How lovely to have been involved in photographer Simone Rudolphi’s first Sunday Salon.
Simone brought a small group of like-minded folk together in her home on Sunday evening. Attendees were offered drinks, delicious homemade avocado soup and divine chocolates from a local chocolatier.
They joined me in Simone’s front room and listened as I performed some of my poems including Swifts Screech and Circle in the Afternoon Sun and my Hartley Pit Disaster poem, History Lesson. I performed it ahead of the disaster’s 152nd anniversary tomorrow.
I also read some of my longer autobiographical pieces published in a variety of local publications including Michael Chaplin’s Come and See The Beguiling Story of the Tyneside Cinema.
I arrived in Durham on Sunday afternoon. It was wonderful to wander through a dark and gloomy city to the cathedral and touch base with St Cuthbert, Fenwick Lawson’s Pieta plus this wonderful painting by Paula Rego.
I talked with one of the cathedral’s senior steward about his life as a miner and mining engineer. He also told me about Midge, the Domino playing dog from Teesdale. True story.
The next Sunday Salon takes place in February. For more information follow her on Twitter @SimonesSalon
