Category Archive

Dear Philip,

Will you please pass on my heartfelt thanks to the team at Arvon —  everyone who was instrumental in donating the first prize in the Arthritis Care creative writing contest. What a wonderful prize it has been, from the choosing of a suitable course, through the tension of selection, to the course itself. This prize has made my summer and autumn quite memorable.

I have just returned from a week at The Hurst in Shropshire. The two tutors on this course, (selected, advanced fiction 8-13 October), were Jacob Ross and Maggie Gee. Both eminent and prolific writers, they proved to be outstanding tutors too.

Their generosity with time and commitment was staggering — they were on call from breakfast to bedtime, fitting in many extra sessions as personal tutorials and ensuring they used social occasions to continue with instruction and advice.

I feel very privileged to have spent these days in such a beautiful setting and among such inspiring people. Thank you for all of this.

As you know, at The Hurst, one is pretty well incommunicado unless one’s very determined, so it was not until I arrived home that I heard I had also been named runner-up in the Guildford Book Festival’s short story contest, judged by Adele Parks. With that and Arvon coming in the same week, I feel I am a real writer!

Visit editorialgirl’s experience at the Hurst - thanks to Editorialgirl for the picture above, taken at the Hurst in September.

There could be no more fitting visitors to The Hurst than members of the Mary Webb Society. It was founded in 1972 to foster an appreciation of her writings and of the Shropshire countryside which she loved. The 30 acre grounds of The Hurst were included in the Society’s annual exploration on foot of the landscape which inspired her writings.

Their walk began at St George’s churchyard, Clun, where John and Helen Osborne, the last owners of The Hurst are buried. “Everyone is intrigued to know how John Osborne made the life journey from Look Back in Anger to one of Housman’s quietest places under the sun.” explained Keith Pybus. “Although at first glance you couldn’t imagine two more different writers, Mary Webb would have understood Osborne’s love of walking these hills with the labradors and his passionate claim that he had ‘the best view in England’ down the Clun Valley from his upper lawn. The house was built in 1812, so I suppose we can also say that it is part of Mary Webb’s Shropshire. You can’t imagine a place which better combines a writer’s retreat with such an inspiring setting. John Osborne said to his wife Helen that buying The Hurst was the “Best thing we’ve ever done Marvellous!” He wrote to a friend “I still can’t get over the triumphant inspiration of coming here. Not for the ‘final years’ but as a new outburst of energy.”

“Everyone who walks these lovely grounds realises what a remarkable spot this is. I felt if the Mary Webb members didn’t tear themselves away they wouldn’t complete their walk. They seemed to have loved the place as much as we do, as we are now talking to them about hosting their Summer School at The Hurst.”

The text of Gone to Earth can be found on the Project Gutenberg site.  The complete text of her other works, including Precious Bane, are also available online .

This is the inspirational story of one mother and daughter - Rachel and Clemmy - who attended an Arvon writing course at the Hurst together, sharing a bedroom, contributing to the creative writing classes together, being inspired by and learning from each other. Rachel, the mother, writes…

Signing up for an Arvon course as mother and daughter felt both rather brave and pleasurably cosy.  At least we would each know one other person, we said on the long and beautiful drive to The Hurst, and would be familiar with our room-mate’s bad habits before we arrived - and it would be a treat for us to spend a few days together without the other children.  (Clemmy, 16, is the oldest of five.)  In fact I think we had both given more thought to that perspective than to the one which struck our fellow participants, but as the week went on I felt increasingly conscious of how lucky I was that Clemmy had been prepared to come with me, to spend five days sharing not only a bedroom but her creative space as well.

I was very touched by the way the tutors, staff and other course members responded to Clemmy.  Everyone treated her exactly like another writer, listening with respect to her contributions to discussion and including her in mealtime conversations and activities.  I was also immensely proud of her for throwing herself into the course - she read a story she had written during the week on the last night, along with everyone else, and won joint first prize in the story slam we organised with her piece on the Seven Deadly Sins.  I loved watching her blossom in the unique Arvon atmosphere of encouragement and stimulation, and seeing her through other people’s eyes - and it was great to have her there to try my own drafts and ideas out on, too.

