East Peak Poetry

Penistone Poets ArtHouse Reading

eastpeakpoetry — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 22:43:03 +0000

Penistone Poets, a group initiated through Art in the Park’s Villages of Poetry project, have organised a reading on Thursday 27th September at the ArtHouse Cafe in Penistone – http://arthousepenistone.co.uk/

The reading runs from 7.30 till 9pm, is free of charge, and will feature work from, amongst other inspirations, their industrial heritage project. Julie Mellor will also be reading from her 2012 Poetry Business pamphlet Breathing Through Our Bones.

Poets include:

John Barron

Mark Doyle

John Hislop

Pat Hislop

Julie Mellor

Marion New

Sue Riley

eastpeakpoetry — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 22:32:51 +0000

September sees the return of Art in the Park’s Villages of Poetry project. See below for information and how to book:

Art in the Park’s FREE art classes in Bradfield, Penistone and Denby Dale are due to begin next week. If you’ve not booked a spot already, it’s not too late to do so. Just give us a call at 0114 2686813 or drop us an email at artinthepark.admin@gmail.com

Here’s a list of the places we still have available:

Bradfield

- Drawing, painting and printing (Mondays 2-4pm) FULLY BOOKED

- Poetry (Wednesdays 5-7pm)

Denby Dale

- Photography (Tuesdays 5-7pm)

- Textiles (Thursdays 2-4pm)

Penistone

- Collage, mixed media and 3D art (Saturdays 2-4pm)

- Poetry (Tuesdays 6-8pm)

Following the success of last year’s ‘Villages of Poetry’ event, Art in the Park is back in the East Peak area to provide another series of free art and writing classes for adults. Sessions will be split into 3 terms and will take place in and around Penistone, Denby, Dale and Bradfield. The first term begins in the week starting Monday 10th September. The Villages Project, run by Art in the Park and funded by the East Peak Innovation Partnership (EPIP), will employ a team of talented artists who will inspire participants to get creative through a series of classes. These sessions will include poetry, textile arts and painting. For more information regarding the time and location of the sessions as well as to book a place please call Cassie on 0114 268 6813 or email cassie@artinthepark.org.uk.

Palimpsest – …

eastpeakpoetry — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 02:49:30 +0000

Palimpsest –

n: a manuscript in which a later writing is written over an effaced earlier writing.

The palimpsest, both as image and concept, is a map-key for both the physical environment and the psyche, demonstrating how the new is formed upon the remnants of the old. The layers of the palimpsest question the nature of truth: what once was taken as fundamental becomes broken into a mosaic of fragments composed of trans-historical elements. Truth, we may say, is palimpsest: an ongoing evolution of understanding that echoes both the old and the new in a metamorphosing state of comprehension. From this point of view, dogma, fundamentalism and essentialism are errors born out of a misunderstanding of truth as something fixed, mistaken for the dynamic of a reality that is in perpetual flux. This inadequately short and piece considers palimpsest first in the context of the environment, and secondly in the context of the psyche.

The text of a palimpsest lays itself down over the physical world in many ways. It is apparent in the layers of geology where bedrock is eroded and undergoes further sedimentation or metamorphosis, erosion, and so on. As one crosses the landscape she discovers the unique physical environments of different geological ages juxtaposed within yards of each other. Consider the Peak District, where the limestone plateau lies sandwiched between gritstone moorlands. The gritstone is the upper level, the newer rock, and was laid down upon the limestone, the older rock, when a river delta dumped its coarse grit onto a shallow tropical seabed millions of years ago. Since then, the land has risen and eroded, revealing at ground level the older rock in juxtaposition to the newer rock.

Another physically palimpsestic environment acts as home to most of us – the city. In reflecting upon the process of writing his poem Dore Moor to the Marples Hotel, Rob Hindle describes walking into the city along the approach route of the blitz bombers:

It also took me through a variety of terrains – residential, commercial, manufacturing, as well as those interzonal regions of allotments, subways and derelict sites which, having little attraction for planners and heritage-mongers, tend to persist and therefore provide authentic glimpses down the cracks into some past or other.[1]

This mapping out of our internal historical associations onto the external world can be described as psychogeography. When a writer describes a journey through a palimpsestic environment, he also reveals the psychological state provoked by such an environment. This psychological state, according to the nature of palimpsest, is in a state of change and composed of many cultural elements.

The late German writer, W.G. Sebald, can, simplistically, be described as a psychogeographer. The Rings of Saturn takes a barren walk through East Anglia as its narrative framework, and palimpsest may be observed in the landscape, but also in the text itself. The physical words of Sebald’s novel traverse literally across layers of history and territory, as the narrator intersperses seemingly tangential and associative trains of thought within with the description of the walk. The genius of his dis-unified clarity can also be seen in Vertigo, where each chapter presents a discrete discordant juxtaposition, the alternate layers of the palimpsest of the mind.

Eliot’s The Wasteland displays palimpsest in more than one way, though it is particularly evident at the close of the poem, where the contemporary register decays into distinct heteroglossia:

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina

Quando fiam uti chelidon –O swallow swallow

Le prince d’Aquitane à la tour abolie

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih

This passage can be read as an exposure of psychological palimpsest, where the multiple languages that make up a single person’s coherent consciousness become jumbled and juxtaposed. As well as European languages, an older form of English appears alongside contemporary English and Sanskrit. If our rational understanding of the world is formed through language, then the influences and voices that are written atop each other are many, from which dispersion we collate and unify. This passage presents a regression away from unity and towards dispersion, revealing the bones of the palimpsest from which a mind is formed.

[1] Rob Hindle, Longbarrow Press, prefacing the forthcoming anthology The Footing.

New year, new website, new poetry classes!

eastpeakpoetry — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 18:17:23 +0000

Happy new year, and welcome to the new East Peak Poetry website. This is your first stop for information and inspiration on all things poetry in the East Peak area. You’ll find information on poetry classes, a poetry forum, and poetry events. You’ll also find, in time, our annual online East Peak Poetry anthology.