Come into the garden, Maud

Saturday took me to Ashbourne Festival for a reading of poetry about music and water. The regnant Poet Laureate of the Peak, Ann Atkinson, did the ‘music’ bit and I did the bit about water. It was a brilliant, friendly event proving that even a simple change of location can brighten up a poetry reading. Instead of a stuffy room where everyone wants to be outside, we were on the banks of the river Dove in a beautiful garden – 30 years’ worth of roses, honeysuckle, trees and outrageously fecund shrubbery. Someone has put their heart and soul into this place, for the benefit of other people as well as themselves – it was a properly sensual, stunning location.

Afterwards we went to see the Brodsky Quartet, a string quartet who performed a fantastic set in Ashbourne’s cathedral-like church. I suddenly remembered how inspiring a thing it is to see other people creating in a different art form. Music is a language I don’t speak, and to see these four people working it so fluently was a delight.

The following day I was back on the canal, working my boat up a flight of locks in Shropshire, and was helped by a young bloke who clearly knew what he was doing. This isn’t as common as you might think – John is from a boating family and worked the locks with a simple, elegant rhythm that comes of long practice. I was all admiration again – full of pleasure at someone else’s skill. Every one of these made me want to write. It’s called ekphrasis – making a work of art in reaction to another one. Why not have a go – use a painting, a piece of music, a sculpture and examine it closely, then see what comes out of it?