See Below for
Sarah Everard
Caroline Weller
Poetry Award
The tougher..times the
more cheerful we
become Stanley Baldwin.
Poetry in Motion Award
for those at NHS and all
who transposed
Edinburgh's Grassmarket into
Avant Garde of theatre,
Jean Findlay,David,Rupert Ferguson,
dedicated Jerry,Tom...
to sacrifice, not ego,
Sarah Everard and
Caroline Weller Award:
-Jean Findlay, Jane Lumsden, Stephanie,
all hope draws on sacrifice, rubbing off
into an ecology of hope.
(As Kerouac said)
a nurse in 'Where it hurts' describes the
privilege of helping others, that's the
consciousness required for our times..
Since meeting Jean Findlay in Goldsmiths'
College, the work of Jeremy intent on
transforming lives, evolved from the
tragic loss of his own sister, but gave
impetus to reach out to impoverished and
vulnerable whose extreme
destinies, in Gaza, East Berlin,
Recife, Brazil, in girls'
orphanages offered deeper insights and
wisdom,
valued by Ken Loach,
Paul Laverty, Susan Sarandon....
Read more about the Award, below,
and Rupert Ferguson, who is Recipient of
an Inaugural Ethical Award. Along with
Mark Maurice for founding Goa Trance Music Scene The intimate moments attested to in Rupert's long years of video work show an inkling instinctually of what is referred to reverentially as 'love' in biblical Jonathan and (later King) David, when described as brotherly/sisterly love. He reaches under time's skin, to our common psychogeography, also in Portobello Festival. Joint Poets in Motion also: Gerda Stevenson, who crafter of Inside Out with Small..and Jean
2021 the Inaugural Sarah Everard and Caroline Weller Poetry Competition (Caroline Weller, sister of Jeremy Weller (whose work was a huge influence on Sarah Kane, the most performed contemporary playwright in Europe.) The ecological and ethical understanding of the present is the subject: as a Memorial Garden where London's most central wildflower Meadow is being made, in Battersea, a short walk from Clapham Common it draws on the inspiration of its positive past: from Wilberforce and Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf's father, with the Antislavely Clapham Sect to the Brixton Uprising. More recently Jude Kelly transformed the Battersea Town Hall into Battersea Arts Centre and went on to host the Southbank and Women of the World Festival. War Horse also had its roots in Tom Morris taking over BAC.
Alternatively start a short story of abt 1000 words with: I am the River and the River is me: Or I embraced the tree...
All submissions received and thanks to all. The Best Refugee's Friend Poetry in Motion Award Anthony Howell for publishing Fawzi Karimi, dying Iraqi, great writer.
Prizes. In a time when ethics are in the fore we look to those in touch with nature, just as Anita Roddick when she in 1989 found the Brazilian Indian women who oversaw like other indigenous folk eighty percent of the biodiversity of the planet. Also a prize for best five children's ecology stories. Five copies of Firkin and the Grey Gangsters from Scotland Street Press. We live in exciting times, when a woman in 2017 could receive a Nobel Prize for declaring nuclear weapons illegal..
Earth Day April 22. One billion are involved in activities for the planet. Who are they governed by? That is a big population of mind.
Persian Paradise Peace Garden or The Covid Peace Garden of Reflection: as a living garden the palpable solace it provides for those isolated, at present, and those working night and day to help out and heal. Number One Eden, like the Jerusalem Chapel, Westminster, it embodies whatever distant place we want brought near. We are enabled by illness to change habits; welcoming the sickness must grow worse to heal us. Further beds appear with wild flowers Californian poppies..Eschschultzia.