We both got a huge amount out of the course, not least acquiring a network of new friends and fellow writers to share ideas, resources and frustrations with.  One of our wonderful tutors told us the week was about fermenting our ideas, skills and talents, and Clemmy and I certainly came away bubbling over with excitement about our writing.  On the drive home we plotted out a series of four children’s books which we plan to write together - though so far, while Clemmy has been hard at work on a project of her own (10,000 words and counting) I have been rather more subsumed by domestic life, as the younger children have reclaimed their share of me!

Having Clemmy there certainly enhanced my own pleasure and satisfaction in the course, and I, for one, will cherish the memory of a very special shared experience with my daughter.  

This very excellent photo of a book held against sunlight was taken by Netherlands photographer Marc van Agteren. See more of his photos at www.shotsbyme.com. The photo sums up summer reading, so we asked Arvon staff what books they were reading this summer. Here’s what some of them said:

Cynthia Rogerson (Moniack Mhor) is reading Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Ariane Koek (Arvon London) is reading Young Hearts Crying by Richard Yates 

Emma Johnson (Arvon London) is reading Alis by Naomi Rich

Rachel Humphries (Moniack Mhor) is reading Under the Skin by Michel Faber

Kerry Watson (the Hurst) is reading London Orbital by Iain Sinclair 

Philip Cowell (Arvon London) is reading Land’s End by Michael Cunningham 

Pauline Smith (Totleigh Barton) is reading The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

Julia Wheadon (Totleigh Barton) is reading Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna

Stephen May (Lumb Bank) is reading Marilyn and Me by Shanta Everington

Nick Murza (Arvon London) is reading Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome

Bathed, creamed and combed,
I choose my evening self
from the folded personae available.

A supporting role, perhaps.
Empathy in pink,
and understudied, comfortable shoes.

A mixed message may be conveyed
by separates.

The dress overstates things,
suggesting joined-up thinking,
all-of-a-piece
from head to hem.

I have emerged from muddy neutrals
and wish to discard
the comfort blanket.

But perhaps I’ll save the evening dress and diamonds
till Friday.

This new poem was written by Diana Harris at the Hurst - John Osborne’s former home which is now Arvon’s latest writing house where over a thousand writers every year spend a week of their lives devoted to their writerly craft.

‘I have the best view in England’
John Osborne, playwright, on the view down the Clun Valley from his garden at the Hurst in Shropshire

On Saturday June 23rd and Sunday 24th from 2pm to 6pm visitors to Clun Gardens Open will be able, for the first time, to see for themselves John Osborne’s ‘best view in England.’

For the last eight years of his life, the author of Look Back in Anger, enjoyed the elevated view down the Clun Valley and other delights of his 30 acre estate. Peter Salmon, centre director of The John Osborne Arvon Centre said “We are very happy and privileged to be joining with 14 other gardens in and around Clun. Naturally, I think The Hurst has something special to offer. The woodland here is very fine. We have a splendid tulip tree which should be in bloom and a very fine stand of Wellingtonias which must have cost a fortune in the 19th century.”

Each year nearly 1,000 established and would-be writers attend the many courses at The Hurst. “We have devised two trails that take the visitor past the house, around the gardens, through the woods, to Osborne’s view” said Peter. “Outside the house one of us will be telling racy anecdotes from John Osborne’s life here. In addition we have selected twenty or so quotations from garden and countryside poems, which add a touch of I-Spy to the walk.”

“They can take a cup of tea and a cake by the pool before having a look at the picturesque Dingle. Week after week we get the chance to see how people are inspired by the surroundings here, I’m sure our garden visitors will feel the same.

It’s fitting that Clun Gardens Open is in aid of St George’s Church, as both John and Helen Osborne are buried there.”     

The Hurst (Clunton, Craven Arms, Shropshire, SY7 0JA) is approached up a private drive off B4368 Craven Arms to Clun road, one mile before Clun. Tickets from The Hurst and other gardens on the day. A ticket for all gardens is £4, one garden only 50p. Call Dan on 01588 640658 for more details about the Hurst and our writing courses at John Osborne’s former home.

