Do come and join us! It’s our first local craft fair – we have artists, textile artists, potters, a glass artist, printmakers, a jeweller – and a delicious pop-up cafe by Eco Nature…



A post from Chris.
Advent begins on Sunday. I love to allow seasons like this to shape some contemplation, and so intend to put together a daily reflection thing via my blog. Does anyone want to contribute?
Advent is about anticipating something better. Hoping for light that is still to come, even in present darkness. Do whatever you like with this this. Could be a poem, an image, a video clip, a song, or a painting, or anything else that provides a space for others to be still for a moment and reflect.
How is it that still, you love things by becoming them?
How was it that this brown-skinned man with the heart of a woman
Took upon herself another name for everything, so we could
Encounter her in all these beautiful things and bleed with her when she
Lies broken? And just when all seems lost, she whispers still –
See, I am making all things new.
Even you.
It can be hard at first to step aside from both secular and religious cliches about the approach of Christmas, at least until you allow yourself a bit of space to think again about the nature of this season.
- the time when winter is still deepening, the coldness increasing, the days shortening
- the creak of increasing Christmas pressure coming at us from our screens
- fears of scarcity despite our abundance
- the end of last year and the approach of the next
- the certain knowledge that there will be a new spring
- the simple, all surpassing idea of immanuel, the god who loves things by becoming them
If you would like to join us for the journey, reply here or drop me a message. You need espouse no particular position of faith. Just help our hearts open a little when we need it most.
After the apocalypse is now out on all those unmentionable global websites that used to sell books and now sell everything.
It is also available on our website here, so forget what I just said.
After all the hard work by lots of people to get the book into some kind of shape – the editing, the design work, the proof reading… and of course Si’s magnificent images – I think it time to take make grateful pause.
It is not perfect. A few errors slipped through. The print quality on the images has not totally passed the Smith test. Despite this, I am feel a sense of satisfaction that I have not always felt after a book has been completed. I think it is because this book, despite its limitations, is as honest as I can be. Its limitations are my limitations. If it carries any hope, any beauty- these are ones that I have lived through or am reaching towards. Also, despite the commercial nature of any project like this, the book was not written to sell anything. It started in frustration, anger and dissatisfaction with the world we have made, and ends in a great sigh of connection with the spirit that sings within us all.
I hope people will read it, but if you don’t that is OK. I needed to say these things anyway. More than this though, I feel a sense of responsibility towards the ideas that the book contains.
I stand by the anger. There is lots to be angry about. But we can not exist on anger alone.
I appreciate the pause that poetry gave me, the chance to ponder and reframe the way we look. But pausing is only the beginning of change.
And even if the book offers no blueprint for betterment (because I know my limitations) I think it carries some clues. It feels to me as if these are not my own insights, but ones I have discovered, almost by accident, in the margins of the scribbles I was making as poetry was forming. This is the gift of poetry – it takes is both inside ourselves and then, if we are lucky, it draws us towards new places.
Or perhaps it is nothing to do with luck. My contention is that if a solution is anything at all, it begins in the ‘theatre of the spirit’ (as Havel put it), or to put it another way, we first have to re-encounter the meaning of our lives as individuals, but even more so collectively. We have to remember that the human world we live in has been made by humans, so it is quite possible to re-make it.
In the next season of the life of this book, I hope to be bring together some actual ‘theatres of the spirit’, by putting together some gatherings where we read together and dream together. If you are interesting in hosting/attending then get in touch.

It is hard to choose poems from the book now. They are all fragments of a five year journey. But this one will do.
.
I want to live
.
I want to live in a world in which refugees are welcomed
As if coming home. As if the food they are given
Was cooked by their own mothers.
.
I want to live in a world in which people share what they have
With those who have nothing. Where fear of scarcity is foolish
Because we finally recognised abundance.
.
I want to live in a world in which love for neighbours
Made hedges and fences inconvenient. As if real estate
Is not real after all.
.
I want to live in a world in which guns are things for museums
Behind glass with suits of armour. Where tanks are
Used only to store liquid.
.