Just imagine next time instead of going to the Gym, comimg here, planting dozens of bulbs, a variety of sages, thyme, oregano, an apothecary, including lavenders, as changing ourselves can change the world: Mahatma Gandhi, enhancing the refreshed concept of exercise should bring us close to nature. An Iranian Freedom fighter has joined us...and keeps wondering: should he add a water feature to a Persian Paradise Garden?! A mother of a two and four year old said she felt inspired to start an online course of three hour episodes, as gardening is supposed to benefit and heal, even though breastfeeding she joins in. She brings buckets of water, with the elder son keen to show he's part of us. A Welshman crying that he didn't want to live is now a key gardening hand, overwhelmed by the fun. He brings everyone who wants a Guinness in the evening. He has visited Wales too, as his council flat has been without electricity for three months, as during lockdown, his health is somewhat threatened he can't have an electrician. One aids him by using a credit card to update his travel pass.,so simple..for all to adjust. There are people helping build the herbal, medicinal garden, at the Memorial Peace Garden, SW11 in Battersea, who a few weeks ago were taking drugs or 'alcs' drinking. By improving the scents and offering food Pret have kindly donated, they have united in asking if they might know "what we are planting?" Few at all come to drink. Some even try bringing plants. Just yesterday..two Irish brothers enthused that their granny has a few spare bulbs, a bay tree also was donated by Philippe, a half French man which he has had in a pot "since I fell in love with a woman" and she appears cheerily to help dig a metre deep hole, with her antique business young friend from across the river. An exotic man has been smoking shisha, since lockdown and keeps burning and spreading his sweet lemon and orange scents, good smells, perhaps to remove the remaining lingering smells of years of drunks, wetting themselves at 3am? Some offer flowers they should like to donate...If we are changing at present and we take charge of these changes and enact a neighbourliness for our world, in all public gardens, adding meadows too, the ecological biodiversity and insect habitats will improve overnight...A few books start a library under a tree and birds are fed daily with proper seeds and water. There is talk of covering the shelves of books being exchanged to make a Book Tree/ Buchbaum BioGardening:
Enhance your garden, replant pots, maintain a biodiverse environment for bees and other pollinators. Last fortnight I have rebuilt, with social distancing the garden at Katherine Low Settlement. Also worked throughout lockdown on Memorial Garden, SW11. Kambala's largest local Housing Association requiring extended suggestions to drought tolerant improvement to the community gardens. All are interlinked. Cooking for lockdown is around KLS and supplies Kambala whose residents come to relax at Chistchurch Memorial. Rather than sit on exercise machines creating CO2 i have encouraged gardening, as more directed and purposeful. As a gardener we show autistic children who to water, and tell differences between sunflowers, tomotoes, carrots, sage and thyme, by touching, sniffing, smelling.
Important Dates:
International Day of Forests 21 March, a day on which Conservation of Trees and woodland is especially accented. Forest is a five year old at school, who is born the same time, and as such his parents must have it in mind. Are we all be better conservationists as a result of watching fires, in South America and Australia?
Earth Day April 22 suggests one billion are involved in activities for the planet, who are governed by a big population of mind. With a virus that is as mysterious as the pangolin, the most trafficked wretched creature on Earth one couldn't help wondering like millions of others, if the Earth is not warning as gently as the wind responding to its climate chaos. Could it be that Labour's plan of social intervention was just what was needed? The sleazy Jobsworths exposed now to full naked effect.
The Writing is on the Wall, a biblical reference to a tiny hand above Belshazzar that writes on his wall, as he drinks and recklessly disregards his fellow humans. The Temple of Jerusalem is said to have been sacked by him, which is why the hand appears: it is the only time in the scriptures a hand of 'god/ God/ the Divine' is recorded as visible, as far as I can establish. Is this in a way an analogous statement to the Prime Minister and his Health Secretary falling seriously ill? To Brazil's neofascist Bolsanaro catching it also? We point fingers as a matter of course..at those less wealthy, as if it shows our superiority as established fact, as if granted from a divine authority? None of this is justifiable, in the latest plague. Earth 1 Humanity 0 seems to be the score. Economies based in greed are collapsing and none are running back to save them, except the exceptionally greedy, in power who want to shake hands, as soon as possible, passing on disease further....Earth Day had come as a warning a month into lockdown, with public gardens suffering a drought. It doesn't rain withour pouring, or conversely it doesn't storm climate warnings without desert storms. If sand dunes appeared none would be surprised.
Somehow I couldn't help knocking on a few doors, on 22nd April, Earth Day, reminding myself and them of how we are uncomfortable as it is on Earth/ Focussed on people whose front gardens show green fingers, such as a French speaker, with Irish husband, and a mother of two small children, one breastfeeding no doubt, we found common ground. When we say common ground we are using an expression referencing Earth, ground, soil, or soil as inseperable from us. Silent Spring the book that kicked off the environmental movement, by Rachel Carson, might be best associated with awareness that the smell of gas and pollution isn't prosperity. These Forest and Earth days could have been any time of year, but they began to echo in our heads, as though a conspiracy of ordinary people, who value nature more than business and boomtowns.
International Nurses Day followed on May 12th: the day of Flo Nightingale's birth. As if we are all in a conspiritorial episode of a scifi series all the dates that relate to our reckless inability to share, as a world, to value the healing and regard those who sacrifice most...etc, are all occurring as though a Nature Spirit has taken over the Press Office of World governments.
