Duino Elegies, 1

Johnny Marsh: Rilke handout: December 2011

Duino Elegies, 2

Johnny Marsh: Rilke handout: December 2011

Duino Elegies - A Community Reading

Please join us for a community reading of Rainer Maria Rilke's 'Duino Elegies' at the Rose and Crown Inn, Mayfield, on Sunday 4th December 2011, from 6 o'clock. All are welcome and there is no charge for the evening, although contributions will be gratefully accepted on behalf of Sussex Oakleaf.

The Unimaginable Zero Summer Picnic

Four Quarters Exhibition Notes

The exhibition is now over. Rebecca, Johnny and I have returned to our respective homes and the little shop we called our own for two weeks is empty again. The Mayfield Fringe has also come to a close and the village is quiet once more.

We three Quarters had fun though, during our two week occupation, meeting initially on the evening of 4th May to cover the walls and find a home for our work:





Johnny read from Eliot's 'Four Quartets':


while Rebecca hunted for scanned pages from her journal:


and I relaxed:


Over the next two days the show took shape:









On Wednesday 11th we held the Red Read, an evening of stories and poems on the subject of Little Red Riding Hood:





and Sauvage the dog found her inner wolf:


On Saturday 21st, we closed the show with 'Tea and Scones with Eliot', a group reading of 'Four Quartets'. It turned out to be a truly Anglo-American affair, with seven Americans among the twenty-one strong gathering. I loved listening to the changes in voice and accent as the poem was passed around.



We were also lucky enough to have T S Eliot's dinner jacket with us:



And finally here we are in photograph taken by Rebecca's friend Cuyler just before the show ended:

Red Read

linocut by Jay Luttman-Johnson

Rather belated notice, but there will be a Red Read tonight at No 1 London House in Mayfield, East Sussex. This is part of the ongoing Four Quarters exhibition. The reading begins at 7.30pm - come one and all with your favourite retellings of the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale - your own or someone elses. All are welcome to this free event, which is part of the fabulous Mayfield Fringe Festival!

May Day Itinerary

Sunrise: 5.40 am

Sunset: 8.30 pm

Sunrise. Beat the bounds of Parson's Wood and then return to Johnny's house for a hearty breakfast.

Mid-morning. Gather ivy for the maypole, pausing in the fields to read 'Spring' from Vita Sackville-West's The Land; Philip Larkin's 'The Whitsun Weddings' (because we've come over all epithalamic after the Royal Wedding) and to begin reading Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm. Back to Johnny's again for lunch and strawberry upside-down cake.

Afternoon. Prepare rags and ribbons for the maypole and continue reading Cold Comfort Farm. Return to the woods to turn the summer solstice dancing tree into a maypole.

Sunset. An early supper of roast lamb, asparagus, purple sprouting and new potatoes, followed by a final visit to the woods.

Four Quarters Exhibition

02/02/2011 - Candlemas Itinerary

Eve of St Agnes by John Everett Millais, 1857

Sunrise: 07:38 am

Sunset: 16:51 pm

Sunrise. Beat the bounds of Parson's Wood and back to Johnny's for a hearty and warming breakfast.

Mid-morning. Make a bed in the woods for our 'Little Brigid' corn dolly. Candlemas readings, including 1 Corinthians, chapter 15. Lunch followed by tea and zesty marmalade cake.

Sunset. Walk up Pennybridge and back down into the woods to visit the spring and the Clootie Tree. Then back to Johnny's for split pea and ham soup. A long evening of red wine and poetry: Keats's 'The Eve of St Agnes' and a candlelit reading of T.S. Eliot's 'Four Quartets'.

Cross-quarters 2011

While we completed our year of Quarters with the autumn equinox in September 2010, we have decided to continue with the Four Quarters collaborative for another year - this time spending each of the cross-quarters in the same dozen acres of the Sussex Weald.

The first cross-quarter day of 2011 will be February 2 - Candlemas, the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, Imbolc or St Brigid's day - take your pick. Marking the halfway point between the winter solstice and vernal equinox, this is a feast day associated with divination, fire and purification, marking the beginning of a month of ravaging wolves and cakes! It is the day snakes wake up, foxes mate, and ewes give birth and begin lactating.

We will also be in the woods on May Day (Beltane), Lammas, and Samhain (Halloween or All Soul's Day) and will be reporting back here in due course.