Where can you find art in Crawley? On Thursday 14th November 2024, I was invited to perform poetry at the second occurrence of Woodzy & Friends at the Theatre Centre in West Green. This was my first time reading poetry in Crawley; I walked fifteen minutes from my house to the venue, where I usually hop on the train, walk to Brighton or take another bus to Hove. Many artists who don’t live in Brighton or London will do the same, and there was no train or bus to hop onto, my legs felt that this is not anecdotal. I was walking through familiar landscapes, and in a dark nook, I entered a new world: the seeds for a vibrant art scene in Crawley.
Woodzy is this local poetry celebrity who has been on Life & Rhymes and has performed in Wembley.
Simon Edwards presented his photography practice throughout the years, from his early days to now, with a humble tone, saying sentences like “and that time, I thought why not put things in front of the view and block it”; in that quiet walk through photographs, the room felt the power of what art can do to someone. His talk made me want to pick up a camera again and see what emerges from “blurry, shaky” photos, like a mirror to my self, to my world view when the picture is taken.
Then I came on stage and turned it into an imaginary campfire, to gather and tell each other stories. I screened a short film, and you might think I was there to show poetry not film, and I was, because this film is a filmpoem, meaning it’s a poem using audio and visuals to add to the words; the words didn’t work at first because of some tech issue, so the audience was left with silent “blurry & shaking” footage of my garden – ironically echoing Simon’s artwork. My poems are emerging from our times, at their root, the challenge of our century, the big scary C-word: climate. Like a tree, roots communicate through fungi networks, ie. community, love, relationships. So I read some poems which I frame as ecopoems: poems with an ecological message, but as I go about the lessons of being a beginner gardener and falling asleep with my love in winter, I remind you that ecology means “study of the home”, and so I explore my home. If you don’t relate to this view of ecology and its relevance in the climate crisis, that is okay, but if you do, maybe you can write about your home, or explore this theme in your artwork.
Crawley is now my home, poetry is my home, and Woodzy & Friends is becoming my home. I end my performance by breaking into French because I haven’t told you, reader, that I am French; growing up in France I didn’t expect to live in Crawley but I do, and Crawley becoming my home has expanded where I thought that I could belong. Because I spoke in French, I talked with the security guard who said I heard some French, we got chatting and she told me about her journey moving here twenty years ago from Mauritius; I thought this is the point, isn’t it? Languages and poetry open conversations and create connections between strangers. You might think I don’t speak French, I wouldn’t have understood anything, but you wouldn’t need to, as I spoke the poem to music made with bird songs (Bittern by Cosmo Sheldrake); we don’t understand the meaning of bird songs but they make us feel something, and this is what art can do: speak to the heart.
If you think art wasn’t for you, or if you say to yourself I am not an artist, I hope you look through a mirror. If you think that art scenes are necessarily at least a train away, look in your neighbourhood. Come to the next Woodzy & Friends and meet creatives; I hope to see collaborations sprout from deepening and expanding our networks, like mushrooms in the woods.
