During winter 06, radio producer and writer Caroline Beck has been in residence at The Alnwick Garden as part of an audio writing project, working with local writers. The local writers in residency were Emma McGordon from Cumbria and Anna Woodford from Tyneside, two talented young writers and poets, and Neville Clay and Kathryn Williams in a joint project. Neville is a published poet and regular on the North East poetry circuit, and Kathryn is an award-winning singer-songwriter
and exceptional lyricist.
The resulting work from each writer can be heard outside in The Garden via listening devices in spring and summer 07, and a CD of the work is available from The Garden’s shops and by mail order (call 01665 511350).
Click below to hear a selection of the work.
"We started work at perhaps the most inauspicious time of the year in horticultural terms - between the end of a fireworks display of an autumn and a long wet, winter. We were lucky. The notoriously fickle Northumbrian weather played fair and every day we came to The Garden the sun shone and even when it was so cold that my hand melded to the microphone people still had something to say. Indeed it seemed at times as if the coolness of the air slowed down thoughts to a pace where poetry and philosophy were allowed to meet.
One man I interviewed on a bitterly cold day in early January said that he "didn't want to talk because I've nothing of value to say and I've only come for some exercise and the coffee". He talked to me anyway and after fifteen minutes of intimate reflection upon gardens, the wildness of the borderland of Northumberland and the great beauty of the landscape in the depths of winter he stopped as if amazed at himself. "You can go for your coffee now," I said, and he walked off whistling.
The Alnwick Garden may be new but in the hearts of the many visitors we met it's as old as the garden where they first experienced freedom, space, and a chance to dampen their feet in the dew of the grass. It's also the backdrop to a thousand stories; of the first steps of babies, special days spent with friends and final days spent with elderly parents. Each one of the thousands of visitors takes something away from The Garden, but they equally all leave their own mark upon it.
It is this we have tried to capture."
Caroline Beck
The Words from The Garden project is a partnership between The Alnwick Garden and New Writing North, and supported by Arts Council England through their Grants for the Arts Programme.
