Workshop Writings – Part 3

Here’s another helping of excellent writings from the writing workshop participants focusing on the science of memory as well as the Lit and Phil itself.

The Lit and Phil

The air inside feels different,
has the smell of curiosity,
the taste of possibility.

Each breath carries with it
whispers of a thousand words.
Words bound within their own tomb,
waiting to be opened,
for their treasure to be found.

Witnessed by the people and the trees,
the sculptors of words, the builders,
the characters laid to rest within.

This building is people.

Jessica Whortley

 

Pink on Green

Arising from the dark hollow a
vessel emerges. Fronds of green matter
bristle and sway,
oblivious to the pulsating pink object
that has invaded.

One part of the vessel widens
to form something womb shaped.
There’s a branch
leading off to the left. The opposite side
has been amputated.

It reminds me of the time
the goose was taken. How we tried and
how we failed
to move that damn bird, knowing who
would get her.

Two white wings carefully
dissected, in opposite corners of the garden.
Glistening entrails pink
against the green grass. Body buried in a
hole for later.

Eleanor Holmes

Workshop Writings – Part 2

Here’s another selection of the writings that were created during the series of workshops focusing on memory.

Running Home after Dark

We ran, laughing, in the dark along the high pavement,
Dodging between the dim street lights
Until I fell
Down the steep steps into the pool of dark.

Sharp edges struck my flailing body.
Arms, legs, head, all falling anyhow
On to the rough road beneath the wall.

Nothing at first, then returning breath,
My head swam to the surface, right side up.
There was a pain but mostly I was damp
And cold on the wet stones under my bare legs.

I sat, shaken and confused.
The thud of adult feet was reassuring.
He loomed above me, powerful and huge,
Thick fair hair, uncombed; an alien presence
Softened by the warm familiar smell of cowsheds,
Kneeling in the road beside me.

His voice was slow, hesitant, somehow not quite right.
His hands, gently cradling my dangling wrist,
Were rough and wonderfully warm.

“You hurt?” I nodded.
I knew he was a stranger, still with us after the war,
but he wasn’t strange.

Then there was a car, another strange and rare event.
Solid clanking doors and creaky leather seats.
A short drive, up the hill,
And I was home.

I remember the X-ray and the plaster
But mostly I recall my milky rescuer,
A friendly blur.

Jenifer Harper

Observed in a Nineteenth Century Museum – A bottle of young alligators

life-less, green, easy to see
appear to huddle in water
amphibians; three

if i could transport you from dark enclosure
back to the Nile, where the waters release you
to witness you in your habitat
immediate, animate, surviving, alive

to be quite perfectly unpreserved
growing, learning, allowed to ‘be’

Instead your agile limbs are still
young brains lost to formaldehyde
the lithe forms that could run with ease
paused forever in silent cry

a parody of visceral beast
captured for a mass desire

and
curiosity satisfied,
I walk away
from a life
expired

Carmel Slawski

Returning to the Philosopher’s Table

Tonight was the opening night of Dawn Felicia Knox’s project The Return to the Philosopher’s Table.

This was a project where Dawn invited other artists in the region to respond to the history of the Lit and Phil, particularly in relation to The Newcastle Museum.

The aim was to bring the objects gifted to the Lit and Phil in the past back to the library for one amazing exhibition which mixes art with science, myth, drawing, gardening, sound, light, viewing boxes, performances, paintings, photographs and two mummies.

The exhibition is open when the library is open till the end of the month.
There’s an event each week in June running in conjunction with the artwork.
I have to respond to some aspects of the exhibition in a creative way. What!
I’m not sure yet. Just watch this space.

The finished creations can also be heard and seen on the evening of 26 June at the Lit and Phil from 7pm.

I am amazed by what is on show or not blatantly on show. Come see for yourself and you will understand and wonder.

Memory Workshops – Part 1

Saturday will be our last workshop in the series that have taken memory and all its guises as a focus. These workshops have been very well attended as midway through I had to add in two extra sessions. They have been a wonderful safe space to explore personal as well as imagined memories and projections into the future.

