Light-heartedness is a serious business – latest from The Hurst Writer-in-Residence

A selection of photographs and found poems from Deb Alma, our writer-in-residence at The Hurst.

Points of interest

We want you to treat the Hurst as your home

monkey puzzle, apple orchard, honeysuckle

your room as your writing room

Clockhouse, carpark, sequoia trees

decorate with flowers books and woodland objects

Duck Island, bluebell walk, azalea walk

screwed up bits of paper

wisteria arbour, best view in England

tossed from your desk.

– words taken from The Hurst Welcome Pack

The Hurst Crop

We picked all the apples yesterday morning;

if the fruit hits the ground

it has no time to bruise;

stooping and placing, trays and baskets

loads more than we had feared

to press the apple flesh

pulp into the bucket

scooped into layers of cloth and frames of the press

the fruit of the tree of literacy

bucket by bucket

the Curl Tails crunched up

– words taken from The Hurst newsletter, 2007, Keith Pybus

‘The fire in the flint shows not till it be struck’

In the early days it had been pens and notebooks
and a queue for one of the two typewriters,
there was always a queue for the loo
but back then no-one complained.

And now the paperwork, the application questionnaires,
the evaluation forms, the parent groups,
insurance companies, fire officers,
health and safety inspectors .

But the sound, like laughter;
it has been the lightness that has tempered Arvon,
kept it radical, deep-rooted,
light-heartedness is its strength,
light-heartedness is a serious business.

We had been called on to write as if writing mattered.

– words taken from The Founding of Arvon by John Moat