Featured in the 2011 Charles Causley Festival are newer and established writers, artists and performers.

To see the full 2011 Festival Programme visit
http://charlescausleyfestival.co.uk/

James Lovelock – famed for the development of the Gaia theory which examines the effects of climate change and other issues affecting mankind’s future, Professor Lovelock was last year featured by the BBC in its “Beautiful Minds” series about prominent scientists. Also identified by the Observer as one of the top intellects in Britain. In conversation with Professor Colin Webb.

Jim Causley – Devon-based folk singer makes a popular return to deliver a mixture of traditional and contemporary songs. Last year his arrangement of Charles’s poem Angel Hill was one of the most moving moments in the Festival.

Literary Lunch with Michael Williams – has worked with many local authors including John Betjeman, Charles Causley and Winston Graham of Poldark fame. Amusing anecdotes and personal insights.

E V Thompson – author of many historical novels mostly based on the lives of working people in Cornwall. Meticulously researched, his books give a fascinating picture of Cornwall’s past. Meet with him over a cream tea.

Bagas Degol & Annamaria Murphy – present “Red Letter Days”, a blend of music, poetry and stories with a strong Cornish flavour.

Dizraeli and the Small Gods – a remarkable evening of hip-hop music which should set Launceston alight. A poetry slam by local residents prior to Dizraeli and the Small Gods performance. Dizraeli will also be running a rap workshop for anyone interested in performing in the poetry slam earlier that afternoon.

Phil Cope – expert on local Holy Wells will supplement his talk with an exhibition and a mini-bus trip to see some of the wells he will highlight in his talk.

Dew Vargh (Bert Biscoe and Pol Hodge)/Mike O’Connor and Barabar Griggs/David Johnson – for an evening of music, poems and performance poetry

Gumbo Flyers – renowned local zydeco band

Book signings – by local authors Georgie Adams, John Neal & Virginia Spears, Anne Watts

Art exhibtions – by Gwynngala and Tom Adams

Book Fair – of local independent publishers

Wine, Wisdom and Words Literary Quiz evening – organised by the Launceston Twinning Association

Poetry and Pints at the Westgate – with Clive Blake and an exhibition of photographs by Chris Robbins

Causley Walk – walk the town with Jane Nancarrow and listen to Jane’s superb readings of poems which unlock the secrets of Causley’s love of his home town

Charles Causley Poems at the Museum

To see the full 2011 Festival Programme click here

http://charlescausleyfestival.co.uk/

Tickets for the festival are available from the Hall for Cornwall Box Office online at http://www.hallforcornwall.co.uk/other-venue/search/&venue=35 or by telephone on 01872 262466.

Tickets are also available to purchase in person through Launceston Tourist Information Centre

The recent death of artist Robert Tilling MBE, RI is a massive loss to West Country life and more widely. Born in Bristol in 1944, educated there and in Exeter, he was an inspired teacher in Jersey where he settled. A great friend of poet Charles Causley, he was a frequent visitor to Cornwall. After Charles’ death in 2003, Bob was an irreplaceable member of the Charles Causley Trust, tirelessly working to preserve the poet’s house in Launceston for posterity and as part of Cornwall’s heritage. It was characteristic of Bob. His energy for the arts and their importance was boundless. He was a fine painter, elected to the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-Colours in 1985 and exhibiting widely including at the RA and RWS. His characteristic style was an abstraction from landscape forms. The Jersey coastline in all its lights and colours was a constant inspiration. In comparison with his prolific response to the land and the sea, he did much less figurative work, but when he did, it was invariably impressive. His tremendous response to Causley poems such as ‘Myth’ and ‘At St Hilary’ in Twenty-One Poems (1986) and to Causley’s translations from the German in Schondilie (1982) are fine examples. But Bob’s artistic abilities were not only with paint. His photography, though informal and as yet not exhibited, was a delight to his friends. He played good blues guitar, wrote many jazz reviews, lectured, performed, and taught blues technique in the United States. He brought blues singers over to perform in Jersey and wrote a book about blind bluesman Rev Gary Davis, first published in 1992 and reissued, updated, in 2010. Rev Gary Davis died in 1972 but it was his recorded voice which greeted the 500 mourners at Bob’s funeral in January at the St Helier Methodist Centre, Jersey. It was a funeral certainly but a heartfelt celebration of this larger-than-life man. Tributes came from Sir Philip Bailhache, from the painter Peter Swan, his first art teacher in Bristol, and jazz companion Bob Little. Poems, including Causley’s ‘Sorel Point’, written for Bob and his family, were read by family and friends. More music, this time Beethoven, played by Edward Bailhache and Gerard Le Feuvre, the most rousing account by the congregation of ‘Jerusalem’, then prayers and blessing. Shining through all was a sense of love and gratitude for a generous-spirited man, a constant encourager of others, as teacher, friend and arts administrator, a vibrant artist, a lover of life . His 2006 MBE was national recognition of this. All who knew him carry that recognition closely and personally. Bob, a devoted husband and father, is survived by his wife Thelma and daughters Isobel and Delia.

Ronald Tamplin

In keeping with the subject of Rotheray’s album, ‘The Puffin and The Squirrel’ deals with the age-old question of gender relations, addressed through a romance between a seabird and a squirrel. Of the song Rotheray says “It was intended as a slightly quaint comic number in the tradition of Flanders & Swann or Noel Coward. The Puffin is the good guy, the Cuckoo is the rogue. The Red Squirrel is the good girl; The Grey Squirrel is the gold-digger”.

