The Mist, Rain and Poetry Festival (West Riding).

Ah, the West Rid­ing !  All that Pen­nine weather. Actu­ally pleas­ant enough for autumn as we wound into Wharfedale, stop­ping at the Wharfedale Inn at Arthing­ton for Black Sheep and Fish and Chips (and mushy peas, of course).  But head­ing up from Keigh­ley pst Haworth and Oxen­hope — a glimpse of smoke down in the val­ley from the K&WVR — on the roads which gradu­ally climb the con­tours along the side of the val­ley, fringed by mill­stone grit walls, we found deteri­or­at­ing weather.  We entered the clouds and lost the scenery, except for 100yards of bleak and tree­less moor on either side, and the occa­sional totally isol­ated row of cot­tages about which the only pos­sible ques­tion is “why?”  But as we came over the top into Calder­dale through the mist ahead appeared Hep­ton­stall church tower, grey against a grey land­scape and cloud­scape.  For­tu­nately, once we got up to Hep­ton­stall the rain was inter­mit­tent, although the grey clouds racing across the top of the val­leys gave no hope of sun­shine.  Noticed that the Meth­od­ist Chapel had numer­ous umbrella racks.  Also that Sylvia Plath’s grave in the over­flow church­yard is sadly neg­lected, though a few wil­ted sun­flowers and col­lec­tion of plastic Venus of Wil­lendorf nestled amongst the grass and weeds.  Out bey­ond the vil­lage onto the ridge and then dropped down to find Lumb Bank.  Hughes and Plath had a splen­did view from there, in whatever weather, and even on such a grey day the turn­ing leaves were a splen­did sight.  Up an old stone track­and fur­ther along the ridge then via the ham­let of Slack to the other side where a wood-edge path above a pre­cip­it­ous drop led us back to Heptonstall.  

After tea and cake at Milly’s café in Myth­olm­royd to the Ted Hughes Theatre at Myth­olm­royd school, where Ian Duhig and Anthony Thwaite were read­ing.  Hadn’t expec­ted to like Ian Duhig’s work much, and didn’t, though he reads much bet­ter than he used to, and had delib­er­ately chosen poems which were fairly access­ible on first hear­ing. But any poem which needs a longer intro­duc­tion than poem is not really try­ing to be accessible.

And Anthony Thwaite was a dis­ap­point­ment.  He’d chosen to read only per­sonal auto­bi­o­graph­ical poems but none of them seemed to rise bey­ond the spe­cific to the uni­ver­sal, nor did they attempt to.  Rather a thin offer­ing, like the day’s Pen­nine rain.  At least Ted Hughes had some guts to his poems.