Blog

On Wednesday 8^th August twenty would-be creative beachcombers – oh, and three very well behaved dogs – assembled at Covehithe Church to explore the ancient shoreline that had once been adjacent to ancient Doggerland, now submerged beneath the North Sea.  And on this particular day the sea reflected the blue of a breezy sky (most un-North Sea-like) and more akin to some imagined tropical Paradise.

Our happy bunch first sat down to picnic among the fallen sea-washed trees that decorate the Benacre end of the beach, but it wasn’t long before expedition leader Simon Raven had us using foldable frames to investigate shoreline detritus more closely – “getting our eye in”, he called it!  We each had to come up with one chosen item from our investigations and some of these were discussed as to their reason for choice.  Simon then shared some of his finds and small assemblages to get our creative juices flowing on the long walk down to Covehithe along the shoreline and beneath the cliffs.

After a while we reassembled at a place where Simon told us there had been a wreck of a clinker-built boat only three years before.  It turned out that one of the group had taken photographs of it, as well as of Covehithe in general, and he gave us his website address and file name for the photographic record – www.kbonnettimages.com / Recent Work / Time and Tide.

Here we shared our beach finds which included what were identified as 80 million year old sea sponges, now turned into flints.  There were also lovely bits of seaglass, holey pebbles, quartz, pieces of driftwood and an old rusting piece of metal that I will be converting into a contemporary life-style shelf!

All in all a fascinating day, full of information and playfulness, as well as time for contemplation – “very peaceful and relaxing” as one participant attested.  A great time was had by all.  Thank you Waveney and Blyth Arts for organising this opportunity.

Mary Cutts

Don’t forget – another chance to go beachcombing with Simon, this time at Corton, on 22nd August

It already seems like August with harvest well underway and the seemingly never-ending heat. Is it too hot to write?

Our River Dwellers poetry competition is open for entries until 10 August so you have a couple of weeks left to get your entries in.

Retreat indoors to a cool space and let your imagination take you under the river, with cool green light and the gentle caress of the water. Imagine life on the river, be inspired by its wildlife or its history, and write no more than 30 lines of poetry to share with us.

This year’s judge is poet and author Dr Jos Smith, who is Lecturer in Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia.

The top three entries will be invited to the Arts & Eats lunch on 20 September at the Waveney Inn, Burgh St Peter, where certificates and prizes will be presented.

Please send your entry as an attachment in Word format or as a PDF to mappleby (at) tiscali (dot) co (dot) uk

Please add a ‘Reply Read Request’ if you require acknowledgement of receipt.

Each piece must have a title and be typed on one side of A4 – no indication of the author’s name should appear on this sheet.

Entries should be in a clear font eg Times New Roman and without illustrations or photos

Full entry details elsewhere on this site.

 

 

This weekend the River Dwellers exhibition opened at the Ferini Art Gallery, Pakefield.

[Read more…] about River Dwellers – see, hear, write

Today is World Wetlands Day (2^nd February 2018) and Waveney & Blyth Arts is pleased to launch its spring conference – A River Runs Through It, taking place on Wednesday 25^th April 2018. Organiser, Melinda Appleby, shares some thoughts on the inspiration of rivers.

“I live on a small inconsequential Suffolk river – the Dove. I like the fact that it moves quietly and unobserved through the landscape, a channel hiding among field boundaries. It was not always so; rivers brought people from the North Sea, exploring, looking for food, clean water and shelter. Their map of the countryside would be like the tree, spreading out from a central spine and feeling its way into places, branching and sub-dividing.

Today our maps are focussed on transport corridors of train and car. We cross and recross rivers, often unnoticed until they flood. From the road, the Dove is almost invisible as it disappears into a poplar wood, then through a dense tangle of hedge. I have seen water voles here – plump potterers by the stream side, chewing on mint leaves and making their burrows just above riverline. Once, where the river slips behind the gardens, creeping through a tangle of alder and hazel, we saw a vole swimming with two young beside her.

After the heavy rains of recent weeks, the river now roars over the concrete lip of the water splash and plunges down past the allotments, passing the last of winter’s bulrushes, tugged untidily by the wind. The Dove builds in volume, crossing the A140 unseen, until it emerges in Eye. From there it passes through Hoxne, and under the bridge where King Edmund reputedly hid from the Danish invaders, being betrayed by the glint of the sun on his spurs and so brutally slaughtered. A last mile or two and the Dove slips into the river Waveney, the borderland river that rises in Redgrave Fen and flows east to the North Sea.

The river’s curve reshapes man’s linear landscape, it draws us in, provides a moment of reflection, tempts and betrays, lures and overwhelms us.”

All this and more will be explored at our conference.

