WRITING INSPIRED BY LANDSCAPE

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

    The theme for this particular section of the session was ‘cutting something out’.   For no reason that I can fathom, the first thing that came into my mind was a clear memory of my Dad using his walking stick to hack away at long strands of bramble which were encroaching onto public footpaths.   I suppose really it is more of ‘cutting back’ than ‘cutting out’, but what’s a bit of semantics among friends?   Thinking about it now, I should have just supplied my Dad with a pair of secateurs – or perhaps that would not have been so much fun! Cutting Back the Bramble   Thwack! Out struck the cane, the staff, the walking stick with the curved handle. My father’s big hand securely grasping the base of the curve. Thwack, thwack. Take that. Cut it back, thwack it back. Thwack the woody stem once, twice, thrice Until it yields. Cut, thwack, cut it back, Clear the path. Make way for walkers, For pushchairs, For bikes. Cut back t...

  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... ...

  The Fenscapers first public reading had to be held online due to Covid restrictions but was an online success.  Invited by Fascinating Fens to read texts and poetry as part of the launch of our wonderful audio collection.   Read about the event here and click on this  link  to watch the event on YouTube.  Please find the texts read during the evening below: A Walk Around My Garden  by Barbara Grafton " Life is sometimes sad and often dull, but there are currants in the cake and here is one of them " - Nancy Mitford Part-way down our garden lies a unique mass burial of eight cattle and six horses - adult, immature, neonatal and unborn - mostly arranged nose-to-tail. They were discovered in a ditch during the archaeological dig prior to the building of our house on the “high lands” of the fen. They have been radiocarbon dated to 40 to 230 AD, the very Late Iron Age to mid Roman period. It is speculated that their buri...

  Photo taken at Madeleine’s Patch near Warboys: Visit  facebook.com/madeleinespatch Download and listen to our walking podcast - stories, poetry, short texts, music and sound.  It is a beautyiful collection of writing inspired by the Fens. Written and recorded by the Fenscapers, music composed and played by Chris Ellis, edited and put together by our own wonderful Colin Stevens.  It is a thing of listening beauty - but don't take my word for it: Listen here!

  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...