Photographic memory

Last weekend, I was back at Liverpool's Open Eye Gallery for the eleventh, and final, instalment of this year's European Poetry Festival. More on that in a future post, however, as I have other thoughts to share right now. 

My visit to the Mann Island photography outpost in 2024 sparked me to write a piece to enter into a fancy art magazine competition. This pageant's details had been wafted under my nose by Roma Havers, who had been facilitating the Critics Collective, a Manchester Poetry Library initiative for which I was lucky enough to have been selected to join the ranks. Our six-week session series – which featured presentations and workshops led by guests including Khairani Barokka, Kit Fan and John McAuliffe – culminated in participants writing and placing (or attempting to place) reviews.

I have some incoming in PN Review (my second appearance sporting my jaunty new critic's hat) and The North. I've seen the proofs for both, so I guess they're imminent. I do not, on the other hand, have anything in the fancy art magazine. Unperturbed, I tinkered with the piece slightly and submitted it to another fancy prize, and that got me nowhere either. 

Hey-ho. It felt a shame, as the exhibition I'd reviewed was fab, but as it was taken down in September, I thought it best to forget about it. 

Then, as I say, last weekend, I was back at Liverpool's Open Eye Gallery, and I noticed that the photographer whose show it was, Stephanie Wynne, is involved in another project, and you have until 24 July to catch it at Crosby Library. Not All Who Wander Are Lost, part of the Photo Here programme, sees Stephanie as artist in residence collaborate with members of Crosby Camera Club to explore the "feel" of Sefton by combining photography with psychogeography. Wandering and pondering, what's not to like? Check that out here.

So here's the review I wrote of Stephanie Wynne's The Erosion. Better later than never...

Stephanie Wynne's The Erosion, Open Eye Gallery.
Install photo: Rob Battersby June 2024

Littorally Speaking by Sarah-Clare Conlon

The naturally eroding sands of Crosby Beach are gradually revealing a hidden human history, as documented by Liverpool-based photographer Stephanie Wynne in an exhibition commissioned by Open Eye Gallery

It almost wasn’t meant to be. Arriving with minutes to spare, I whipped out the two pairs of binoculars I’d lugged via tram, taxi, train and tube, located my collaborator, handed her one, then grabbed a seat in the audience and took a breath. It was instantly cut short as I gasped at the photographs to my left.

Here were five evenly sized, evenly spaced studies, each setting wave-worked orange bricks and hand-carved blocks of white marble against a bright blue letterbox of sky. These were broken homes and collapsed cornershopfronts, factory facades and grandiose gravestones. These were smithereens of Liverpool after Second World War air raids. 

Creatively exploring Crosby Beach climbed into my must-dos in 2020 when I heard about its secrets gradually being revealed by time and tide, simultaneously learning that family had grown up within spitting distance, on the sandblasted terraced streets of Waterloo. But we were in lockdown and the coast seemed a long way from Manchester.

Stephanie Wynne, however, is local and has photographed the beach for years, she tells me when I get in touch. I’d outlined my encounter with The Erosion; that I was one of 14 European Poetry Festival performers reading in pairs at Liverpool’s Open Eye Gallery, that I was taken by our backdrop. I ask about the five warm-hued shots with light surrounds, a contrast to the strand’s dark story.

“The day images were taken on different days in different seasons,” Wynne tells me. “Most photography projects that have value are long term – you need to photograph and re-photograph. You need knowledge of a place to be able to represent it.”

On the opposite wall, beyond which the River Mersey flows out to the Irish Sea, eight black-mounted views elicit an ethereal, other-worldliness, and a sense of nature taking things back – spume-slippery seaweed slicking over once-windowsills, creeping gale-thrashed marram grass grasping footholds in crumbling mortar. “It is a poignant landscape,” notes the exhibition blurb. “Man-made but sculpted by nature.”

Wynne elaborates: “The night pictures were the first in the project, taken between 1 and 8 May 2021, to mirror the week of nightly bombing in May 1941 – the May Blitz. They are all long exposures with torchlight – referencing searchlights – exposing the foreground details.”