When it comes to it people who live in the country they tend to be more peaceable, growing herbs, vegetables and hence Rupert, an author reminiscent of Walter Scott, in talent, is growing, herbs and or harvesting berries wherever he can.
An eyeopening experience is the way community has come together, like the herd which knows which way the wind blows, where trees shelter, like the mumurations above and whispering of butterflies' wings, all know which way to go. Like I heard about life in East Berlin, when the Wall still stopped travel. There resources were shared, vegetables, potatoes and apples, pears, grapes, berries, all shared without any need for encouragement. A lot of sharing, resourcefulness and better attitudes, far from central government are reduced from globetrotting, to essential activities, like caring for the Environment. None could have foreseen a more radical movement as if accelerated by itself. We have been running gardening workshops; teaching environmentalism with Sha, wildlife manageress; learning how to maintain a meadow without wasting water, above all. We visited those who were constrained to stay indoors and nurture their gardens and give them food and shopping. We gave an injured pensioner essential support, we are constructing a bird bath, feeding the birds, with heathy bird seeds, which has a feeling of intervening in the polluted life of the mind that has ruled. International Day of Forests 21st March felt really relevant as forests burned in Brazil and Australia and then Earth Day 26th April inspired us. It was a call from the planet to leave us in lockdown as these significant days came: Forests need our intervention, not only in South America or Australia.
The young watch and question more than they would at school. There are those who engage in nature and I believe that with transport and travel reduced a stillness has been enabled, forced on us, we have crashed into better Self..there are many who do not wish to return to what we had. On 26th April World Earth Day, I have engaged neighbours in talking about how we are changing, and 'the birds are looking at us, like we might be beings not intent on..." Let's stay positive. We are good if we want to be. Katherine Low Settlement even asked me to do their garden that had faded under lockdown which I loved doing. I met all the volunteers there and in Fulham I dug a garden that was immensely overgrown for Penelope, an ailing actress, who had had no visitors since lockdown, but we wore masks and were able to dig enough up to use the back gate after half an hour.
Even Captain Tom included my picture on his Instagram. I met neighbours so much more appealing than I dreamt. I did some watering for a neighbour shielding, I even walked down Patience Road to nurture plants that owners thanked me for when back.
I recently... contacted Grant Smith who like me has a passion for the dawn chorus. Staging a revolution with birds. Since school days he has been with Paula Baraitser, now Doctor, who is part of a revolution of insights into selfcare and time saving online healthcare. She sees digitisation makes it possible for us to even test for illness without going out. If we are now in a hostile environment (what or who is the hostile one?) the most marketed creature, pangolin? We require NHS, (led by careworkers, many migrants, who as Mabud Chaudury stated on Facebook 'have human rights' to protect themselves. Brave as he would die a week later of Covid19) So many of those recently foamed at by Signor Feigning Britishness Foraqui now clap, hold a hand up to the NHS, or pint is there a slight flicker of self-deprecation and self-doubt now shining out? The more difficult times makes us cheerful, is how Stan Baldwin stated it.
Along with Grant I remember Ben Whittam-S was at school, also, who I know as quite otherwordly, talking about life, wondering what time present is without a love of a combined future. So we live in times where we all try out new roles, parts, film is the lazy way, you can be doing it with family, friends, neighbours.. listening to experimental jazz. Rupert Ferguson made kids wonder what they were doing listening to music made by druggies and so he is an Honorary Winner of London Peace Prize. Also he won a literary award. If we all doubt enough what we are unwittingly becoming we might be able to dream. Instead of accepting life in its mad dash we seize a chance to better the world. Volunteers at Kambala and Katherine Low Settlement lead the vanguard. All charities have replaced stars of stage and screen, and I ain't ever going back. Michelle provides amazing treats to the worthy and I would love to take a leaf out of her book too! Planet Organic offer their leftovers and she works at the same time! Grant worked as a performer in the Young VIC and TOURED. WHAT CREATIVE PEOPLE. I HOPE THEY WILL WRITE. Charlie's work has seen distribution of food to homeless and alcohol and drug dependents at therapeutic Cabul Road's herb garden, developing. John Dunbar helped him on a homeless project, a man who lives in a flat he rents since decades where he appears out of step with formal culture, all kinds of experiments in art surround his works, where Mariane Faithful came and still comes perhaps, Yoko and she met through him.... The homeless man who sleeps in the Memorial Garden at times is by some standards discontent, but then I think of the empty stage where economy has halted is like absurdist theatre. In the East we worked with homeless and found Kantor and in Paris peter brook, also favouring simplicity. I am gently growing aware of a neighbour has been working backstage with him, since he directed her in Mahabharata, the indian epic he worked into a six hour film, which she with irish husband performed in. The work he has put on as director is filled with africans, all nations, like a portal to a secret garden of diversity, maybe that is what Camus would have written about, A Huis Clox. Our peace garden, war memorial of sw11, has grown to be that portal to neighbours in lockdown. We did not notice that. Maybe the homeless and birds who live for the day sniffed its roses long ago in paradise gardens. They represent freed culture, like in East Berlin where none paid rent, even after the Wall fell. The sharing we all participate in now is like the Sixties withouth the nonsense.. classes are free maybe the skies are no limit at all...is it possible a universal wage might help? We are told countries are billions in debt, apparentky that means though that we are more imaginative and are more and more sharing without money. The more difficult times are the more cheerful we become, Baldwin said. or someone like him. So maybe that is why we share cheerfulness so much more joyfully, challenges aid. / Some time back Chris Johnston from Fluxx became a friend and his Citizen Theatre is missed by all.
