Picture
Most wonderful event of this Arts festival! Perfection of setting, high quality string music reverberating through the mysterious arches, and poetry about the marvels of Nature and our soul's and wit's reverberations to Her... 
thank you all involved! 

The artists and their family and friends, the congregation, the poster makers and the Chapel.

To 'hear' the poets, please visit their website:
http://www.henrymarshpoetry.co.uk/
http://www.henrymarshpoetry.co.uk/poems.html#seasonal
http://alexanderhutchison.com/
http://alexanderhutchison.com/traces.pdf

Tessa Ransford: http://wisdomfield.com/
http://wisdomfield.com/reedShaken.html

 

Tannahill at arts centre on Monday eve:

Poems and songs from Scottish folks' voices was the theme of the last two days for sure.
Dr Fred Freeman's talk on Robert Tannahill with musical illustrations was well attended and deemed to be a success. Sorry, no pics, as no-one with camera attended event. All the same - you can catch Fred's voice here at the Garden Sessions show, and some of the renderings he commissioned can be heard here, on a site devoted to the Scottish Language. 

Tannahill songs kept featuring in  two other sessions which the Penicuik Folk Cub had organised for Penfest.
On Tuesday eve we saw two events drawing in people: the Folk Club sing a long at the Road House, and the Penicuik Writers at Arts Centre.

Participants of three different writing groups (Penicuik, Dalkeith and Pentlands) came together to share their published and unpublished works. Witty and wondrous, vulnerable, celebratory and macabre, people and place. Scottish and global - all was there in poetry and prose. Special thanks to Karen Duncan for bringing them all together, a broad spectrum of writers company, reading out their words-smith craft under the backdrop of painted poetry, the Penicuik Turner Prize exhibition. 
 
Reading and writing Poetry or prose, and listening to music combined to a cosy event in the view of the art works entered for the Turner Prize. The musical treats included:
Picture

Peter Stewart, piano, blues and classical, present with his usual precision and vigor, this young man got us (as usual!), breathless, clapping and joining in. Truly invigorating!

15 yr old Sophie Burt fairly shook us with her deep lyric songs (self penned!) touching profoundly on the mysteries of life and death, and intimate relationship with those.
Picture
Interestingly enough, the veil seemed thin that night, with friends and their poetry being remembered, and the paintings chosen as stimulus for writing echoed mystery such as this one:
Picture
As the mist of memory fades in the morning light
the reflection of the lonely man
bends to his other half
and the whisper arises, from the rim of the distant shore,
"con mortuis in lingua mortua"" 

 poem, written to this painting, by two people, line after line, alternating


It was very inspiring to witness how poetic or prose text beating humour or longing or other notions of relating to self and already visually expressed images, was birthed and voiced. Here a few more examples of interaction of creative 'Inspired by Art' participants with the art of their choice to the prompts of : "Come and let me tell you..." and "Relate to a tiny detail..."
How did I get here you ask, well I was here before the footpath. 

Long, long ago, I was here with the standing stone behind, we were surrounded by a wood of ancient trees, which year by year were felled to keep humans warm. 

They laid bare this area, it was scrub, then it became a designers dream to make walls, paths, grassy areas so that you human’s can frolic and play.

Do you ask how I felt when you removed my moss, I am bare to the world, naked, to please you only.


Picture
Picture
Sunflower petal

I am part of the all, a tiny part

We are all overlapping

Jostling for the sun

Are we meant to be this close

Nature says, yes it’s so

The cosy kitchen one with the beam

The beam diffuses the light
Sending it down towards the plants against the wall
All else is cast into shadow
Giving me a cosy feeling

Picture
Picture
Come with me and let me tell you………
how I escaped !

I am Horance, I was out the day Ms Potter
Stopped by, I was chasing the pesky
 Chicks, or so Miss Jemima Puddleduck
told me so.
They exclaim, "Horance watch out  for
Ms Potter's return!!, I do, I did.
Proud stance upon the chicken coupe
My beady eyes see furthest of all
The farm beasts,
yet I missed the calling from
our fair author? So I did not feature.
I am a proud beast of the farm
I am too busy for fame.
No-one will rise from their
snuggled warmth without me.
I am bold - check out my tail-feathers!!
I was not forgotten!! Ahha for I was only
 born this year…from the brush of my
 fair artist.

There was lots more - but so far these masterworks did not make it to the press here. Back to completing the list of musicians:
Picture
And, played regally, the saxophone, by Stephanie Clark.
Picture
60's tunes sung beautifully with well trained voice: Royston Timewell.
And now is high time for a proper listen to the music:
and then - just in case you are interested: here is a creative writing experience open for you at West Street
Picture