Eighty years before Wynne took her camera to the beach, the Luftwaffe pounded Liverpool. Nearly one-third of houses were damaged or destroyed, thousands of buildings in the strategically vital port city flattened. The resulting rubble was dumped on a mile-long stretch of shoreline, part coastal defence, part collective memory wipe. 

Wynne researched war waste on Merseyside and beyond during a six-month residency with Open Eye in spring 2023, and, to give context to The Erosion, picked four black-and-white archive images from Sefton Library Service and Imperial War Museum, which oversee the exhibition. 

At the far end of the room, I find myself drawn to two larger, unframed prints, very much focused brinewards. Watery themes run through my poetry (I used to keep a little yacht upstream at Brunswick Dock), and, to me, these feel different to the other groupings and their land-based gaze. It turns out they are part of a new series of pictures, explains Wynne: “To further the project since January I decided to look at how the water and intertidal life is affected by our interventions.”

This pairing – one calm, half-submerged; one rippled, kinetic, as if the swash is rushing in – was chosen by curator Max Gorbatskyi. “He felt two was enough to tell the story,” says Wynne, continuing: “Max wanted to create a narrative throughout the exhibition – the daylight wall shows the archaeological details, shifting bricks, plantlife, how people use the beach and construct playful ‘artworks’ – and I decided to create one of these makeshift sculptures.”

Spying this 3-D pile of debris – cobbled masonry necklace-linked with a ribbon of rusting steel reinforcement rod – was another highlight at our event, one of the poets hiding behind it, then reappearing. My poetry partner and I delivered our ebbing and flowing piece about the ocean, squinted through our binoculars, The Erosion around us also providing a long view through its close-ups.

Stephanie Wynne’s The Erosion was part of LOOK Photo Biennial 2024: Beyond Sight, 28 June-1 September 2024, at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool. 

Wandering and pondering

A couple of weeks back, on Thursday 24 April, I launched my latest poetry pamphlet, Wanderland, a Poetry Book Society Summer 2025 Listing and nominated for the prestigious Wainwright Prize. We celebrated with a wonderful evening of readings, including kinepoetics from Scott Thurston and poems about concrete (but not concrete poems) by Lydia Unsworth, who even agreed to revisit the Oulipian collaboration we made for European Poetry Festival a bit back.

So Wanderland is out with Red Ceilings Press (the same publisher as Lune), as they make lovely little A6 numbers, perfect for popping in your pocket and taking for a wander and a ponder, which is what Wanderland was inspired by and what it aims to inspire in its readers. Wanderland brings together three sequences about wandering and pondering. It lifts off with ‘Flight Patterns’, inspired by the RSPB’s Manchester origins and a pioneering ornithologist uncle, tours the watery world of Ilkley’s moorland spas and springs (from my Ilkley Literature Festival residency), and ends up visiting various urban-rural edgelands via a series of 100-word prose poems, which appeared last spring in the special Urban/Rural edition of Spelt Magazine.

Anyway, the Red Ceilings online store has already sold out of their copies of Wanderland, but I ordered extra, so numbered and signed limited editions are still available direct from me. Indeed, this weekend, I'll be reading from the book at this year’s Weaver Words Literature Festival in Frodsham, where I went to high school, so you can snag a copy then; I'll bring my best pens. 

I'm going to perform the sequence of poems from the collection called ‘Flight Patterns’, featuring endangered British birds, written in tribute to Emily Williamson, who, 135 years ago, launched her Wear No Feathers campaign and subsequently set up the forerunner to the RSPB near to where I now live in South Manchester. I was commissioned to write ‘Flight Patterns’ for Didsbury Arts Festival and premiered the 12 poems (one for each month of the year, and for each of the 11 newly red-listed birds at that time, plus one for "all the birds") to a packed room at the Old Parsonage on a sweltering day in the summer of 2023. The performance, complete with birdsong and church bells and Ladybird books and poetry map and a bit of background on the process of making it, went down really well and received lots of lovely comments. I'm not yet quite sure how I'm going to squish it into half an hour, but I'm sure it'll work out fine.