Charlie Wiseman started at Edinburgh Festival with awards for theatre company that toured Dublin, Paris, London, Berlin. There he worked with the old celebrated Volksbuhne/ People's Stage, starting an Ensemble of street vulnerable, former circus workers that toured worldwide. He wrote for the Guardian newspaper on culture while at the Berliner Ensemble he made contacts with Young Vic, aided Heiner Muller, and translated correspondence for Edward Bond. Among awards was a Progress Prize from Berlin Academy of Arts. Charlie has also campaigned..protested against abuse of Refugees at Yarlswood Refugee Detention Centre, where guards often abused, blackmail or raped migrants. Gemini News Agency led to international journalism (including Aga Khan's third world news agency). He returned to work with Jude Kelly, Sue Emmas at Young Vic, Catherine Arton, of 'Be Heard' film shown at Bafta which he assisted on, edited by Lucy V Hay. Also Bettina Jonic, who had a residency The Little Garden at Royal Albert Hall. There he worked, produced, introduced her songs and read from his own work; Lucy Popescu at Brighton Fringe, with an Irene Mensah award, as well as at West Yorkshire Playhouse, invited by Jude Kelly and invited to Windsor Festival/ further directing/writing at Battersea Arts/ Young Vic/ Riverside Studios on 'Jungle of Dreams', his own play about the longing at Berliner Ensemble for a great director, like Brecht to return..if only as a ghost. His work performed in Hyde Park has been compared to Sam Beckett by Greenpeace.
Also contributed to Players International, Guardian, also as editor of Uta Lemper diaries. (Positive reviews received and support from Bob Geldof, Bitter Mirror's Bettina whose work is hailed by Bob Dylan.) He has supported many Amnesty International Campaigns and been written up by Greenpeace. He researched culturally for the Evening Standard, as well as winning Millenium Fellowship, for constant contributions to plight of the homeless, teaching acting, writing, theatre skills, short film on self-expression. He distributes food to Grenfell affected, young offenders institutions, mentally vulnerable in community, numbering up to date about million meals. At Brighton Fringe he also read from Popescu's Good Tourist, charting ethical questions about travel, 'Another Sky' and 'A Country to Call Home', all of which Michael Palin and others support. Link continues to Berlin homeless plays, with support from many Arts and lcoal Council grants, Wolf Biermann's closest Wally Schmitt and endowed by the Academy of Arts/ Stories also published, winning top ranked on Shortbread Short Stories, also in NY and New England. Grassmarket work, applauded by Ewan McGregor as unique. Refugee protest to Calais, as well as Brighton and Edinburgh's Portobello Beach. Worked also financed from Sabrina Guinness at Youth Cable TV, Ken Branagh "the work deserves every respect" and Susan Sarandon. 'Owltime' Reviewed by Edinburgh Festival: "ought to be part of the Offician Festival and taught on school syllabus", and "privilege to be" with Brighton Fringe. 'Charlie has a unique gift for bringing the best out of people and inspires wonderful work.' Henrietta Garnett of Bloomsbury donated to campaigns for London work with Chelsea Theatre. Short film, Big Sister / Bafta performed short. Other work funded by Arts Council and supported by Susan Sarandon. Ken Campbell's assistant director on twenty-four hour by the same, 'The Warp' 2001.
Wiseman also enjoys writing as part of Wingelion Collective in USA, under Trudi Lee Richards direction, a friend and biographer of Mario Luis Cobos. Further performance pieces Hyde Park, and Berlin World March attended by more visitors than all Edinburgh Festival performances.
