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Poetry, prose and Swindon celebrities on vintage bus tour

5 Oct

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You know those coach tours of celebrities houses you can do in L.A.? Today we did the Swindon version.

It was all aboard the vintage Daimler double decker bus for a journey around Swindon’s hidden gems.

Our hosts were “community poet emeritus” Tony Hillier, who promised us “a day of heritage and word juggling,” and Graham Carter, editor of Swindon Heritage magazine and, if not a font of all knowledge, then certainly a bucketful of quite a lot of it.

Our magical mystery tour  – The Beatles only managed one, Swindon Poetry Festival is already on its second – started and ended at the childhood home of Richard Jefferies, now a museum.

For the uninitiated, Jefferies was one of England’s greatest late Victorian writers. Continue reading →

Exciting poetry coming down a slip road – Swindon Festival of Poetry launch

5 Sep

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The great thing about being a chronicler is that on the one hand I can write whatever I like (as long as it isn’t defamatory and all the words are wrote proper) but on the other I feel part of the team.

So going to the Swindon Festival of Poetry launch today at Swindon Arts Centre was a chance to catch up with wordsmithing friends. Continue reading →

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Finale words and flutes and double bass

18 May

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Swindon Festival of Literature reached its climax at the Town Hall with the annual Poems and Pints event. Continue reading →

Bell chimes workshop rhymes

18 May
Jo Bell Workshop

Jo Bell Workshop

Workshops, full of anvils, lathes and maybe a vice or two, unless it’s the last day of the twentieth Swindon Festival of Literature when it’s something else entirely. Continue reading →

Outskirts of Swindon

17 May
Fiona Sampson

Fiona Sampson

Internationally acclaimed poet Fiona Sampson showcased her book. ‘Coleshill’  at the Arts Centre Studio. Continue reading →

Cherries As Insurgent Art

16 May
Mabel's House

Mabel’s House

Domestic Cherry’s Swindon Festival Of Literature residency continued at Artsite Post Modern as Mabel Watson threw one of her infamous house parties. Continue reading →

Genetically Modified Truths

15 May
Steve Jones

Steve Jones

‘Just in case there are any people down from London for the day I’ll translate the Latin because I know that the highly educated people of Swindon won’t need me to’. Continue reading →

The Magic of Listening

14 May
Ben Okri

Ben Okri

Writer Ben Okri talks in poetry,

especially when talking of poetry,

‘the very nature of it is wild,

all poetry is spiritual’.

But Okri also considers poetry so powerful

that we  have to be careful with it.

Tyrants have been known to be poets

bad poets.

We are walking amongst monsters

these flowers

are protection against evil.

Follow the song.

Poetry wants nothing from you but

cascades of sound.

Make our hearts a festival.

We live in a story shaped world – CS Lewis

13 May
C.S.Lewis - a life by Alister McGrath

C.S.Lewis – a life by Alister McGrath

A week of the Swindon Festival of Literature has gone by and it’s at about this time that frazzled Festival types starting running out of sleep and clothes to wear, today the search for a clean T-shirt brought a lengthy, fruitless search in the bedroom, it wasn’t there of course, maybe my tired brain was lying about which wardrobe. Continue reading →

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Family fun at Swindon Festival of Literature

13 May

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Who’d have thought Death would have a sideline in sausages?

Anyone, I guess, who’d followed the reason for the Grim Reaper meeting a pig to its logical conclusion, ie to make bangers, bacon, chops and other stuff that you won’t find in a kosher/halal butchers.

This was the end of Piggery Jokery – a wonderfully funny puppetry tale of nature told to us by Hand to Mouth Theatre at the Swindon Festival of Literature’s Family Day, at Lower Shaw Farm – when Piggy Wiggy met the Grim Reaper of Winter. Continue reading →

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