So a bit more about the book. Wanderland is a meditation on getting lost in nature without venturing too far from the North of England’s urban sprawl. From the feathered friends of Manchester to the watery world of Ilkley’s moorland spas and springs, these poems urge you to take a moment to breathe. Welcome to the Wanderland journey – two poetry maps reconnect you with the hidden wonders sharing our towns and cities; a third sequence is for wherever you find yourself in the edgelands. Pop the book in your pocket and discover the paths yourself or escape from that bus commute with a virtual wander in the great outdoors.

I said on the Red Ceilings mailout: “I’m inspired by nature and the North, and fascinated by place and language. I’d like everyone to feel welcome on the Wanderland journey – follow in my footsteps and read the pieces in situ or join me for a virtual wander, getting lost in the great outdoors from the comfort of your own armchair.” Here are some rare ducks I spotted on the River Mersey down the road.

Wanderland has had a fabulous reception, with me offering lots of little sneak peeks into it at different readings, trying to keep it so noone has to hear the same thing twice. Last night, we were in Prestwich, at Crooked Poets, where there were, happily, some paintings of birds hanging just to the right-hand side of the microphone as I wittered on to the audience. 

Will Mackie, in New Writing North’s New and Recent Poetry from the North: Spring 2025 round-up, said: “Sarah-Clare Conlon’s Wanderland is full of gorgeous observational poems about nature that are lovely to read and greatly skilled. Poems like ‘Colour by Numbers’ and ‘Thoughts on Silence’ have beautiful, memorable lines that conjure precise visual images.”

I garnered a cover blurb from Rachel Bower: "This is an intricate collection of wonder and maps and journeys. Some of the poems carry us through the year; others guide us through rivers and woods; streets and skies; birds and storms. The series of poems anchored by the specific site of Ilkley Moor brings the landscape vividly to life. Beautiful poems of treasure and nature and light." 

And another from Jennifer Lee Tsai: "In Wanderland, Sarah-Clare Conlon takes us on an odyssey through nature and the edgelands of the North West. In these lyrical poems, we encounter ‘heartening aerial sights’, ‘sikes and sandbanks, marshes and margins’. There’s a sense of playfulness in these sequences of sudden reveries as Conlon invites us to ‘close your eyes and listen’, to see ‘starshine/in the gutter’. Her arresting use of language exhorts us to ‘imprint a pattern’ and ‘create our own ripple effect’. This is a gorgeous pamphlet – stylishly crafted, attentive and attuned to the surprises of the world around us, mindful of our place within it."

And as for the cover itself, the watercolour is by Susan Platt, who called it Poetic Nuthatch. The nuthatch is the second bird to feature in the book, "all disco eyeliner". Sue studied Fine Art at Manchester Polytechnic in the 1980s and has worked extensively within gallery education, lecturing in Graphic Design at Manchester Metropolitan University for over 20 years. I'd been following Sue's Instagram account intently during lockdown as she painted and posted bird upon bird, so I knew she was the person for the job. She's a mad keen birdwatcher and recently exhibited in “Fledge - A Year of Birds” at Contemporary Six gallery in Manchester. Be sure to go and see when she next has a show! 

And check out my "Live" section for my own upcoming readings. (And apologies for the state of these fonts. Even with my ability to code, now ageing Blogger is full of glitchiness.)

A record of records

To celebrate Record Store Day 2025 (Saturday 12 April), writers and musicians have teamed up to pen ten tracks for Sleeve Notes, a unique collaborative project and live performance. I'm one of the writers.

The artists have responded to how records have shaped their lives and thinking, each creating a brand-new track combining spoken word and music. The pieces will be available as a limited-edition cassette and premiered live by the writers and musicians at Manchester’s International Anthony Burgess Foundation on the evening of Record Store Day (doors 6.30pm, £5; tickets here) – giving you plenty of time to head shopwards beforehand to get that all-important vinyl. You can also hear a preview of the album via Bandcamp here.