I want to live in a world in which nothing is expendable, as if landfills
were already full. As if bags of bolts and empty cans
Can be used again tomorrow.
.
I want to live in a world in which children are thrilled by birdsong
and gloriously appalled by black beetles. Where great adventure is made
Out of mountain and forest.
.
I want to live…
I have a wonderfully spacious table, made by Chris. He used the framework from a friend’s greenhouse, when they moved away and attached a piece of marine ply to it, knowing it would last well with the clay and water. He even attached castors to the legs, so that it could be positioned in the room according to the activity being undertaken and how many of us are gathered to make!
So, how is it that I end up, working on my own, but still squashed into a small space at the end of the table for making? Gradually, tools, machinery, drying clay, works in progress, notes… all spread out and take up the space..
Are you the same..?
Chris participated in a zoom reading with a couple of friends the other night to mark National Poetry day. It was a lovely evening, full of those tender moments that only poetry can bring. It was recorded, so if you fancy dipping in to some poetry, I’ve posted them here.
Chris was reading poems (mostly) from hie new book, which can now be ordered directly from here (as well as the usual Amazon behemoth and the like).
Those who kindly pre-ordered their copies will be getting them soon too – we are waiting for a batch to arrive here.
Here are the two recordings.
We are planning an evening of poetry on Thursday evening (6th October 2022) – we would like to invite you to join us for a (free) evening reading of original poetry to mark National Poetry Day. It would not be the same without you!
Grab yourself a glass of wine or your favourite tea, then settle down for an evening of good chat, lots of laughter and perhaps even a few tears – because after all, poetry is spiritual.
As well as our very own Chris Goan, we will be hearing from two fantastic guest poets, Vicky Allen and Chris Fosten. All three have worked together on previous collaborations as well as developing their own work.
Here is the link.
The event will be on Thursday evening at 8pm.
Hopefully, see you there.
Michaela
We will be using Zoom.
Topic: Poetry day
Time: Oct 6, 2022 08:00 PM London
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 860 9980 9515
Passcode: 868952
Words from Chris:
It has been a long time coming. Five years in fact. It started out when Si Smith (more of him later) asked me to do a kind of poet-in-residence thing at an art exhibition he was curating entitled ‘World upside down’ back in 2017.
This exhibition was inspired (if that is the right word) by Donald Trump’s use of the Beatitudes in his inauguration speech. For me, this began a long period of writing words of resistance against an increasingly right wing world ignoring the crises of climate change and widening inequality.
A lot has happened over the last five years. Trump came and almost went. His trusty side-kick Boris Johnson the same. Oh, and we had this thing called a pandemic.
Writing protest poems is a kind of sickness – I found myself being sucked inside a vortex of negativity. I could still see compassion and goodness but it seemed stilted, fleeting and fragile. Then the Great Silence caused us all to STOP.
What next? Where do we see hope? What have we learned and where do we find inspiration for the journey to come?
These three periods – before, during and after the apocalypse give shape to this book which will be out very soon!
I am so grateful to Si for his incredible images. He did them at a time when he was desperately trying to work on another big project (which I hope to be able to shout about in the future.)
If you have never seen his work before, he is an artist, illustrator, print maker and graphic novelist based in Leeds. Some of his work includes 40 which we collaborated on and the beautiful How to disappear completely.
It’s a regular theme in our work. To be, to dwell, to rest..
Over the last 48 hours, I have driven from Glasgow (from a makers market) to Nairn (to see a friend and to make a pottery delivery) then back to home.
But I have used that time to rest, to dwell, to think.. To talk things over. To just sit by the shore. To walk in the edge of the sea. To play with their dog. To sing along to CDs in the car. To be cooked for and to be understood and to be finding time to find me.
I’d recommend it.
After a few months of making for shops, commissions and fairs, I decided to have a week of playing with clay – here’s one of the sculptures I created. It’s a reflection on a poem by Chris about how we sometimes need to be low down, near the curve of the earth, seeing the world from a seated position, in order to look upwards and to know that we are held.
I enjoyed the process, the letting go, the thinking bigger.
Today, I was back to some orders, but with a fresh eye and a renewed spirit.