Surrey Unearthed – and Dorking Talking
Surrey Poetry and Summer heat It was a hot evening on Monday and the 38 people crammed into Narnia didn’t make it feel any cooler as Mole Valley Poets unveiled their latest anthology. Narnia? The back room of the Old House pub in Dorking, so named because you enter through the wardrobe. There were no […]
Undersong
Immersive experiences We were treated to a rare immersive experience recently, beneath the dome of St Marks Church, Kennington. 50 of us sat in a group, within a circle as 10 singers sang round us, over us, among us. They sang together, individually, with each other and at each other. They sang while sitting, standing, […]
Chalk, Chalk Gardens, and Elizabeth Taylor
Old friends and new Sometimes everything feels connected. I have been working recently on poetry walks, an anthology launch, and writing some poems myself – all on the subject of Surrey Unearthed. This is a Mole Valley Poets project aligned to a much larger arts project being run by Surrey Hills Arts and involving a […]
Arts Alive
The brochures are here I’ve just picked up a supply of brochures for the annual Mole Valley arts festival – Arts Alive. The arrival of the brochures is a turning point in the summer for me. It reminds me that autumn is coming, it gives me key dates for the autumn diary, and it is an […]
Poems to Keep
image courtesy of bucaorg (Paul Burnett) and Flickr 1000 monkeys I went to a poetry event on Monday. Read some poems. In a pub. Nothing unusual in that, but this was a bit special as it was the launch of an anthology and all the readers were poets who had poems in the anthology. A wonderful mix […]
Looking forward – the planning conundrum
Photo courtesy of Yale Richmond; Creative Commons Spontaneous demonstrations A feature of some of the totalitarian societies which sprang up in the 20th century was the spontaneous demonstration in support of the leader, the party or the government. We were asked to believe that large numbers of people suddenly took into their heads to meet […]
Choices
Image courtesy of Dave Morrison Photography and Flickr: Creative Commons What to write… Speaking with others who blog it seems our main concern is the fear of running out of material. Not an issue this week, clearly. The post election political situation remains fascinating, the issues with President Trump continue to develop, and we have a […]
Learning and networking
It’s not just about writing It seems obvious now but one of the things I wasn’t expecting when I took to writing as my main focus was the need to learn about social media. When I started I was an innocent in this area, my only touch point being a little used Linked In account. […]
Joy amid pain – the ‘Arts’ in a troubled world
Music – aspirin for the soul? They say people of a certain age should take an aspirin a day to keep illness at bay. Not advice I follow. My own remedy is a bit of singing or playing the sax, preferably both. In the world at large, joy seems in short supply at present. The […]
The importance of language
Kind words and positive feedback There’s a special feeling when you get positive feedback and know it’s genuine. We had some of that yesterday when we played a lunchtime gig at Leatherhead Theatre. An experiment. Did people want Greensand’s jazz with their coffee and BLT? It seems they did. We were told it was a ‘divine […]