Forest of Dean-based artist John Slater has been working with the Forest of Dean Writers Collection in a residency at the Dean Heritage Centre. Over the past year John has been experimenting with a number of temporary interventions around the museum site, both inside and out. He has been developing different ways to link work from the Writers Collection with the museum's permanent displays. At the same time John has worked with a number of local schools visiting the site, delivering imaginative workshops combining hands-on making, poetry and local history. His work has now culminated in a fantastic temporary installation in the main ground-floor gallery of the Dean Heritage Centre. In this video John talks through this latest work, and the thinking behind his project as a whole funded by Arts Council England.   

It's been a while! The Reading the Forest podcast launched (dropped?) its first ever episode in January 2021. 007's Angel and the Plot to Burn the Forest was the first episode of 'The Stories Behind the Stories' our series investigating the truth - or often otherwise! - behind some of the Forest's most enduring literary tales and tropes. That first episode traced the long-held belief that the Spanish Armada of 1588 had orders to burn down the woods of the Forest of Dean. Along the way we explored Boys Own author Tom Bevan, founding fellow of the Royal Society John Evelyn, and a literary hoax of the 1960s linking occultist John Dee with James Bond!! Other episodes looked into 'the killing of the bears', and the many Forest ghost stories. Our second series 'Poetry Now' focused on interviews with and readings from three contemporary Forest poets: Maggie Clutterbuck, Stewart Carswell and the late Dick Brice. You can listen to all previous episodes of the podcast now via Spotify or simply click ‘PODCAST’ in the menu bar above.
 
So, it’s exciting after all this time to announce a special, one-off new episode of the podcast!
 
Friend of Reading the Forest radio broadcaster and podcaster Joanna Durrant has been traveling across the Forest with historian and RTF co-director Dr Roger Deeks looking into the life, times and work of ‘the Forest poetess’ Catherine Drew (1784-1867). As well as exploring her recently rediscovered poems, they spoke to an expert in c19th paper making to find out the sort of work that Catherine’s father did at Gunn’s Mill, interviewed book collector and publisher John Saunders about his 2002 publication of her work, and one of the many desendants of Catherine living in America. And, for the first time in probably 100years, working with local genealogist Eric Nichols, Roger will reveals the exact spot where Catherine lived with her husband James and their family in Cinderford.  
 
On 19th September Roger, Jo and participants in the podcast are meeting at Dean Heritage Centre for an exclusive ‘listening party’ as the trailer for the new episode goes live. You can listen to the new episode itself from 28th September onwards. Search on Spotify for the Reading the Forest Podcast or listen via our PODCAST page here - once there just click play.

The new podcast episode is part of the Forest of Dean Writers Collection project led by University of Gloucestershire in partnership with Dean Heritage Centre. The project is funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund. 

There's a rich history of thriving amateur drama across the Forest of Dean. Some of our best-loved Forest authors have written for the stage and this is reflected in the Forest of Dean Writers Collection at The Dean Heritage Centre. Dr Jason Griffiths from the University of Gloucestershire and a team of local amateur dramatists will be exploring the history and bringing some of the scripts to life at Lydney Library on 10th September. And if you fancy "treading the boards" too - there will be an opportunity to participate in bringing rediscovered lines from a lost play to life.   ​

Many of you  will know that Coleford-based author Andrew Taylor has been a key supporter of Reading the Forest. He is an international award winning author of historical fiction, more recently acclaimed for his series of novels featuring James Marwood & Cat Lovett in pursuit of justice in 17th century London (The Ashes of London; The Fire Court, The King’s Evil; The Last Protector; The Royal Secret; Shadows of London). A few years ago we teamed up with the FoD Local History Society to host an event featuring Andrew, with a focus on his much loved Lydmouth series. This popular series of books was set in a fictional coastal town in the 1950s. For us, there are few authors better at evoking the early post-war mood and gloom of Britain. At the event Andrew, with a his fictional map in hand, explained how he had created the fictional landscape of Lydmouth based on an amalgam of Lydney, Coleford and Monmouth. It was a great insight into the processes behind the creation of remarkable historical fiction.
Following the success of his Marwood and Lovett books, Andrew has once again turned to his local landscape to write a compelling murder mystery set in a girls' boarding school. Andrew has kindly allowed us to extend an invitation to all our friends and supporters to the book launch on Friday 6th June at 6.30pm at the Main Place in Coleford.

Every Voice is a new Selected Poems, bringing back into print the poetry of Leonard Clark. It features a selection of Clark’s poetry from across his life, from some of his earliest poems, through to his best-known work, and some uncollected poems from an unfinished manuscript. 
 
Leonard Clark grew up in Cinderford in the Forest of Dean before moving away as an adult, never to live there again.  Nevertheless, the Forest and his relationship with it left a deep impression on him that he would draw upon and form a backdrop to some of his poems.
 
His early published work sees him trying out different styles and themes. Some of the better poems from this era show Clark starting to explore poems about people and their landscapes, themes that he would develop and expand upon later on.  Using locations that he was living in and visiting at the time, ‘Scaleber Beck’ (near Settle, in Yorkshire), sees the poet starkly connecting place and experience:
 
            This is old buried ground.
            Ghost echoes of sudden stopped breath
 
It is in his collection English Morning and Other Poems, however, that Clark’s poetry undergoes a transformation, with a sense of him becoming the poet he wanted to be, and adopting his own distinctive style and voice.  Whether coincidence or not, this collection is also the first of his that features poems explicitly about the Forest of Dean and his own personal past there (such as ‘Headlong, Like Comet’) or the deeper past of the industrial heritage of the Forest.  ‘Charcoal Burners’ features one of Clark’s strongest poetic endings, with him connecting his own experiences of the Forest with its industry, as the poet witnesses:
 
            the ancient miracle that turned to black
            By forest alchemy the tenderest green,
            And hears above the well’s small chattering tongues
            The voices of old fiery boughs.
 
