Art & Tapestry: Poetry Workshop

Thank you to our guest blog from Sammy Weaver and all who participated in our June workshop.

On a drizzly Heptonstall morning, we explored our relationships to Hepstonstall through creative writing exercises in response to artefacts and objects. We began with a guided ‘free-write’ with the anchor phrase ‘Heptonstall is…’. I then led a discussion on ‘word-hoards’, the early medieval practice of oral poets to have a collection of words and phrases to draw upon whilst crafting tales, almost like an inner treasure trove of words to compose from.

The participants then unlocked their own personal word-hoards and then we curated a shared word-hoard for Heptonstall:

Participants then chose an artefact or image in the museum to momentarily fall in love with and in so doing describe in minute detail their lover-object.  After reading Sylvia Plath’s ‘All The Dead Dears’ poem that she wrote in response to a mummified woman in a museum, we discussed the presence of the past and the dead in the living:

“The dead are never far away in Heptonstall”                      ~ Participant

We honed in on Plath’s lines ‘This lady here’s no kin / Of mine, yet kin she is’ and I encouraged everyone to find kinship with their artefact. We read together Alice Oswald’s poem ‘Dunt: a poem for a dried-up river‘ inspired by a museum artefact. We explored the techniques of repetition and rhythm to create language closer to song than conversation. 

We finished up with an experimental woven group poem created by the individual lines, or threads, of the participants’ poems. The refrain ‘the hand loom weaves’ held our distinct voices together creating a tapestry of sound and meaning in response to our real and imagined experiences of Heptonstall. 

Heptonstall
 
If Heptonstall were a colour,
it would be copper and ash.
 
If Heptonstall were a type of weather,
it would be mist.
 
If Heptonstall were an animal,
it would be a hare.
 
If Heptonstall were a type a music,
it would be a village folk song
with hurdy-gurdies and fiddles.
 
If Heptonstall were a person,
she would be a woman
in long skirts carrying a basket
of bread across the cobbles.
 
She would sound booming
and authoritative.
 
She walks confidently,
but with a slight limp
from the weight
of her basket on the cobbles.
 
​~ Ink & Tapestry Poetry Workshop participant

The Hobnail Boots
 
The hobnail boots
thud across
the Heptonstall cobbles.
 
A rhythmic clacking, left-right,
left-right,
ankle-toe, ankle-toe.
 
The two feet riding inside pinch,
blister,
dutifully hobble.
 
A living memory embodied
in fading leather —
only rusty laceless eyelets see and know.
 
​~ Ink & Tapestry Poetry Workshop participant

The Song of Heptonstall
 
We unlocked the word-hoard for this place —
Crow, cuckoo, gust, copper, pelt, mist —
 
Their calloused hands worked hard for this
The whips of rain lashing the steeps
 
Then all of a sudden the sun crashes on wet stones
And the bleached bones of stalks
 
Listen, can you hear the cobbles seeping words?
Did you see the one I saw, named and cursed?
 
The dead here are twelve metres deep,  
The graves line the floor, a mozaic under my feet
 
The ghosts of poets perch on mossy steps
She tries to dance but her legs are cracked stumps
 
Can you hear the stars grinding, crumb by crumb?
The distant echo of the Pace Egg drum?
 
 
~ A group poem woven from the individual voices of the Ink & Tapestry Poetry Workshop and the ghosts of Heptonstall