River landscapes are the focus for Waveney & Blyth Arts; the two river valleys define our micro-region and are the location for our programme of walks and workshops, and for a network of arts venues, festivals and individual arts practitioners.

What better subject for a spring conference than the inspiration provided by our rivers?

One of our keynote speakers, writer Charles Rangeley-Wilson, sums it up in his Forward to the Little Toller reprint of H.E. Bates book, Down the River (2014):

Rivers lend themselves to being thought and written about. Thought flows like a river. As does language. The river, memory and the impulse to write, the sounds and rhythms of words and water, these things merge time and again across the centuries to become the poetry and prose of rivers, flowing from Babylon to Devon. But so much fine writing is impelled not just because of a sympathy between the forms and expressions of thought and water. A river speaks, too. It has character. And a river is the most animate part of a landscape.”

 

The conference on Wednesday 25^th April 2018 will be held at the Ivy House Country Hotel, Oulton Broad NR33 8HY. More details of the programme and booking information will be posted on our website – see Conferences under the Activities tab.

BUT if you can’t wait and want to be inspired by the river check out this video on our Facebook page – amazing photos of the river Waveney from Bungay Camera Club with a soundtrack by Mike Challis from his sound hide at our Sculpture Trail a few years ago.

https://www.facebook.com/WaveneyBlythArts/videos/1198319353517008/

 

Over 50 organisations were represented by around 70 delegates at Waveney & Blyth Arts first workshop-conference exploring how we can work together at grass-roots to promote, support and grow arts in this region.

We overcame adversity right from the start by battling through Storm Georgina to reach Halesworth and our venue, The Cut. Further adversity when we discovered there was no power but, as with all opportunities created by challenges, we held the meeting in the foyer which was more intimate and perhaps enabled more interaction than the theatre style seating in the auditorium.

So what was it all about? Waveney & Blyth Arts recognised that cutbacks in arts organisations and less available cash for our customers, create challenges for arts activities within the region. But, as an entirely volunteer led group, we have never turned away from challenge and resource constraints. We believe that by working together, sharing ideas, practice, knowledge of funding sources and audience reach, we can weather the storm.

We called first of all on key arts representatives to outline the current situation. Claudia West, from the Arts Council, reflected on the specific needs of rural and coastal arts provision. Jayne Knight, Suffolk County Council’s Arts Development Manager, explained the regional ‘Culture for Growth’ strategy. To end the keynote session, a double act of Genine Sumner, from StartEast and Mary Muir, from Norfolk County Council, talked about opportunities for regional collaboration.

Then it was over to the grassroots organisations for a full and lively discussion about what needs to change, what resources would help and how can we grow forward.

Sustained by the Cut’s hearty soup and chocolate cake, the meeting continued in a series of workshops designed to build bridges and reach new audiences.  Three key themes focused the debate: The Role of Heritage – providing arts spaces and advancing heritage knowledge and participation; Tourism – how can the arts be used to grow tourism in this region, and Sense of Place – how we can create a cultural identity and explore, practically, the landscape in this micro-region.

Powered by the return of electricity, an energetic Ideas Buzz networked people from different backgrounds and localities and, hopefully, led to some synergies, new partnerships and ideas for action.

W&BA has been enormously encouraged by the response to the conference and will be looking at how we move forward. All participants will receive a report of the event.

Huge thanks to Arts in Adversity originator and compere, Simon Raven, to Nicky Stainton for all the organisation, and to Kasia Posen for the flyer graphics and of course to all who spoke, contributed or provided the excellent food.

18 January 2018, The Cut, Halesworth.

Photo: Simon Raven

 

The Waveney & Blyth Arts writing competition culminated in a poetry reading at the Ferini Art Gallery, host to the ‘Murder of Crows’ Art exhibition. Twenty people gathered to share a meal, view the exhibition and hear the three short-listed poems. From 70 entries it had been difficult to choose only three but finally we made our choice. They were three very different poems but all had impressed us with their technical ability, the images they created in our minds, and some of the phrases they had used.

Rooks, crows and ravens were represented in the short list and writers drew inspiration from nature itself, from paintings and from literature.

The winner was chosen by public vote and the result was very close but Rooks: Where the Yew Tree Shadows Fall by James Knox Whittet, just pipped the post.

Thank you to everyone who entered and congratulations to our three short-listed poets and to James, our winner.

Thanks must also go to Michaela Barber at the Ferini Art Gallery for hosting and curating the crows art exhibition, [The exhibition ends on 24 September] and for hosting the Arts & Eats lunch. Thanks also to Beth Soule, of Suffolk Poetry Society, who ran an inspirational writing workshop at the Gallery using and reflecting some of the works of art.

We are almost at the end of our 2017 Celebrate programme but don’t forget our AGM on 21st October when we hope to showcase our Crow poems and artworks as we reflect on another successful year for Waveney & Blyth Arts and look forward to new events in 2018.