In a career that has taken him from forming The Beautiful South with Paul Heaton in the late 1980s to his critically-acclaimed acoustic side project Homespun, David Rotheray’s name has always been synonymous with music that mixes the melancholy with dry humour to great effect. His first solo album, ‘The Life Of Birds’, was released in August 2010 and is a series of autumnal, rustic reflections on life. Rotheray’s ornithological concept album stems from the opening track and first single ‘The Sparrow, The Thrush and The Nightingale’, a laidback, upbeat melody with an instantly recognisable whistled refrain disguising an allegorical tale about greed. Rotheray decided to expand on the metaphor to write an entire album with birds as its loose notional concept.

To coincide with his tour David Rotheray’s ‘The Life of Birds’ will be re-released featuring ‘The Puffin and The Squirrel’ as a bonus track.

‘The Life Of Birds’ will be resonating from venues across the UK in March 2011, with intimate performances of beautiful and inspiring songs. David Rotheray will be joined by some of Britain’s most talented vocalists including Jim Causley and Bella Hardy who feature on the album and will provide vocals for all the dates on the tour. Guest support will come from Irish singer/songwriter Eleanor McEvoy who also features on the album.

More information from http://www.davidrotheray.com/

South West dates:

March 29th Louisiana, Bristol 0845 413 4444 www.alt-tickets.co.uk £10.00
March 30th Mama Stones, Exeter 01392 848485 www.mamastones.com £5.00

All tickets available at: www.ents24.com

Sadly, the long-running campaign to save Charles Causley’s House is running out of steam.

Custodian of the late poet’s house, The Charles Causley Trust has worked since 2004 to try to conserve for future generations the intact home and contents of one of this country’s most loved poets. Visit the media section our website to see the extraordinary intactness of the property. You can also see throughout the house with our brand new Flickr Photostream. It is saving this aspect of the poet’s house that is now slipping from our grasp due to lack of funds.

The Trust hoped to save the house to be a 20th Century version of Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage – to inspire the school trips and literary tourists in the 22nd Century and beyond. Still, with only some alterations, the house is very much as it was when Causley was alive, as if the acclaimed poet has just walked out, up Angel Hill, to the shops. But, despite hard work and campaigning, and raising over £50, 000 so far, the Trust are facing up to the possibility that there may be no funders – and many sources have been tried – for this visionary project. At least £150, 000 is needed.

To conserve the house and contents properly will require more money than has been raised thus far, and this winter the Trust faces abandoning the conservation philosophy it has tried so hard to follow in favour of more rudimentary repairs to responsibly preserve the fabric of the building. More invasive renovation will be needed in future months, thus losing the original extension area of the house forever. The Trust faces the very real possibility of selling the house back on the market in future years.

If you can help the Trust at all in its endeavours, through funding, or voluntary fundraising, please contact mail@thecharlescausleytrust.org or write to The Charles Causley Trust, c/o Potter Baker Chartered Accountants, Launceston, Cornwall.

You can call The Charles Causley Trust on 07767 712783.

You can make donations here.

TS Eliot Prize-winning poet Jen Hadfield, and Charles Causley Trust trustee Ron Tamplin will be reading at Exeter Poetry Festival on Friday October 8, from 7pm in Exeter Central Library. Marking Causley’s close association with the city, the Causley Reading will be an opportunity to promote the campaign to save Charles Causley’s House.

Jen Hadfield lives in Shetland, whose landscape and language persistently influence her poetry and visual art. Her work often pivots on the idea of the secular-sacred, relating to landscape – “It is in heaven as it is on earth” “it is on earth as it is in heaven.” Liturgical rhythms underpin many of her poems about place, home, ecology, space – an idiomatic mythology of the here-and-now.

Of her two books published by Bloodaxe, Almanacs was written in Shetland and the Western Isles in 2002 thanks to a bursary from the Scottish Arts Council, and it won an Eric Gregory Award in 2003. Nigh-No-Place, written in Canada and Shetland, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize in 2007 and won the T.S.Eliot Prize for poetry in 2008. She is currently working on her first novel.

Tickets for the reading are available in person, by phone and online from Exeter Phoenix and cost £6/£5 concessions.

You can view the full Exeter Poetry Festival programme online here.

Charles Causley will be featuring in the ICCI 360 Festival, the first panoramic festival of its kind and an immersive celebration of photography, film, art, music and performance. Located in the Piazza, Plymouth City Centre, the week’s exciting events are experimental, beautiful, funny and inclusive.

Karol Kwiatek, PhD researcher at the University of Plymouth, the talent behind the 360 videos of Charles’s House on our website, will be presenting his Charles Causley Project work. Find out more and download a full programme for the festival here.

The ICCI 360 Festival arena consists of a huge 21 metre diameter dome incorporating a 62m x 6m high projection screen and a large performance space which uses cutting edge technology with surround sound and high resolution projection facilities to provide a fantastic immersive 360°, panoramic, digital experience. Amongst a diverse range of creative and cultural activities, features include live music and dance performances, film presentations, high resolution photography, digital and film animations, interactive gaming, children and young people’s activities, as well as illustrated talks and lectures.

All concerned announced the first Charles Causley Festival a huge success. A big well done to the organisers, and you can view photos from the festival here!

Tickets are now on sale for the Charles Causley Festival. To download the full programme follow this link (2.5mb): CC Festival Programme

Tickets can be purchased from Launceston Library and The Bookshop, Launceston.

With the deluxe version of Natalie Merchant’s Leave Your Sleep in the shops, we thought we’d just show you the superb packaging and the way it promotes the life and work of Charles Causley. There is beautifully bound hardback booklet inside a slipcase which features biographies, text and images for all the poets, and as you can see, Charles Causley is no exception. Likely to become a Causley collector’s item, rush out and buy one!

A photograph of Charles Causley taken by Causley Trust trustee Robert Tilling MBE. RI has been accepted into the National Poetry Gallery collection. The portrait, reproduced here, was taken in 1979.