I would like to share a few examples here from those participants who have kindly allowed me to do so.
Thank you to Jennifer Wilson, Fred Lewis and Sue Spencer.

This first one came about from a workshop totally focused on the science of memory.

Flatworm tales

If you cut me in half,
Would my legs remember their way back?
Could planarian tendencies
apply to us humans,
If we really tried?
Do memories really run through us,
like Blackpool rock,
held tightly in each cell,
ribonucleic chains
binding our past together?

The sight of an old haunt,
the taste of sea-salt air;
could this really all fade
with the introduction
of an RNA destroyer?
Eight-aza-guanine, ribonuclease;
enemies of the state of mind.
Calming the crashing waves,
peeling back fresh-cut grass,
Until nothing remained.

Jennifer Wilson

The next two extracts by Fred Lewis, use the ageing of a book cover as a metaphor for life and in the second one we see behind the scenes of a ballet class, inspired by a recent article Fred has completed for Dancing Times, called ‘View From the Barre’.

No longer new, wearing the wisdom of time. Dirt and dust and sun have
taken their toll. Now clothed in the patina of the graveyard. It started
in Newburn but this is where it will end. A mellow decline, they will
outlive us all.

Feel the static, the sub-nuclear blast of new experience. Grasp the old
and the familiar, a shared atomic landscape stretching between us, hours
in the ballet class, view from the barre. Falling headlong, helpless,
through the shock of your reality, your husband, your unborn children.
Non compatible, AC woman and DC man, short circuits across the main
course. I feel the assured voltage of your different life, the switch
doesn’t trip, you laugh at my books, the spark fades. Part in the
hedgerows, a spoonful of elderflower posset for Cheryl, a dozen pale
pink roses for Paula. What did Chekhov say about the company of women?
Do we ever learn – still, it’s been a pleasure.

Fred Lewis

Finally, this poem comes from Sue Spencer, created from a workshop that used the sense of smell to arouse memory.

Morning Routines

Sarah has been on the ward for over two years.
Every morning it takes two of us, forty five
minutes to wash, cajole, manipulate, titivate,
wash her tortured body. Chanel soap,
talcum powder, clothes designed to be worn
at cocktail parties and Newmarket Races.
Once we get her into her tippy-back chair
she demands a spray of her perfume.
A curtain the only barrier between us
and the rest of the ward, she shouts
if this ritual is interrupted. We bite
our tongues, try not to shout back,
remembering who is doing what here.

Sue Spencer

Summer Workshops @ The Lit and Phil

A trip to the Discovery Museum stores
After the great response after our last trip into the basement of the Discovery Museum , we have booked in again with Dawn Felicia Knox t o tour the stores and be inspired to write about the weird and wonderful world that is hidden from public view. This will either take place on Saturday 8 June OR 29 June , from 10am – 1pm. Please get in touch to let me know if you are interested in joining this workshop. Thank you.

Emily Inspires! Writing Workshop with Rachel Cochrane
Wednesday, June 12- 6:30pm until 8:30pm

To commemorate the centenary of Suffragette Emily Davison’s death.

Run by Rachel Cochrane of listenupnorth.com to explore Emily’s life, her actions, Northumberland connections & her motivations. The session will provide opportunities for people to have a voice through writing just as Emily was committed to giving people a voice.

No previous creative writing experience necessary

Slow Writing
Saturday 13 July – 10am -1pm

The postcard is the piece of mail we prop up on the mantelpiece or stick to the fridge door, usually more of a greeting than a message, a few words on the reverse of an image, a sign that someone is thinking of us.

Gail-Nina Anderson presents a postcard exhibition at the Lit and Phil during July titled, THE POSTCARD – A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY. This exhibition offers a light-hearted exploration of why postcards appeal, inviting speculation about our own choices and collections. Rather than tracing the history of the postcard, it plunders one haphazard yet cherished hoard to reveal the pleasures of collecting, selecting, comparing and just wondering why.

This slow writing workshop takes this exhibition as it’s source to explore the art of writing; writing letters, postcards and exchanging greetings the slow way rather than through the email, tweet or text.
Let’s being back the pleasure and intimacy of sharing our lives.

