WRITING INSPIRED BY LANDSCAPE

Autumn rising Berries blushing White tattering Leaves harlequining Butterflies battling Bog oak resting Aliums structuring Iris rhizomes charging   On Sunday October 5th - we gathered in Warboys for an experimental garden words workshop. It was a wonderful day, the weather was cool but gentle and Steve's garden is a layout of small plant rooms, a mini orchard , an abundance of rocks, trees, shrubs and flowers. There was plenty of wildlife about too.  Here's a taste of the writing from Simone - which will along with everyone else's be edited into a whole - a performance for voices which we are calling - a Word Orchestra .  The idea is to harvest the images, sounds, tastes on the wind and smells of the garden to produce a wall of experience.  Kind Eden – An Oasis in the Fens Crunchy acorns underfoot, pop, split, crack Bug hotels , ancient totem poles , stand the test of time Tall, dry grasses bristly whisper Bursts of pink and yellow rose petals Rosehips , big as ap...

Look at you, with your pastoral charms,  ripe for the picking curvaceous and smooth, pale green and firm,  large, pyriform bottom. Your sweetness is sickly,  but always bearable, to me. In full sun, you tend to blush, flush, your naked skin a rosy pink. I spin you around, admire you from every angle. Shapely, exquisite. A gentle squeeze leaves dimples,  barely imperceptible indents on your thin outer layer.  Your pale white innards, once hard, compact, when rolled between my tongue and the roof of my mouth,  now a mushy, grainy consistency. Your juice oozes between my teeth, sweetens my gums. No crunching here, just slurping. Sticky juice trickling down my chin and arms. I’ve devoured your pastoral charms. Simone Chalkley Image by Vitya Lapatey

  I am Bombus ruderatus , son of a murdered mother, husband to a feisty woman with a sting in her tale, and together with my cousins we are the humble bumble bees, and we will have our revenge in this life.+   You will recognise me as the aerodynamically challenged insect that bounces from flower to flower.   Draw near and I will tell you a tale that began aeons ago but nears its climax in these modern times.   When the world was young, we all lived in harmony. We the pollinators sipped on the nectar that the flowers offered as payment for our insemination services. The fruits of our labours culminated in sweet honey to feed our colonies. The fruit lure that swelled and encased the pollen impregnated seeds attracted the animals which fed upon the life-giving food, and they in turn dispersed the seeds in their dung or as an agent of locomotion, moving them from one place to another. But then the monkeys came. They pillaged the flowers and fruits indiscriminate...

  In bijou bloom shops, focused bud browsers bustle about, fuzzy baskets brushing between blossom stalls. Hovering and murmuring in dancing chats, Ambrosia is straw sipped and sap zipped, in shopping sacks. With full panniers, the buzzy market foragers carefully wing balanced purchases to sisters, aunts and nurses. Flowery pollen for bread, fine nectar for honey, jelly for bee babies humming in the cocoon of the colonial home. Sarah Tickle  

  Foxgloves bristle, stems shuddering and shimmering And a big fat hairy arse wobbles out from the lilac purple bell Bulmm Bulmm bzoo boo buzzum bzzle bzzle Bzzlp Bazzup!   And there he pushes, leaps back out with legs a blur Hovers, legs heavy with with puff yellow puff collars dangling and wangling Catching the air oh so briefly then Woho! Here we go! Hmph! Bumph! Bullawazzawazza!   Back in! Head, first up deep into the purple Sending the paper cone a quivering And the surrounding lilac barnacles all abuzz and shivering Sending them all a flutter - plfplfplfpflppflf   This one’s a victory! Plenty to take in this one!   He’s ramraiding the insides of the flowerhead It’s joyous carnage and frenzied, fruitful destruction Wooar!! Bzz bzz bzz bzzuh!   And then he’s off The big bumbling heavy arzed blunderbuzz Launches into the warm summer air 
 Swerves across the garden wall Along the chapel roof 
 And away... ...

