnt Irish...went to the wrong school!! but dad was an Armagh man and over my life I realised that some of those "odd" words that he and Aunt Cis used were most probably Gaelic.
Whether Irish or Scottish I cannot say....but definitely not Anglo Saxon English.
So when asked by the leader of the day to write a poem based on the sound of the words and the rhythm of the lines...I thought of dad and all the story-telling that he had done when he was alive.
...and I wrote this piece, making up a story of chieftains and betrayal in Ireland...
of which I now know from reading Irish history...there was a lot between clans!! 

 

I looked up the translation of the original poem and there was the story of Moses in the basket being found and reared by the Pharoah's daughter....

Maybe it was the rhythm...or maybe something much deeper made me think of this story of betrayal.