The Art of Writing – A writing workshop in response to Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Project

Saturday 17 August, 10- 1pm

During August and September the Lit and Phil will host the international exhibition of artists books from the al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Project.

The project marks the bombing in 2007 of al-Mutanabbi street in Baghdad. The street of cafes, book sellers and stationers. A cultural quarter for over 500 years. The project consists of nearly 260 artist’s books made by contributors from around the world in a response to the devastating destruction of lives by the car bombing. One hundred and thirty people were killed and maimed as a result of the bombing. The al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here project is very close to receiving 260 books, twice the number of people killed and maimed.

This writing workshop with Sheree Mack, the writer in residence at the Lit and Phil, will take the artist book exhibition as its inspiration to explore the event, the place, the book and the artists’ motivations.
Providing opportunities for participants to create writing that can later be made into artist books with Theresa Easton to become part of the al-Mutanabbi collection.

Any further information require please get in touch with me.

TO BOOK:

£5 booking for each workshop with the Lit and Phil please as numbers are limited.
Email: library@litandphil.org
Telephone: 0191 2320192

The Late Shows @The Lit and Phil

I managed to be present this year at the Late Shows at the Lit and Phil, after organising the event for two years running. On Saturday 18th May, I was glad to witness the library all a buzz, a hive of activity as over 1500 people passed through our doors between 7-11. The overwhelming response from the visitors was sheer pleasure at the place and then amazement at the fact that they might have lived in the North East so long and not know  the Lit and Phil existed. I hope through this late opening of the library that more people have the Lit and Phil on their radar and take the time to visit again. People don’t even have to be members to enjoy this place. The Lit and Phil may be privately funded, relying on membership fees to stay open, but it is still available to everyone to come in and enjoy the books, events and refreshments. Now that you’ve found the place, make sure you keep returning.

Sue Spencer’s Moral Compass

 

NaPoWriMo – Day 20

You’ve changed. He does not reply.
The passage of time is like a whisper.

Come eat with me. Silence
You did once. The truth left hanging.

Sorry. You never did like garlic did you?
He studies me now for the first time

with those eyes. Cold like the space
I struggle with under the duvey.

NaPoWriMo -Day 19

Summer. Wait for the wingtips of waves
to break on the shore deep down
in King Edward’s Bay. I see her then.
Not her but her eyes – a watery cobalt.
She who danced the shore in another time,
a scarf tied to her hands now tied to mine.
I lift my arm and wave, feel the wind through fingers.
As the voices whisper in, moving out, I dance for never feeling ink.

NaPoWriMo – Day 18

scene 1

panning in from the left
three white plastic chairs bolted to the concrete floor
hog the window view
camera swings around to take in the yellow rusted
industrial size dryers
the coin slots are blackened with use
and congealed with fluff
camera draws back to take in
the once brightly coloured soap power
dispenser advertising
a long forgotten brand of detergent
that had active agents that could tackle any stain
camera swings right to looks along
a silver block of washing machines,
the laundromat is recognised
fade in monotonous music then
cut

scene 2

camera zooms in on her face
wrinkled and taut, mouth moving too fast
zooms out to take in a body shot
framing a feminine figure in a too tight
chocolate leather jacket, belted tight
camera panning along her index finger
jabbing repeatedly into the guy’s face
camera close up of his face, dark brown beard,
fleshy lips and amber eyes
following shot he’s backing
away with hands up as she advances
camera panning out to bring in the
silver block of washing machines again
fade in mounting music
every washer is full of white foamy suds
dark fabrics comes into view then vanishes
camera panning out further
to reveal her other hand, clutching bright red
silky underwear far too small
for her larger frame
camera moves onto doorway
marked “way out”
cut

NaPoWriMo -Day 17

Another day watching the ocean move
under a rose sky; maple, alder and spruce.You brighten this scene like a wild moon: Fir cones, blown onto the ground, spongy to the foot; a moment to breathe.
Everyone is leaving, you sit in the pull to stay. You feel the come on of water and try to remember. When did you notice the ocean’s serenade, that the base notes were inside you? Standing here, feeling the vibrations. How long have you rode the strum of waves?