The first Romsey Art Festival opened last Saturday and I had the honour of being involved in two events. First I delivered a creative writing workshop in the afternoon. We explored kennings and haiku and after participants were fired up with inspiration they went off to wander the area and work on their own writing.
The three hour workshop generated some great writing. Sa'adiah Khan came up with the following kennings for string:
Strangle-tracks, Mending lines, knotted roads, weaving fingers, hanging streams.
Alex Weinle went for a walk and came back with this:
I am resolved to walk in a loop – but you can’t scribble and walk – I must remember. I must remember. How Suzie got on her bike and laughed and waved. How the bins must go out for those along Gwydir street, but which is it she asks him? The Green or the grey and they battle and rattle the bins together, rumble up and down. I must remember that sound. I am resolved to walk in a loop and I try to avoid the mother on a bike with a flock of daughter bikelets – all en-helmeted and clucking like ducklings – I must remember them. Turn corner one, some fucking twee houses, I won’t remember them. I shall try to forget the well-kept fences and boxed rows of garden centre pansies. Even as I speak, I fail to forget the disappointment of one side of the quadrilateral of my adventure. When you are writing you are not watching, when you are watching you are not writing. I must remember – but not this. I fall in step with some fashionable chap. In one hand he has a jacket rakishly slung over his shoulder and in the other a brown paper carrier bag – either containing a takeaway or something recently bought from a clothes shop. I cannot tell and will not know for the time when I have to remember. Details – deets – are important, even in ambiguity, results with error bars I shall recall and return. Why doesn’t he fall over? Those tight shoes could easily make him trip and then I could remember it. But he does not. This street - so much like the first street but more main street than the second – still twee though. Begonias! I say to you. You force me to imbibe them and I recall because I must remember. What kind of writer finds fuck all in the middle of a festival? I am resolved to walk in a loop but now I speed up because I feel the bits and pieces decaying in my head like cake out in the rain, or like other seventies lyrics I have ever remembered, dissolving a vowel at a time. Fear - I tell you – drives me into the public house where Paolo, how Romsey, serves me a pint of lemongrass beer, which you will chastise me, will not help me remember that: I am resolved to walk in a loop – but you can’t scribble and walk – so now I’m sat down and I must recall; how Suzie got on her bike and laughed and waved.
Sa'adiah also captured the flavour of the festival down the road at Hope Street Yard :
Strangle-tracks, Mending lines, knotted roads, weaving fingers, hanging streams.
Alex Weinle went for a walk and came back with this:
I am resolved to walk in a loop – but you can’t scribble and walk – I must remember. I must remember. How Suzie got on her bike and laughed and waved. How the bins must go out for those along Gwydir street, but which is it she asks him? The Green or the grey and they battle and rattle the bins together, rumble up and down. I must remember that sound. I am resolved to walk in a loop and I try to avoid the mother on a bike with a flock of daughter bikelets – all en-helmeted and clucking like ducklings – I must remember them. Turn corner one, some fucking twee houses, I won’t remember them. I shall try to forget the well-kept fences and boxed rows of garden centre pansies. Even as I speak, I fail to forget the disappointment of one side of the quadrilateral of my adventure. When you are writing you are not watching, when you are watching you are not writing. I must remember – but not this. I fall in step with some fashionable chap. In one hand he has a jacket rakishly slung over his shoulder and in the other a brown paper carrier bag – either containing a takeaway or something recently bought from a clothes shop. I cannot tell and will not know for the time when I have to remember. Details – deets – are important, even in ambiguity, results with error bars I shall recall and return. Why doesn’t he fall over? Those tight shoes could easily make him trip and then I could remember it. But he does not. This street - so much like the first street but more main street than the second – still twee though. Begonias! I say to you. You force me to imbibe them and I recall because I must remember. What kind of writer finds fuck all in the middle of a festival? I am resolved to walk in a loop but now I speed up because I feel the bits and pieces decaying in my head like cake out in the rain, or like other seventies lyrics I have ever remembered, dissolving a vowel at a time. Fear - I tell you – drives me into the public house where Paolo, how Romsey, serves me a pint of lemongrass beer, which you will chastise me, will not help me remember that: I am resolved to walk in a loop – but you can’t scribble and walk – so now I’m sat down and I must recall; how Suzie got on her bike and laughed and waved.
Sa'adiah also captured the flavour of the festival down the road at Hope Street Yard :
In the evening I was hosting Romsey Poets at CB1 featuring Ian Patterson and Rychard Carrington. Organiser Alex Blustin had done a great job of promoting the event, plastering posters all over the city and the cafe was full to capacity.
I was kept quite busy. Not only was I presenting the poets and an incredible line-up of open mic acts but I was also called on the play percussion during one of Patrick Sheil's poems and play various roles in Rychard Carrington's set including his inner thoughts and TS Eliot. I even managed to add a few of my own poems.
I plan to share some of the poetry from the night on upcoming editions of Headstand on Cambridge 105. I also look forward to enjoying more of the festival which continues until August 17th culminating in a special Shindig at St Philips.