Ange Drinnan wrote a poem about the Hurst, Arvon’s writing house in Shropshire.

Hurst May

A passover week: from the beginning, endings
hover, a flock of birds beating
their wings against Saturday.

Fears about death
of languages. Stories
of exile and surviving attack.

Memories imported across borders,
some smuggled, some stowed away.
Internal tyrants censor words.

I cross a border,
to Wales, with a wrong turn to Clun,
and wonder about being in between.

In between but part of a circle,
the face of a clock.
The spaces between the numerals still count.

Spanning the years, a family
tree of surprises, including Daddy long legs.
We sup wine and Shropshire bluebelled.

I picture us as a glowing
necklace of poems, each taking
a bright bead for the journey home.

You can read this poem and lots more  writing at the Arvon Friends website

As ever, it’s a bright blue sunny day here at the Hurst, made lovely by the presence of golden daffodils, budding azaleas, dappled things of all make and main, and the delightful presence of our current phalanx of poets - tutored by Patience Agbabi and Patricia Debney - wandering about and capturing the speech rhythms of delirious nature in delicate, limpid verse or brusque, urgent quatrains.

Yes, spring has come to the Hurst, and with it those merry-makers of the English language, the poets. We’ve got a terrific group this week – we have a terrific group every week at the Hurst – who have grasped the Arvon bull by the horns, and are churning out poems by the fistful, as well as cooking up a storm, engaging in exciting debates about issues of import, and having a quiet drink at the end of a long day to celebrate a job well done. Then a quick dip into the dream world of the unconscious, before another day behind the mule that is poetry.

Last week – playwrights, under the wonderful, entertaining tutelage of Tim Fountain and Natasha Betteridge. It was our first open programme week of the year, crowned by a final day of performing plays by all 14 participants, in perhaps the most epic day of theatre since Euripides pulled up stumps, took his bat and ball home, and declared the Greek Empire decayed beyond the reaches of satire.

We’ve got more theatre coming up, of course, with David Eldridge and Robert Holman spending the week with us from May 7 to 12. The guest will be Dominic Cooke, Associate Director at the Royal Court Theatre, who will be joining us in a week famous in theatrical circles for the first performance of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger on May 8, 1956. And as we’re in Mr Osborne’s lodgings, we were very excited when Dominic accepted our invitation.

So if you have the next Look Back in Anger lodged in you and you just can’t get it out, why not join us in early May? The daffys will be on their last legs, but that’s only because they have to make way for the rhododendrons, blue bells and, you know that flower that’s sort of pink, but kind of white? The thingy-whatsit? Lotsa them, too.

Right, back to the garden to pound out some unsprung villanelles.

Respect.

Pete

(Peter Salmon, Centre Director, Hurst)

Is the Hurst (The John Osborne Arvon Centre for creative writing) some sort of TARDIS? No, there’s surely been a mistake - we’re smaller on the inside!

The Hurst seems to have been at the centre of some sort of time warp for the last couple of weeks.

Kerry and Peter (our new Centre Directors) dashed off to London last Monday (as usual with just enough time to catch their train) for the initial programming meeting of 2008 whilst I spent a few days in the company of Paul Warwick and Ed Collier. “Not THE Paul and Ed?” I hear you cry. Yes the very same - Ex-Centre Directors and lifetime Hurstmen. They’ve hired the centre lock stock and barrel for the Dark Room, a development project for devising theatre companies (now in its third year) and settled into the office as if they had both put on a comfortable old pair of slippers. They commandeered the phone, complained about the heating, and unplugged all the network cables. Once logged into their fancy IMacPod Lap Arts Council funded thingies they adopted that familiar hunched stance emerging from their collective trance only to answer (in bullet point form) my inane questions about the state of their careers/relationships etc.

