Beside the Sea
Thanks to esmerelda_t (and my sister) for alerting me to this rather gorgeous poetry installation that is taking place around the UK. Peace Camp is a coastal installation curated by director Deborah Warner and actor Fiona Shaw who established:
"Eight murmuring, glowing encampments at some of our most beautiful and remote coastal locations. Designed to be visited between dusk and dawn, Peace Camp is a poignant exploration of love poetry and a celebration of the extraordinary variety and beauty of our coastline.
Alongside the live installations, the project will also paint an audible portrait of the nation with the creation of a virtual Peace Camp online. The people of the UK are invited to nominate and record their favourite love poems and submit their own messages, creating an online anthology that celebrates our languages, dialects and accents as well as our rich poetic tradition."
Many of my favourite poems have already been added to the anthology and one of the "rich dialects" contributing to the murmuring is none other than Ioan Gruffudd who has read Robert Graves' Counting the Beats, the anonymous Ar Lan Y Mor / Beside the Sea, (this is beautiful beyond belief), and John Donne's Canonisation (would it be uncouth to squeeeee over Ioan Gruffudd reading John Donne?) Just follow the links to hear the readings.
Other highlights include Cillian Murphy reading Yeats' Oh Do Not Love To Long and When You Are Old and Grey and, for anyone who is still weeping over the death of Falstaff, Simon Russell Beale reading Donne's The Good Morrow and Keats' Le Belle Dame Sans Merci. There are also two recordings of Donne's To His Mistress Going To Bed by Alun Armstrong and Cliff Burnett. I don't know Burnett at all but I much prefer his reading to Armstrong's.
One of my own favourite poems, Edwin Morgan's One Cigarette is also included in the anthology but no one has recorded it yet so I'm very tempted to do it myself :}
One of the "glowing encampments" is on one of the beaches at home on Lewis; Traigh Na Clibhe or Cliff Beach. This also happens to be where my sister and her partner camp on a regular basis and when I was at home a fortnight ago she was complaining about not being able to go camping because the beach was over run with "weirdos from the mainland". Ahem. Still, given that the Peace Camp website describes the terrain of Lewis as being "extraordinarily bleak" she perhaps has a right to be miffed!
Peace Camp, Traigh na Clibhe
"Eight murmuring, glowing encampments at some of our most beautiful and remote coastal locations. Designed to be visited between dusk and dawn, Peace Camp is a poignant exploration of love poetry and a celebration of the extraordinary variety and beauty of our coastline.
Alongside the live installations, the project will also paint an audible portrait of the nation with the creation of a virtual Peace Camp online. The people of the UK are invited to nominate and record their favourite love poems and submit their own messages, creating an online anthology that celebrates our languages, dialects and accents as well as our rich poetic tradition."
Many of my favourite poems have already been added to the anthology and one of the "rich dialects" contributing to the murmuring is none other than Ioan Gruffudd who has read Robert Graves' Counting the Beats, the anonymous Ar Lan Y Mor / Beside the Sea, (this is beautiful beyond belief), and John Donne's Canonisation (would it be uncouth to squeeeee over Ioan Gruffudd reading John Donne?) Just follow the links to hear the readings.
Other highlights include Cillian Murphy reading Yeats' Oh Do Not Love To Long and When You Are Old and Grey and, for anyone who is still weeping over the death of Falstaff, Simon Russell Beale reading Donne's The Good Morrow and Keats' Le Belle Dame Sans Merci. There are also two recordings of Donne's To His Mistress Going To Bed by Alun Armstrong and Cliff Burnett. I don't know Burnett at all but I much prefer his reading to Armstrong's.
One of my own favourite poems, Edwin Morgan's One Cigarette is also included in the anthology but no one has recorded it yet so I'm very tempted to do it myself :}
One of the "glowing encampments" is on one of the beaches at home on Lewis; Traigh Na Clibhe or Cliff Beach. This also happens to be where my sister and her partner camp on a regular basis and when I was at home a fortnight ago she was complaining about not being able to go camping because the beach was over run with "weirdos from the mainland". Ahem. Still, given that the Peace Camp website describes the terrain of Lewis as being "extraordinarily bleak" she perhaps has a right to be miffed!
Peace Camp, Traigh na Clibhe