Event
9th October
Afternoon, Big Day of Poetry at Cramphorn Theatre.

Bio

Clare Crossman was born in Kent. She studied English and has an MA in Theatre from Lancaster University. As well as poetry she also wrote plays for theatre in education. She has published three collections of poetry Landscapes (joint winner of the Redbeck Prize 1996), Going Back (Firewater Press Cambridge 2003), The Shape of Us (Shoestring Press 2010) Her poems have appeared in many anthologies.
She has worked as a lecturer in adult education, caretaker, and workshop leader in poetry and theatre for schools and communities for Start Arts, South Cambs
http://www.clarecrossman.info/

Penni McLaren Walker, acoustic musician, is a well-respected
singer-songwriter who refuses to be constrained by musical style.
Her musical past has included folk jazz and rock but she believes: “It’s all about the music and however you choose to enjoy it.”
She regularly performs at a variety of venues as a solo artist and with Bryan Causton (Mandolin) and the Celtic trio Fionn Faer.
Write What You Know, included in Fen Song, won the BBC Song Writing Competition in 1997.
http://www.penni-mclaren-walker.co.uk

Bryan Causton, musician, has worked on TV and radio and, when not playing live, spends much of his time composing and teaching music. Bryan plays Mandolin, Mandocello, Cittern Guitar and Keyboards.
Bryan is currently a member of the 4 piece instrumental folk band Strangeworld and for 15 years played in the highly acclaimed folk rock band Shave The Monkey.

Poem

How he came to love them he is not sure:
deep brown pools of seed, a tiger’s eye.

All the words for yellow are never quite enough:
cinnamon, saffron, daffodil does not name them,
too faint and- moon close for their practicality.

Bronze comes closest, forged out of dust and clay,
carved into decades, surviving desert storms.
Or gold a true colour, with its own alchemy to make

the heart of daisies, wasps casings , thick
sugar melt of honey, firecracker, a Catherine wheel.
Their heads as high as his shoulders when he walks the rows.

Their deep amber eyes keep him in acres.
The strangeness of miles of them, helianthus,
somewhere shimmering seen from a passing train.

Like a memory of plains where he might have been
a painter, walking barefoot through stubble fields.
Now he’s a merchant of the sun,

servant to all those who reach for it.
His harvest horses, the blonde colour of his
children’s hair, armfuls for city dwellers so that

summer can take them, across heavy furrows,
into the frames of fields. Their coins in return
for light woven petals:

Picasso-parasol, topaz- ring, straw -matted circle,
canary, butter, parchment, pods.