  Speaking to a neighbour recently, I mentioned the ghostly figure of a monk I’d seen crossing a road in the village when driving home at dusk some months ago. “ Oh,” she said, “ we’ve all seen him – we think he’s a monk who taught at the local school and was buried near here.” And this evening, I thought I saw him again as I headed towards my favourite contemplation spot – a five-barred gate overlooking a broad meadow and west towards the sun setting over the tree-lined river. Leaning on the gate, I looked to see if I could spot any deer or foxes on the jogging track mown around the meadow. As I prefer to be alone with my thoughts, I was perturbed to see someone, or something, across the other side of the meadow coming towards the gate. I couldn’t see clearly what it was because it was silhouetted by the setting sun. Two long ears waggled – could it be a donkey. I stepped to one side of the gate out of sight and looked through a straggly hedge to see what it was as it drew ne...

  Two siblings race in monsoon rain up the path in a Singapore yard; No likelihood I’d lose, the eldest by two years.     Sticklebacks dart, tiny missiles secreted in Hampshire’s chalk streams; My chilled hands drip platinum drops. A vixen pounces into feathery pristine snow. Her flicker of flame Doused through thin ice in a sluggish flow.   On an Exmouth rock pool, my shadow obscures the surface glitter; Tiny crabs dance a fox-trot into seaweed cover. Just the rain, in all its moods, on a roof or window, is a fall into joy; Many hours can pass in a blissful trance. On the Ouse Washes, a hundred swans feed in their own reflections, Fragmentary glimpses of perfection. Blossom from cherry and crab-apple powder the pools at Giverny; Bound buds of narcissi sway in papery wraps. Heard only by fish, waterlilies break open with muffled detonations; Above heart shaped platters stand their transient jewels. On a Minoan vase, 1500 B.C., dolphi...

  A bright, clear night; the moon rides high. Thin clouds racing past the shining disk which scans the landscape with pale intensity. Passing over limestone country, the Hanglands are below. Part of John Clare’s lost Heath; now an oasis in an arable land. Clare, versing in his head, walked from Helpston to be alone in this green space. Escaping from villagers who thought him strange - a lunatic!? Tonight, the moon tracks a car following the road Clare took one hundred and fifty years before. Head lights challenging the moon’s gaze; it stops by the path to the Heath, No longer a green lane; one hedge grubbed out to extend the crop. The moon lights on two people emerging from the car, escaping from a noisy party. Like Clare - they too want to be alone. Nearby, a little owl picks up beetles fallen from an overhanging oak, a badger scratches and a deer barks. The two young people thrill at the night sounds. Then, still listening, hand in hand, they quietly tak...

  My head is filled with the deafening roar of shingle being dragged back’n’forth, helpless and willing, in the raging surf slapping and sliding towards my feet. And as the pull of the deep contracts, I could sink into the glistening and dazzling sparkles of the thousand shiny black and opal agates.  But while I’m transfixed on the rolling and crashing, Buster has locked his eyes onto something moving, a dark shadow lurching through the waves, breaking the surface of the water only some thirty feet away. Smooth and proud and powerful.  It disappears and we are left searching the white, greens and turquoise blues of the waves. Buster is barking, noiseless in an even louder chorus of chattering shingle, his eyes have seen it before mine. And there it is. A sheen of grey flashes in the sunlight and then a playful flip of a darker tell-tale tail. A humpback whale. He’s inviting us, teasing us and we are such easy prey. I follow Buster and break into a run along the water’s ed...

    Stools and rooms The internet miracle of Sitting and talking In remote rooms across zoom Is nothing To the ancient rejuvenating funghi net Which vitally feeds, protects And connects the giant and the microscopic. Preceding human cleverness and showing us up. Big time. Sarah Tickle

  Whisper, shimmer, whisker-like on the breath of the wind; shape shifter; preening beak, wing or feather. Hipperty hop, bibberty bop, pippety pip, what staccato breaks this fluidity, me, me me…pippet! Rhythm restored, pulsing heart, pumping life, ebb and flow, underworld, outer world, in the world, of the world.   Squid propelled, to or from, enters my sight. I follow, fins and flipper footed, accepting your invitation into the depths, to dwell a while in your watery world.   Rising to the surface for air, the pitter patter, pitter, patter of water on water, rain drops of heaven joins oceanic expanse   Snail takes cover, withdraws, retreats, hides   Yet the fern, the flower, the tendril, the thirsty stem, soaks up, drinks down, absorbs your nourishing quench…unfurls, blooming, rises to light, aligns with life, is life… Bats, elastic shudder in flight, overhead, on the night shift Moon, star, sun, you rise you fall, things come, things go, ti...