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.

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!!...