Here are the three short listed poems:

Rooks: Where The Yew Tree Shadows Fall

Your raucous voices have always been there

from childhood to age as you rise as one

to greet dawn or explode in winter air

when the last rays from the low sun have gone.

You would have called from high, arched beech branches

when baptismal water flowed from my head

and perfumed winds made the dewed bluebells dance

as watered light across the bare fields spread.

You joined in choruses of wedding hymns

that September evening when church bells rang,

leaves, like palms, rustled with your restless wings

and the sea loch mirrored the moonlight’s ring.

You’ll be there where the yew tree shadow falls

when I can’t be awakened by your calls.

James Knox Whittet

 

How to Dance with Death.

Take a lesson from Crow –

he knows all about it,

delights in it,

devours it for a  living.

Death gives him strength

with which to comfort you.

 

Crow stabs at the heart of death,

pins it  down under his kindly claws.

Crow can tell you how to embrace death,

how to make a good life

from its grisly lumps and strands.

 

Listen to the rattle of his shiny quills.

He will mantle you with his satin feathers.

See the gleam in his leather-trimmed eye –

a tear like a blackened pearl slides down.

Smell the sweet ooze of carrion as it slips

from his metal beak.

 

Crow will watch your back.

At the time of mourning he dresses for a ball.

Wrapped in a black down cloak,

he waits to hop the danse macabre

with you, his chosen partner.

Judith Wolton

 

A Pantoum for Nevermore

After ‘Nevermore’ by Paul Gaugin (1897) and ‘The Raven’, Edgar Alan Poe (1845)

 

Hungry for the forest’s treasure, burn, destroy, in equal measure.

Claws outstretch, first break the surface, forcing further, gaining purchase

where she, like a mango forming, green and glossy, knew sun’s warming

rays fall on her, innocently. Nevermore to ripen gently.

 

Claws outstretch to break the surface, forcing further, gaining purchase,

spreading wide ‘til nevermore the dappled leaves can let the ochre

rays fall on her, innocently. Never more to ripen gently,

lying on her side she listens; gossips prattle. Silent raven

 

spreads its wings ‘til nevermore the dappled leaves let in the ochre

beams primeval. Wings fold closer, body stiffens thinking of her.

Lying on her side she listens; gossips prattle. Silent raven,

hooded eyes, presentment telling, evermore its needs compelling,

 

screams. Primeval wings fold closer, body stiffens, thinking over

where she, like a mango forming, green and glossy, knew sun’s warming.

Hooded eyes, presentment telling, evermore its needs compelling,

hungry for the forest’s treasure, burns, destroys, in equal measure.

Fran Reader

There are only two weeks before entry to our Crow Writing competition closes and entries are flying in. But there is still time to be inspired by one or more of the crow family. Eight species* of crow breed in the British Isles – which one will you choose? Although all part of the same Corvid family, they are very different in character. Most are black or pied apart from the colourful, but shy, jay.

They are intelligent, adaptable birds, opportunists and collectors. Crows have been with us for thousands of years, birds of myth and omen, often associated with death and funerals.  We even have collective nouns for their gatherings: a murder of crows, a train of jackdaws, a scold of jays, a tiding of magpies, a parliament of rooks and an unkindness of ravens.

You cannot be unaware of them – their noisy chatter and scolding, the harsh croak that welcomes the dawn, the black tide of roosting rooks that inspired Mark Cocker’s Crow Country. It seems they touch something in all of us for our suggestion of a Crow themed art exhibition had an enthusiastic response. At the Ferini Art Gallery in Pakefield, artists share with us their response to crows. On Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays between 1 and 24 September the gallery will be showing a fascinating mixed exhibition of two and three-dimensional work inspired by crows under the title: A Murder of Crows. It will feature work by a wide range of East Anglian artists including Mark Ward, Ruth Wharrier, Kate Batchelor, Paul Lacey, Lucy Beevor, Sally James, Hatty Leith, Chris Mound and other Waveney & Blyth Arts members,

Make an early visit to the Gallery and find writing inspiration in the artworks. Still stuck for ideas? Join a writing workshop at the Gallery, led by Suffolk Poetry Society member Beth Soule, on Wednesday 6 September. Still a few places left and we are holding the competition open for poems written during this workshop.

Just a reminder: the writing competition is for poems of no more than 30 lines and flash fiction of no more than 100 words – all on the theme of crows. Open until 9am 12 September 2017 – please note 9am! We cannot acceot entries after this time. Cost: £3 per entry or £5 for two.

Details and competition rules elsewhere on this website.

*Carrion crow, hooded crow, chough, rook, magpie, jay, raven, jackdaw.