The Golden Room podcast: Episode #1

The Golden Room podcast #1

An Ecobardic Showcase (pt 1)

Welcome to The Golden Room podcast – a celebration of poetry, storytelling, music, song, conversation, and creative fellowship.

Created and hosted by writer, poet, and storyteller Kevan Manwaring, the plan is to release a new episode on the 3^rd Sunday of the month – with this double launch on the Autumn Equinox being the exception! Roughly an hour long, each episode offers an immersive and relaxing medley of contributions – ideal to commute to, cook to, or sit back and unwind to: however you listen you are most welcome into The Golden Room.

The first two episodes offer a chance to eavesdrop upon An Ecobardic Showcase, a special evening which took place in Stroud, Gloucestershire, on 17^th August, 2019. It was a double-celebration of Kevan Manwaring’s 50^th and his doctorate. Proceeds went to Tree Aid – a worthy cause which you can still donate too, here:

https://www.justgiving.com/treeaid

The evening was excellently MCed by the inimitable Anthony Nanson. His links and much of the convivial atmosphere is edited out, to tidy up the raw recording (expertly done by Chantelle Smith; with help from Brendan Georgeson on PA, and thanks to Simon Fairbourn for loan of the recording device), but we hope you still get some sense of the atmosphere. Finally, many thanks to BAFTA Crew composer Rosemary Duxbury, for kindly allowing use of her sublime track, ‘Reverie’. Check out my interview and review of her latest release, ‘Thread of Gold’, after listening to the show.

LISTEN TO THE GOLDEN ROOM PODCAST #01 HERE

Tracks:

1. [00:00] Intro: Kevan Manwaring
2. [00:47] Reverie: Rosemary Duxbury  (Catherine Musker, viola & Patricia Siffert, piano)/[02:15] The Golden Room by Wilfrid Gibson, read by Kevan Manwaring
3. [07:59] Welcome: a song by Chantelle Smith
4. [08:22] Fifty: a poem by Kevan Manwaring
5. [10:46] Mist-covered Mountains: a song by Chantelle Smith
6. [13:20] The Dog: a story by Wayland the Skald
7. [21:21] A Valentine for New Albion: a poem by Jeff Cloves
8. [29:18] Overheard at Ascot; What the I Says: poems by Gabriel Bradford Millar (with Anthony Nanson)
9. [32:35] Pan at My Window: a poem by Richard Austin
10. [34:44] Planet Blues: a song by Sara Vian
11. [37:51] Therapy: a poem by Brendan the Pop Poet
12. [40:22] The Earth, She Moves Within: a poem by Joziat Khimba
13. [45:45] The Butterfly Bishop: story by Kirsty Hartsiotis
14. [55:21] Claw-hammer: Banjo by Scott Freer
15. [59:10] Outro: by Kevan Manwaring/Reverie – reprise.

NEXT: THE GOLDEN ROOM EPISODE #2 An Ecobardic Showcase pt 2 – available from 22nd September. 

Look out for episode #3: 20^th October – An Extinction Cabaret special!

 

 

Wall in the Woods

Along a tangled way I wended

unpicking the stitching of my thoughts,

revisiting the mind’s invisible divisions

 

until there it stood.

 

Tumbledown barrier

overcome

by stumbled trees,

storm-snapped branches.

Wedges of limestone

covered in maps of lichen,

thirsty moss, panting ferns,

rusting vines of wire

grafted to the bough’s skin.

 

A good few days’ graft –

each stone an effort;

a rough-thumbed thought,

a pipe’s pungent respiration.

Chosen and placed

with deliberation;

held by gravity’s cement.

Demarcating

 

space.

 

Green air

the same on both sides.

A wildernessed wood

criss-crossed with rotting boughs,

a paradise of fungus.

An Eden of decay.

Gap-toothed wall,

an absence big enough to walk through.

 

What good does it do?

 

What good

these barriers

we place between us

when

in the end

we are in the woods

together?

 

Kevan Manwaring © 2010

From The Immanent Moment, Awen, 2016

http://www.kevanmanwaring.co.uk/the-immanent-moment.html

 

*****POSTED IN SUPPORT OF THE BRIDGESNOTWALLS CAMPAIGN******

On 20 Jan 2017, we’ll drop banners off bridges around the UK, pledging hope for the future & to take a stand against the rise of the far right. #bridgesnotwalls

http://bridgesnotwalls.uk/