Ongoing work with Chelsea Theatre with free space to rehearse plays.
Also teaches, ongoing mentoring Ladbroke Grove young, YCTV and support from Vanessa Redgrave, Henrietta Garnett, Kate Smurthwaite who records voice with Tim West OBE.
Noble Peace folk giving charity for free, at Heart Foundation and in community. Also Tony Robinson, Sylvia and Jon Swinden and Rafa de la Rubia for World Without Wars and World Marchers. The Beginning of the End of Nuclear Weapons is a documentary Tony made about Nobel winner too, ICAN 2017 When asked: How can we wake London take responsibility for nuclear? 38 Degrees agreed.
Wiseman is also a Food Waste Hero,who works with Pret A Manger too.
Kew: volunteers can transcribe 19C seeds..plants online Tutorial
Frost Giants,
Joetnar,
Children of Ymir!
Your deeds echo down the ages,
In the poetry of the Skalds!
Rupert Ferguson
Rupert wears no om on his neck, swears at false prophets,
leads Fleets's fleeting nonsense
Away instead of damming flotsam and jetsam,
A gentle sage's rage.
Beware "enemy in unguarded thoughts about self." Biases we maintain may relate to our past. So we can change by not feeling 'bad' as this stops one dealing with past: living in the present, awareness of this moment in time allows one to forget, forgive and move forward. Social science and psychology are what we see of the past and so enable the present as we are meditative beings. Find the watergow within, the Scots for rainbow "How old are you old tree?" I asked. "I haven't counted the rings and my head, said a tree, Count them for me!"
Fungariana Kew's amazing insights into fungi, zombie fungi and ants
In July, Morpheus Under Ground performed the preview of new play Little Sisters. The play addresses issues of displacement and homelessness through the eyes of two young women trapped within the confines of a reality TV show house. Audiences remarked on the dignity, grace and beauty of the characters in the play and the darker aspects resonated and drew comments such as "The more I think about this play the more scary some of the ideas become. The idea that you can be voted out onto the street by people you have never seen is a concept that is truly Orwellian"
Peter Jonas, winner of the 2013 London Peace Prize, contemplates the inner workings of society and its harmful influence on individuals, going back to his roots in Cape Town, where he was already helping street kids, by encouraging them to make murals in the ugly landscapes they had til then inhabited. His artistic work, since arriving in London continues to explore identity, as a half South African, with Dutch ancestors too. He has protested as an individual with a foot in both camps. His work also explores how the mechanical world and that of nature collide, with memorable images of South African traditional dress, to his Gandhi portrait or Cliff Richard who autographed the work.
As the eldest granddaughter of Sir Larry Olivier, artist, Isis Olivier, grew up with a sober view of celebrity. 'He was the same in life as when on film'. This attitude has helped her to develop, first as an aid worker in the Sudan, later as an artist who, as a feminist, has shaped her own platform and views.
David Low creator of infamous Colonel Blimp is most keenly remembered as a plump bald-headed figure with a walrus moustache, decked out in a plethora of decorations from ancient wars, spouting platitudinous and preposterous commentary on the politics of the day, such as: “Gad Sir, Churchill made an irrevocable decision to be guided by circumstances with a firm hand”. Low insisted that his Blimp was genuine and that he had overheard him in a Turkish bath, dressed in the altogether, pronouncing that what Japan did was no concern of Britain’s.
Children of Damascus, a poem by Rupert Ferguson, written in response to the chemical attack on Ghouta
An excerpt Charlie Wiseman's autobiographical story of working, in theatre with disadvantaged. Wiseman has spent much of his life travelling the world working, first with www.grassmarketproject.org on innovative projects, involving real people often from the street, to portray what is going on below the surface of society, later on his own intiative.
'Charlie's work for the Grassmarket Project enabled it to develop around Europe and further, first by being at the centre of the wheel when it involved People's Stage, Berlin. There he used his language skill to find a staggering £50,000 budget for the most enlightened play in their history, involving homeless from the streets where Liza Minelli's Cabaret is set.'Our work has run parallet, innovating and changing forms' Jeremy Weller, Artistic Director Grassmarket Project
This award was set up by Charles Wiseman in 2011 in response to the London riots. As Charlie says he set up the award "to bring to people’s attention the individuals whose work is making changes in their community, whose work is about building neighbourliness, understanding and positive activities. Positive action is the only way to heal and bring about “Peace”.
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