The project has been featured on BBC Radio 6 Music by both Guy Garvey and Marc Riley, and there's a write-up, including the full line-up of writers and musicians involved, on Creative Tourist here. I was asked to write a bit for Joyzine about the inspiration and process behind my contribution, "Breathe Silence", with artist and musician Jez Dolan. Obviously, I wrote probably way too much and it's unlikely to all get published*, so here you go...

Sarah-Clare Conlon x Jez Dolan “Breathe Silence”
When I was asked to be one of the contributing writers to Sleeve Notes, I began by nailing down a narrative, which led me to think about the ritual of selecting and playing records, especially in the context of growing up and going round to friends’ houses to listen to music. 
My jumping-off point then was messing about with the sounds of words – my aim is to imbue my poetry with an aural quality, for example through assonance and alliteration, percussion and sibilance, to create an evocative soundscape. I’ve been performing regularly since 2010, and I love creating work that will have impact on both page and stage. 
I invited artist and musician Jez Dolan to work with me, as I thought his double bass would provide the perfect backdrop to my words, and, after an initial chat about influences and ideas, I spent an evening riffling through my vinyl collection, picking out artists I listened to as a teenager – Talking Heads, OMD, Prince, Kate Bush – and making notes on the noises of putting on a record, not just the songs themselves. I have a Pro-Ject deck and it doesn’t have an automatic arm lift, so the stylus just goes round and round at the end of a side, and it turned out each LP had a different kind of rhythmic quality. 
I sent Jez a draft of the text – which I’d approached slightly as a song, with I suppose verses and a chorus, and a refrainy thing – and a quick recording so he could get an idea of how I sounded reading the words. Jez then spent a bit of time with the words coming up with some options, including a riff and some drone, and the next step was me meeting Helga (the double bass) and spending an afternoon playing around and nailing down a firmer direction for Jez to go down and develop. One thing we agreed was that my words needed to be edited down, while Jez wanted to create an extra musical element, so at our next get-together we had a more streamlined version of the written piece and a more sophisticated composition. We practised this and once happy with the end result – called “Breathe Silence” – we recorded it, then drank some wine to celebrate.

Update: *indeed (also I note I did more than one "nailing down" in the original) – you can read the Joyzine article here. It says mine and Jez's track has a "beat-generation, jazz-vibe". Niiiiice.

Tootally Wired lives on

Thrilled to have ‘Repetitions and Pauses’, originally dreamed up for the Tootally Wired project in September (thanks to Nic Chapman for the photographic evidence of part of the creative process as well as the performance event, which I also compèred), accepted for publication by Long Poem Magazine.

Issue 33 is due out in May. I was asked to send the editors an introduction to the writing process of the poem, which I think is a great idea! Sometimes I spend ages doing research and working out how to approach the actual piece – what it should look like, what it should sound like, what will stand it apart from the other pieces being written for a project – and that whole teeth-pulling procrastination part is often lost in time, like tears in rain...

‘Repetitions and Pauses’ was conceived for a commissioned performance project as part of Manchester Histories Festival. Six writers and a sound artist were each invited to respond to the Tootal scarf, a Manchester export, premiering their pieces live in September 2024 at Manchester’s Central Library for a sold-out event called Tootally Wired. I enjoy working within constraints and my approach to writing the piece was to consider the construction of the garment, and how this might be applied to my own creation. Traditionally Tootal scarves are woven and repeat printed silk with hand-applied tassels, and I wanted to incorporate this into the fabric of the poem – the ‘choruses’ not only evoke the process and the product, but also the musicality of the looms and machinery used in the manufacture, and the rhythmic back and forth of the supply and distribution network involved. As a former journalist on fashion glossies, I was interested in exploring both the history of the brand and the craftsmanship involved, so I spent some time at Edinburgh’s world-renowned tapestry studio Dovecot and with a textile artist at Manchester’s Rogue Studios, who explained the intricacies of passementerie and other weaving practices. As they require a hands-on, human skill, and with silk a natural product, I was also compelled to consider the industry’s impact on, or implication in, the landscape, where, even in the most urbanised and polluted of settings, nature manages to creep into the cracks. This in turn had me thinking, and writing, in a circle.