The poem ‘Every Voice’, from which this selected poems takes its title, was regarded by Clark as his best poem. Featuring a dawn chorus, this poem explores Clark’s most prominent themes of nature and divinity, with the collective resurrection of life following the quiet light of winter.
 
            I heard some fields whispering together,
            grass blades bending beneath familiar skies;
            it seemed every turf was trembling
            with wordless praises.
 
These images of life, nature, and renewal are picked up later in ‘English County’, with a landscape during harvest (“a tractor puffs away the morning, / crisp barley gathered in”) while Clark:
 
            breathe[s] some of its divinity now,
            am washed by it as these hills are washed,
            know that Love is shining here, everlasting.
 
The typical English landscapes that Clark visits here, as well as the plain language he uses to convey these complex and universal images, is reminiscent of poets such as Edward Thomas and Philip Larkin. ‘The Pea-Pickers’ exemplifies this, featuring as it does a stopping train journey.
 
Elsewhere in this book, Clark frequently turns his attention to the natural world and the animals within it, writing poems that capture the individual of the animal.  In ‘Mole’, he imaginatively explores the domain of a mole, the ‘little black lord of the underworld’:
           
            prince of the sappers I have excavated the whole of Europe,
            hills and tunnels advertising me all the way to Japan.
            My four strong ounces drive forward at speed.
 
Clark only revisits the Forest with his poetry in some of the final poems, selected from An Intimate Landscape. Written during the latter stages of his life, these poems extensively and nostalgically explore the Forest, with Clark ‘gripped by the fever of homesickness’.  Perhaps after Clark’s autobiographical writing of the Forest published in the 1960s, he felt it was now time to express more of his own life in the Forest in his poetry.  Here he tries to justify his return to the Forest:
 
            What impelled me to go home.
            Was it to walk abroad with the dead?
            Discover again roots that may never have been there?
           
An Intimate Landscape sees him writing at his most direct and most moving, writing about the place that he ultimately knew and loved best.  These poems capture evocatively the Forest and its identity:
 
            At the top of the town
            where the wind blew fresh and free,
            a great panorama, the bowed river
            sparkling through red meadows and farms,
            the white cathedral tower commanding,
            belonging it seemed to another country.

Stewart Carswell, November 2024

More than forty years after the writer and poet Leonard Clark, who grew up in Cinderford, passed away, a brand new collection of his work is being published. Dr John Howlett of Keele University has collaborated with the Clark family and the new Forest of Dean Writers Collection Project to bring together some of the late poet's very best work. The new book, Leonard Clark: Every Voice, selected poems,  published by Greenwich Exchange, will be launched on Saturday 7th December in Cinderford itself, just a a few steps from the poet's childhood home, and the church where his ashes are interred.
At the launch event will be an exhibition about Clark featuring photographs of the young poet, and other details of his life and work newly discovered amongst his extensive personal archive recently donated by his family to the Dean Heritage Centre, in Soudley. Editor of the new book John Howlett will be joined by Clark's son and literary executor Robert Clark (who wrote a foreword to the new book), Clark's daughter Mary-Louise, and Reading the Forest's Dr Roger Deeks. The discussion will be chaired by former BBC presenter and now podcast host Jo Durrant and will feature recordings of Clark himself reading some of the poems in the new collection. 

Join us for this free event (and free refreshments) to discover more about this fine 'Forest poet', and to purchase your exclusive signed copy of the new book. 

Robert Clark recently visited the Forest of Dean to see some of the places connected with his late father, and to visit the new Collection at Dean Heritage Centre. In discussion with Roger Deeks, Robert gave some amazing insights into his father and his work, and we'll be releasing film extracts of those conversations over the coming weeks here on the Reading the Forest web pages.     

Two of the Forest’s most popular poets lived more than 100 years apart – Catherine Drew (born 1784) and Harry Beddington (born 1901). They wrote about the Forest’s people, places, landscape and history. Catherine described the remarkable changes she saw as Forest industry expanded and Cinderford grew into a town; Harry captured the essence of the Forest character through sharp observation and humour. Now we’re discovering there was even more to these two than we’d thought: finding forgotten poems written by Catherine, and unpublished poems (and more!) by Harry. To share some of our new discoveries, Dean Heritage Centre is streaming live online (for the first time!) this Thursday (3rd Oct.) 12noon (1pm GMT) from the Gage Library. Log on if you can and hear some of these newly (re)discovered poems as we mark National Poetry Day in the Forest of Dean. And see some of the other incredible material relating to these two writers recently donated to the new Forest of Dean Writers Collection. All made possible with support ofThe National Lottery Heritage Fund

Summer season of fun family crafts workshops have kicked off at Dean Heritage Centre. They're open to all. If your children get free school meals you can apply for one of our fully-funded family places - free entry, free workshops, and free lunch - for children and parents/carers. Thanks to the support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, FVAF, Gloucestershire County Council and University of Gloucestershire, with the support of Dean Heritage Centre we're putting on a series of crafting activities inspired by poems in the new Forest of Dean Writers Collection. Today's (1st August) was themed around the brilliant dialect poem 'Varest Ship' [Forest sheep] by Keith Morgan. We've two more (specific to the collection) coming up: Thursdays 8th and 22nd August. Free places are limited, so to find out how to apply and book, go to Forest Voluntary Action Forum's booking page: here: https://forestofdeandistrict.coordinate.cloud/project/57012