On Lindale Hill / Cumbria Reading Detectives

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On Lindale Hill Find!

Whilst working on Reading Detectives, the Grange team decided that they would like to commission a poem about the local area, written by a poet living in Cumbria.

We decided that it would be a fitting finale to our work, providing a legacy of the project which in turn adds to the body of literature about Cumbria.

So now, the Grange team can unveil the poem to the world. It is called On Lindale Hill and is written by poet, Andrew Forster....

ON LINDALE HILL

It's a village of layers, a place

in continual progress. On this stiff climb,

houses are messages from different ages:

rain-polished slate, wind-roughened stone

or blues and greys, evenly-painted.

Rock roses cascade from garden walls

like secrets refusing to stay hidden.

In spaces between buildings, beeches,

weighed down with ivy, reach from rocks

in gestures almost within translation.

A double-stemmed chestnut, rusty and flaking,

grows out of gravel where the millpond was.

The wooden board beside it shows drawings

of millworkers' cottages, demolished,

making room for traffic to somewhere else.

Now, streets branch off, cutting corners, following

their own trails to crossroads or dead-ends.

The millrace is a dry channel beside the beck

Blocked with bricks, lined with copper leaves,

leading only to an asphalt carpark.

The beck itself curves sharply over stone lips,

splashing and foaming and murmuring to itself

in its own tongue, as it runs its broken course,

disappears into tunnels, emerging

for a mere glimpse, then returning underground.

Andrew Forster is a poet, critic and literature development worker. Originally from South Yorkshire he lived in Scotland for 20 years.

His poems have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies since 1993, including The Rialto, Acumen, Obsessed with Pipework, Cencrastus, Lines Review, Envoi and Poetry Nottingham, among others.

Essays and reviews of poetry have appeared in The Dark Horse, Fife Lines and Lines Review.

He was awarded Scottish Arts Council writer's bursaries in 1998 and 2002, and a sequence of poems based on the life of Lytton Strachey was published by Flarestack in 2000. In 2003 the poem Radnoti's Notebook was commended in the Bridport Prize.

His first full-length collection, Fear of Thunder was published in October 2007 and was shortlisted for the 2008 Forward Prize: Best First Collection.

Andrew worked in social care for 14 years, latterly managing housing projects for adults with learning disabilities. In 1998 he began a career in literature development, teaching creative writing for a range of organisations throughout Scotland, including the WEA and Community Learning departments for a range of councils. He also developed a range of community writing projects and edited/co-edited several community anthologies, included Midlothian: Faces, Voices, Lives (WEA 2000) He was instrumental in setting up The Portobello Poets, with Elspeth Brown and Martin Bates, who arranged regular poetry events just outside Edinburgh between 1999 and 2001. In 2001 he was Writer in Residence for North Lanarkshire council museum department, which lead to editing the anthology Imagining Industry (North Lanarkshire Council 2001).

In 2003 he became Literature Development Officer for Dumfries & Galloway Arts Association, and has been responsible for an extensive range of activity, including the ground-breaking Poetry Doubles readings, which pair emerging local writers with poets of international standing, and the Wigtown Poetry Competition, the largest poetry competion in Scotland. He was instrumental in organising the first Scottish Literature Development Forum, helping to create a network of literature development officers throughout Scotland, and is a Board Member of the National Association for Literature Development.

Now, Andrew works in Cumbria as Literature Officer with The Wordsworth Trust. He is responsible for their internationally renowned poetry programme and for developing the Trust's other literary activities.

Andrew's second poetry collection, Territory, will be published in May 2010, and we wish him every success with it.

The Grange group members are pleased that Andrew accepted our commission, and are absolutely delighted with the finished poem.

To find out more about Andrew, go to: www.andrewforsterpoems.blogspot.com

15 March 2010 from Helen

1 Comment

Priscilla | March 29, 2010 10:43 AM

Hello Helen and Reading Detectives in Cumbria
It is fantastic to see the poem you commissioned - and as you say, it's a really great legacy for the project. It seems particularly fitting as the location is so near to Grange over Sands where your team was based.
I hope your readers enjoy the poem and continue to explore their rich literary landscape.
Best wishes
Priscilla

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