The Tootally Wired writers were, in performance order, Emily Oldfield, Tom Jenks, Wendy Allen, David Gaffney, me and Nicholas Royle, with a musical interlude from sound artist Gary Fisher. We had a Tootally Wired ident created by Zoe McLean, Tootal-related footage from the North West Film Archive, and mannequins sporting Tootal scarves. It was funded by Arts Council England.

Blah! Blah!! Blah!!!

Two of our favourite hangouts have closed their doors in recent weeks: one due to the decision to discontinue trading at one of their two sites (so at least they're not gone forever); the other after their estate agent landlords turfed them out unfairly (and likely unlawfully). This latter, Café Blah, were evicted with no warning (and right after paying their rent), and, following a sit-in protest and a take-to-the-streets demonstration, a Just Giving campaign is ongoing to help them get set up in a new space as soon as possible. 

A vital part of Manchester’s creative community, the folks at Café Blah regularly put on bands and DJs and sound artists and films and spoken word and art shows and all sorts of fabulous necessary cultural activity – scant days before their locks were unjustly changed, Blah co-hosted the third Party For The People and a literary quiz for the first-ever Withington Book Festival. While making our way to the demo just a week on from making our way to read at WBF, David and I decided to try and make sure Café Blah can host many more great events!

As a flurry of gigs were organised by bands at the likes of Peer Hat and Withy Public Hall, we've been busy behind the scenes setting up our own #SaveCaféBlah Fundraiser, a reading event bringing together loads of fantastic writers serving up wonderful words to contribute to the #SaveCaféBlah campaign. 

Blah! Blah!! Blah!!! Writers For Café Blah – poetry and prose for the people – will take place on Saturday 23 November, 5-7pm, upstairs at Withington Public Hall Institute, at the village end of Burton Road, between The Orion and Sainsbury's. Tickets are £10 and are on sale now – you need a ticket to get in, but if you can’t make the event and want to donate please use the Save Café Blah Just Giving link (see below for all the links).

LINE-UP: The Blah! Blah!! Blah!!! #SaveCafeBlah wordy fundraiser readers will include purveyor of fine flash fiction David Gaffney, reading from his pamphlet Whale, and Professor of Poetry at the Centre for New Writing John McAuliffe, reading from his latest collection National Gallery. The Blah! Blah!! Blah!!! line-up will also include Joey Francis and Tim Allen of Peter Barlow's Cigarette, Steven Waling and Pam Galloway oft spotted at Manchester Poets, and Anna Percy of the newly reinvigorated Beatification. We’ll also be hearing from Broken Sleep Books poet Nóra Blascsók, Confingo storyist Nathan Bailey, Dry River author Alicia Rouverol and death of workers/Red Ceilings/many other published writer Lydia Unsworth. Joining the party are The Emma Press-pamphleted Lenni Sanders, of Manchester Critics Collective, Red Ceilings Press-pamphleted Steve Smythe, of Speakeasy, Guillemot Press-pamphleted Jazmine Linklater, of No Matter, and Sublunary Editions-pamphleted Tom Jenks, of zimZalla and formerly The Other Room. I will be compèring and might read something too.

Bagsy your ticket quick, it’s less than a week away!

* Tickets are £10pp. Eventbrite will add a fee to each ticket price. Here's the ticket link.

** All proceeds go to the Save Café Blah fund. Big thanks to the artists for giving up their time and super big thanks to the Withington Public Hall Institute peeps for their support in the effort to raise funds for Café Blah, letting us have the venue for free.

*** Please note, if you'd like to contribute to the Save Café Blah fund, but can't make this event (or you'd like to contribute more than £10pp), you can donate direct to Blah's Just Giving crowdfunder here.