Poetry in Shropshire

The Clocktower at The Hurst

Well I've been extremely quiet for a week and that's because I've been staying here, in the Clocktower on a week long poetry course run by The Arvon Foundation. This house used to be owned by the playwright John Osborne renowned for the play 'Look Back in Anger'. Surrounded by Housman's 'blue remembered hills', and featuring three 18th century buildings thirty acres of sprawling woodland and a spring-fed lake. It is close to the village of Clun which has its own ruined castle. Half of the group (there were 16 of us) stayed here and the rest in the main house.

The Main House

Each morning after breakfast we had workshops and writing exercises till 1pm run by our two tutors Jean Sprackland and Andy Brown, both published poets (more about them later).

Jean Sprackland and Andy Brown

Lunch was followed by some time for ourselves, to write or to explore the beautiful grounds. All the woodland flowers were flowering, the Clun sheep all had lambs and there were the most amazing Redwoods.

The Lake

Each student also had an afternoon tutorial with one of the tutors to discuss work in progress. Each day at 4:30 a group of us took it in turns to cook the evening meal for the whole group. We assembled for wine and nibbles on the patio at 6:30, and dinner was at 7. Each evening we had a recital or workshop from 8:30 till 10. Jean and Andy shared their poetry on Tues, we had a guest poet on Wed, Anthony Wilson, to read from his book 'Full Stretch' and we had to read out our own work on Friday (eek!).

Our Group

I met a fantastic group of people from varied backgrounds, worked hard and learnt a lot. We were so lucky with the weather, it was dry and bright all week. Can't wait to sign up next year.

If you want to know more about Arvon and the courses they run go to:

http://www.arvonfoundation.org/p1.html