Bryony Pritchard - Community

‘From the corner of my eye I see a ball of tangled words:
 A poem lurks by the door, waiting to be worked.’
- Excerpt from Poem by Greg White

Morley Literature Festival’s poet in residence Becky Cherriman and visual artist Bryony collaborated together to develop Word on the Street, an outdoor poetic art trail that took the public from the Morley Town Hall to the park and other locations in the town centre.

The poetry installations were hung up high and down low for people to read and absorb on the street rather than on the page. During the Festival, Bryony and Becky led a large group of visitors around the trail packed with conversation and en-route live performances from the poets.

The creation of the poems referenced Morley’s heritage as the first producer of shoddy cloth. Bryony felted a form of shoddy cloth with botany lap waste and cotton strands. Each letter was hand printed using a letterpress at the pop up Derdlab Press.

To see images of the trail and full poems, click here
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On the first Sunday during the Festival, Becky and Bryony led a family poetry workshop at Morley Library where families joined them for a playful afternoon’s sky gazing and poetry creating. Each family could climb in under a sky of hanging space objects and fish down a poem to finish. They each created an individual poem inspired by the sights and sounds around them, and tweeted their best poetry and photos to the Sky Museum. Here are a couple:

“The clouds are not clouds, they are the froth from the milk in Starbucks!”
“A sky recipe: Grab a handful of fluff. Stir in blue paint. Let it dry”

To read more poetry, click here

Date: July - October 2013
Locations: Morley Town Hall, Metro, Leeds City Council Parks and Road Maintenance, Morley Library, Groundworks, Cuchina Restaurant.
Materials: Botany lap waste, cotton, ink, elastic.
Participants: All ages