Readings, recollections & awards

Please join The Charles Causley Trust at The Eagle House Hotel, Launceston at 7.30pm on Thursday 16th October 2008 for a special event:

Charles Causley's Saints & Sinners

Prizes will be presented for the 2008 Causley Poetry Competion by Trust patron, The Lord Tyler of Linkinhorne, there will be readings from Causley's work, and an update from Arts & Books on the progress of developing the new literature agency for South West England.

£5.00 to include admission & refreshments.

Tickets from The Bookshop, 10 Church Street, Launceston, 01566 774107.

Presented by the Charles Causley Trust Reg. No. 1102459 & The Charles Causley Society in conjunction with The Friends of Lawrence House Museum.

The River and the Rope Bridge by Greta Stoddart

The River and the Rope Bridge

Let's try and get halfway then stand firm,

rein in each rough jerk and shudder.

But the merest sway in the wind has us

wobbling hopefully on towards the bank

or crawling back to the woods we know.

The river beneath has seen it all before.

Like us it has nowhere special to go

but goes there all the same. All the same

you'd think it'd stall and darken but no,

it'd still sparkle in the sun, go on

(Go on!) if we gave up and jumped in.

Greta Stoddart

Poet of the Month: Greta Stoddart

Cyprus Well Stories is very proud to announce its first Poet of the Month, a continuing series that will highlight the work of writers in the South West.

Our very first poet is Greta Stoddart, with 'The River and the Rope Bridge'.

Greta's first collection At Home in the Dark (Anvil) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize 2002.

Her poems have been published in many newspapers and magazines including The Independent, The Spectator, Poetry Review and TLS.

Greta Stoddart is a tutor at the Poetry School, the Arvon Foundation and Bath Spa University.

Her second collection Salvation Jane will be published in September 2008.

She lives in East Devon.

Launceston in the rain

Work towards the new agency and its home at Cyprus Well has begun. Arts & Books now have a new base to work from, above The Book Shop in Launceston on Church Street, with a wonderful view of St Mary Magdalene. This week, there have been some outbursts of quite torrential rain, but the Church across the street is never anything but beautiful. Arts & Books is reminded of that line in Causley's poem 'Mary, Mary Magdalene', spoken by a nervous groom:


Mary, Mary Magdalene
Underneath the spray,
What will you be sending me
On my wedding-day?


It's said that if you manage to lodge a stone on the back of the granite statue of Saint Mary Magdalene on the east side of the Church it will bring you good luck. If you're passing by, you should have a go.

Launceston in the rain is beautiful too.

About Launceston

It is easy to see why Launceston captured the poetic imagination of Charles Causley.

If you rise early, when there is a slight mist in the valley, you'll find a completely rare crispness and clarity to the air. Launceston Castle wakes striking and magical into the sun and stands tall above the green hills of the surrounding countryside.

As Causley wrote:

WINDED, on this blue stack
Of downward-drifting stone,
The unwashed sky a low-
Slung blanket thick with rain,
I search the cold, unclear
Vernacular of clay,
Water and woods and rock:
The primer of my day *

Make a visit to www.visitlaunceston.co.uk to help you plan a trip. You should also have a look at the links to the right - The Charles Causley Society have a great page where they travel the town as it features in Causley's poems.






* From 'On Launceston Castle' by Charles Causley.

The Charles Causley Trust

Charles Causley died in 2003. He is generally acknowledged as one of the very finest Twentieth century English poets. He was lived all his life in Launceston in Cornwall, where he was a popular and admired figure and, for many years, a much-loved school teacher. His poetic reputation was worldwide.

Much of his work is a direct celebration of Cornish and Launceston life, character, history and legend. To celebrate Charles Causley is to celebrate the poetry of the region. His poetry brought him many awards, among them The Queen's Gold Medal and The Ingersoll/TS Eliot Award. He received the Hon DLitt from the University of Exeter where his archive is now held.

The Charles Causley Trust exists to keep his memory alive and to promote writing in the community and region in which he lived. To this end, the Trust has acquired Cyprus Well, the house where Charles Causley lived for fifty years. This was made immediately possible by an interest free loan of £140 000 in 2006.

There is still a great deal to be done to further the conservation and conversion of Cyprus Well to create a permanent memorial to Charles causley and contemporary poets of Cornwall and Devon, to create seminar spaces and, now, a home for a new agency in the South West, an agency with aims so very similar to that of the Trust itself.

If you would like to support the Charles Causley Trust appeal, you can do so by visiting any branch of Lloyds TSB and making a payment to The Charles Causley Trust account, held at the Launceston branch of Lloyds TSB. (A/C 0846748 - Sort Code 30-94-91) The Charles Causley Trust are a registered charity, no. 1102459.

Arts & Books

Arts & Books is a freelance cultural development agency. We are project managing the start-up of the new agency, and will be based in Launceston until the end of the project and the new agency is up and running. We’re based in South West England, and we help our clients with feasibility, organisational development, fundraising and business planning. The steering group for the SWLDA project are Arts Council England, South West, and ArtsMatrixLtd.