It’s a pleasure to have Ed and Paul back and the first two weeks of their visit seem to have gone off swimmingly. Once they have impro’d their way back to the big smoke, we will welcome Kings School for a week of prose and performance poetry from Lynne Bryan and Marcus Moore. Our old friend, teacher, committee member and general good egg, Katie Adam has engineered this course with her usual precision. Even though it looks unlikely that she’ll be here in person, I have no doubt her considerable organisational skills and passion for all things creative will shine through. Katie knows the centre so well, we sometimes ring her for advice on repairing the boiler and unblocking the dishwasher…

And then to the open programme, kicking off this year in mid April with a Playwriting course in the capable hands of Tim Fountain and Natasha Betteridge. Following hot on their heels - with Freedom in Form - will be Patience Agbabi and Patricia Debney. We will then be in the midst of a run that will last until December, with the centre resembling anything but a Dark Room..

Editor’s note - We can confirm that the Hurst is not a TARDIS (a Time And Relative Dimension In Space) - the blue police box made famous in Dr Who, and invented by BBC screen writer Anthony Coburn, after he edited C. E. Webber’s script of the very first Dr Who show. The TARDIS was conceived out of budget restrictions - the Doctor needed to travel in something but finances required the vehicle to be simple and cheap to make. The word TARDIS is now commonly used to refer to something that is bigger on the inside than the outside.

And in this respect perhaps, after all, Arvon is very TARDIS-like.

Best wishes
Dan Pavitt
Administrator
The Hurst

As ever it’s been a busy time at the Hurst Shop – we had open courses right up to the middle of December, and then leapt straight back into things on January 22, with a terrific partnership week with Princess Royal Trust for Carers. They spent the week in the esteemed company of tutors Ian Marchant and Jemma Kennedy, with Jo Shapcott featuring as our guest reader. While any number of aesthetic goals were reached, for us the highlight was to find that one of the participants had not been to the pub in sixteen years – a duck she broke on the Tuesday. And the Wednesday. And the Thursday…As a reward for rejoining the fray, she was awarded our first Champagne Moment of 2007.

Meanwhile we’ve been girding our loins for the start of the Open Programme (all our courses advertised in this year’s Arvon brochure). The bookings have been thundering in, and everyone who has booked seems really, really nice, so I’d encourage you to join their number. Space prohibits a list of highlights, but I’m sure you carry your Arvon Course guide with you wherever you go, and have the Arvon Foundation as your home page (Google is so 2005), so I’m sure you’re up to speed.

Before the Open Programme begins we have a number of School Weeks, which are always a highlight. If you’re a teacher and you haven’t brought a group to the Hurst, then you’re obviously insane. Check out the young people pages at www.arvonfoundation.org for more details.

Aside from things writerly, scrumping fans – and who isn’t a scrumping fan? – will be excited to hear that our local committee member Keith Pybus recently selected a number of apples from our orchard for dating and identification. It seems most of the trees were planted in the late 19th Century, and that one of the varieties – called a Curl Tail – is a rare apple, first recorded in Woking in 1872 and not before recorded in the Marches. So if you visit us during October/November next year, and are partial to rare and strange apples, you’re in for a treat.

Finally, congratulations to all at Pentabus Theatre, who were nominated for a South Bank show Decibel Award, which recognises work which contributes to the development and promotion of ethnic diversity in the arts. The nomination was for White Open Spaces, a theatre piece developed at the Hurst in November 2005.We look forward to seeing you here soon

Peter & Kerry, Centre Directors, and Dan, the Administrator

We’re looking for Arvon Friends to share their experiences of the Arvon courses they have been on. Have you ever been on an Arvon writing course? Which writing house did you visit? How was your journey there and back? How did you feel on the Monday night as you met your fellow writers for the week? What was unexpected? Did you experience any writing epiphanies? What did you cook and did people like your meal? Who were your tutors and your mid-week guest reader? What kind of weather did you have, what colour were the skies? What inspired you most when you were there (and what didn’t?) With Arvon’s fortieth birthday coming up next year (our first course, with Ted Hughes as guest reader, was in 196 we’re going to collect as many stories about Arvon experiences as possible. Add your experience by clicking on Comments…